> Complaining about "the effort" just reinforces the double-standard.
Another point of view is that this is just the reality. Loads of people are on gmail, and migrating isn't always simple. Pretending it is doesn't make it so, and pointing out that one never should have done it in the first place is a moot point.
As someone with a domain at home and a working email server, I'm still stuck with Gmail as I don't have time to make sure my setup is resilient enough to base my daily emails on...
> As someone with a domain at home and a working email server
Maintaining your own email server is crazy and not feasible unless you're passionate about email servers.
It's also a false dichotomy. Nobody with any experience and common sense suggests that you should install your own email server. Use FastMail, use Protonmail, use Office 365, heck, use Google's G Suite.
Most such services have import tools that work and the option to work with forwarded emails and external SMTP servers, so migration can be smooth.
Seeing software developers complaining about migration costs makes absolutely no sense.
Just yesterday I migrated a GSuite account to FastMail. I just changed the DNS records and imported the email via FastMail's import tool, which was automatic. And with a @gmail.com address you can just work with forwarding until everybody knows of your new address.
I migrated email addresses several times, including from my old @gmail.com address which now no longer exists. It wasn't a tragedy.
> Maintaining your own email server is crazy and not feasible unless you're passionate about email servers.
Sorry but I think this is FUD and it potentially discouraged people from taking steps to be part of the solution and not the problem.
I’ve run my own mail server for years on a $5/mo Linode VPS, and am not passionate about email servers. It was a little difficult to set up but no more difficult than a lot of weekend projects the smart people on this site undertake. It should not be scary. You can also make the switch gradually by first setting up your MX and forwarding to gmail if you want to take it slow. There’s no reason anyone with a moderate amount of Linux skills and patience can’t host their own Email.
The toughest problem I had was for a brief time, Comcast rejected mail sent from my host, but the reject log was sufficient to diagnose the problem. I just needed a fresh IPv6 address.
Another point of view is that this is just the reality. Loads of people are on gmail, and migrating isn't always simple. Pretending it is doesn't make it so, and pointing out that one never should have done it in the first place is a moot point.