Isn't the point of the article that as a non-user of gmail you can't opt out of giving google all your email? It's nice that you get a service for providing your emails to google, but what do I get?
I mean, that's the whole point of communications though, isn't it? If I tell you something, you can do that you like with that information - tell someone else, hand it to a state government, publish it in a paper, or just upload it to the servers of a corporation that I dislike. If you don't trust what other people are doing with your data, you can freely choose not to give them your data - albeit perhaps by giving up some of your communication methods and making your life somewhat more complex.
I mean this is a fact of life for pretty much everything. You can’t opt out of USD if you want to participate in the global economy. You can’t opt out of barcode scanners if you want to purchase groceries. People will augment open standards with proprietary, 100% dependent processes either because they’re easier to work with or they same you money, and often that means customers in turn must interact with those proprietary systems to get anything done.
I exchange e-mails with people who don't use Gmail and it's pretty reliable. Let's not pretend that Google is the only company who knows how to run a mail server. In fact I have more problems with e-mails coming from Gmail accounts (low quality text/pain, broken threads, etc.).
