Probably similar for google. My first line of search is always chatgpt

Whats the reason for using this over free options like gmail?

For me it's the ability to use a custom domain. See https://lorendb.dev/posts/the-case-for-custom-email-domains/ for my reasoning why I do this.

Your emails aren't being anaylyzed to create a profile about for being used for targeted ads.

Doesn't Google claim they don't read your emails?

There's plenty of reasons to drop Google thought. They barely improve old products.

They probably try to force us to use their products: I think you can't use your own assistant with a wakeword. On my pixel watch 1, using a calendar other than Google's sucks. There is almost no useful wearos apps (sure, it's the devs jobs but Google could bribe them or something). A lot of great wear os apps would benefit everyone.

I'm still pissed that they want a monthly subscription for the sleep tracking with the Google home thing... That you buy with your own money.

Except for all the emails you send to all the other people still using Gmail.

Harder for Google to tie it to you though when you're not using a Google account

I care relatively little because I cut ads using browser plugins and suchlike.

Allowing anything shady, let alone incriminating in your email would be insane, whether it's a mailbox at Google or at Proton. Transactional emails from shady websites, like password reset, are best done with email services like mailinator, which offer zero access protection and destroy the received email in a few minutes automatically.

Mostly custom domain emails or API usage

We use the mermaid gantt chart to track our releases, as well as team individuals that are out of office.

Looks like this: Out of office: [John Doe] [Stacy] Release: [code freeze] [Staging date] [Release!]

You need at least two leading spaces to get that to render as code and preserve the layout, like:

     Out of office: 
            [John Doe]
                         [Stacy]
     Release:
            [code freeze]
                           [Staging date]
                                            [Release!]

I use a google spreadsheet with 1 colum per day and 1 row per person. It looks like:

          Jan
          1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 ...
  John          X X X X X
  Stacy   X X X

  Release       CF       FF