I left Gmail and began using Kolab Now during this wacky little experiment. You know what? I have no intention on returning to Gmail. Even though Kolab Now is a paid service, I find it to be well worth the few dollars I pay per month. The simple fact that I am not being advertised to (and my data is not being indexed for marketing purposes) is well worth the price. But the fact that Kolab Now is such a great member of the Open Source community – in addition to providing an excellent service – has convinced me. I’m staying there and leaving Google-provided email behind for good.
Docs and Drive are a similar story. I left those in favor of an OwnCloud-based system. I love it. It hasn’t been a perfect transition – I hit a few bugs in file syncing along the way – but the good outweighed the bad by a huge margin. I now have control over my own files and have far more flexibility.
