While one could heavily overgeneralize and say that "everyone uses google for mail" (iirc they own like 20% of the email market) they certainly don't own the protocol or its development.
I think it is exactly these sentiments that do most harm.
I mean, that is completely false at every level (technical and operational).
Sure, gmail is a big player but there are many others. Most importantly, there are thousands of smaller players. All of which interoperate.
I can't tell if you say that sarcastically or from a position on being uninformed about how email works. If the latter, do take some time to understand email infrastructure at a high level because it is a case study in beautiful interoperability of open standards. Something we must all keep in mind for the future of the Internet.
Email has been resilient and an open communication mechanism from everyone since the 70s precisely because it cannot be owned by anyone, it is an open interoperable standard.
There will never be anything equally long-lived and feature rich from a single corporation. Corporate interest don't align with that. Proprietary solutions will always be about locking you in and limiting interoperability.
