Not everyone leaves their browsers open when they're at the computer. I don't, and on a 100/100 connection, from click to inbox open it takes me almost 7 seconds. I tried it twice on all 3 of my gmail accounts with varying results, but none faster than 5.
Not everyone, but I would wager that most do: Many office desktops went from having an instance of Outlook.exe open 24 hours a day, to a couple of tabs in Chrome. Which is exactly why Google made it a rich, all-encompassing platform (calendars, contacts, instant messaging) -- it's a conversation dashboard that is intended to sit resident.
This whole discussion sounds like some sort of Fastmail astroturfing campaign. I mean when people complain about Google+ (which in gmail is wholly materialized as a +YourName up in the corner), it sounds like rote talking points.
I have a account on both gmail and fastmail. If we are just concerned about speed fastmail wins for me. And there is that whole tracking thing that bugs me so that is another win for fastmail. I just use gmail for signing up on websites I will most likely only visit one.
