So, uh, in re: centralized email:
https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-because-it-has-all-of-yours
It's not completely centralized, but there has been a big trend towards what could fairly be called oligopoly, I think. The average experience of email is, essentially, Gmail.
Perhaps most galling has been seeing universities, where so many of us got our first email accounts & who use to run their own infrastructure, outsourcing their email to the few big providers.
Republished by Slate. Translations available in French…
copyrighteous