> Though I don't really agree with your second para. If users actually cared, at scale - vs. reacting like Pavlov's dogs to corporate marketing & such - then the nastier corporations would have to change or die. Note what happened to the "American" car companies, back when they were selling un-reliable gas guzzlers, and Americans decided that buying reliable Japanese econo-cars was the smart way to fight back.

So the solution is to wait for another for-profit company to be slightly better, migrate en masse, and hope the new one isn't as nasty as the old one. This is what people did when migrating to gmail (so much free space ! so much speed ! so much cool !) and look where we are now. Same with Apple, Facebook, and others. It's the perpetual myth that competition keeps bad actors in check - but it assumes that starting a competitor and gaining users is so easy that anyone can do it if they don't like the current offer. It's wishful thinking at best, and still doesn't give any guarantees to the user.