Maybe they have a reputation system in which I've gained a good standing and you haven't. Have you considered that your attempts to game their system have actually been regarded as abuse?
All major email providers do similar things because this is exactly the setup you'd have if you were a spam operation. Email is just something that you shouldn't try and do yourself on a small scale.
How long before 'The world wide web is just something that you shouldn't try and do yourself on a small scale.'.
Really that's bothers me greatly. Email is the example of a successful open protocol and by all means you should try and do it yourself. The less we are reliant on these giant companies the better and to abdicate email to google just because they've achieved critical mass is to wipe 25 years of internet history under the carpet.
Decentralization is good, not bad.
If installing and operating a compliant email server is too hard then we should make that easier, not push to get everybody to switch over to some corporation.
It very much is something that should stay decentralized. I'm was shocked when I learned that google mail has 1 billion accounts. It's starting to break email as a non-proprietary service.
Email remains the poster child (given its age, perhaps that should be poster grandparent) for how a lightweight federated communications protocol can service needs from micro to mega.
For comparison: the sidelining of XMPP by corporate interests was awfully disappointing; the centralisation of social networking feeds is downright heartbreaking. But none of that should put us off trying and trying again. Everyone with an interest in how the Internet protocol stack works in context should try running their own mail service, it's a fantastic and low-cost way to gain insight.
