Erick Schonfeld wrote an interesting post today onGmail Nudges Past AOL Email In The U.S. To Take No. 3 Spot.
Here’s a quick excerpt
I have a .me account and I use my personal domain for a email address. Not to say that I don’t have a gmail account, I just never use it. As for you about to run out of space in you account, can’t you just delete all those old messages, and spam to relieve space? reply · Olaf Lederer – August 14th, 2009 at 11:27 pm PDT. In gmail Spam is cleaned up every 30 days 
you can use every domain name with gmail for free, check http://www.google.com/a …
Read the rest of this great post here: Gmail Nudges Past AOL Email In The U.S. To Take No. 3 Spot.