Sure, you just set up forwarding (oh look, forwarding just became a paid feature in Gmail!) and then respond from your new email, and over time it will fix itself and you won't lose emails..
Definitely, the point is you'll have to pay Google whether you want it or not, if they make GMail a premium product. So it's not so easy to leave at all.
Fair.. I've actually been looking at paid email services lately, thinking that perhaps I would rather pay a reasonably yearly fee to have more guarantees and perhaps a bit more control over my email.
