I suspect that this is yet another situation where public libraries are going to have to step up to the plate and provide services to fill in the gap. In this case, it would be email services to patrons.
The Googles of the world exist because they provide inexpensive services through automation and at scale. They are poorly positioned to provide services that cannot be automated at scale. Chances are that any attempt to do so would likely bankrupt them even though we are talking about extremely wealthy corporations. (Keep in mind that we only hear of a fraction of the complaints about Google. Few people have the reach or ability to have their voices heard.)
On the other hand, libraries are already embedded in the community. They already have personnel who can better understand and respond to situations that Google would regard as edge cases. They are also much smaller organizations that have less bureaucracy to deal with and a mission that aligns with the needs of the community.
I am not saying that they have to provide the actual email servers. They could contract that out, perhaps even to Google (though I suspect they would try to find another organization). They would be managing the email accounts themselves, including authentication and recovery.
The Googles of the world exist because they provide inexpensive services through automation and at scale. They are poorly positioned to provide services that cannot be automated at scale. Chances are that any attempt to do so would likely bankrupt them even though we are talking about extremely wealthy corporations. (Keep in mind that we only hear of a fraction of the complaints about Google. Few people have the reach or ability to have their voices heard.)
On the other hand, libraries are already embedded in the community. They already have personnel who can better understand and respond to situations that Google would regard as edge cases. They are also much smaller organizations that have less bureaucracy to deal with and a mission that aligns with the needs of the community.
I am not saying that they have to provide the actual email servers. They could contract that out, perhaps even to Google (though I suspect they would try to find another organization). They would be managing the email accounts themselves, including authentication and recovery.