As to usenet i remember bang paths and telebit trailblazer modems
I.e. csiro!bigsite!foovax!barbox!me
As for google they get all my e-commerce mail as they do a reasonable job of keeping it spam free and making sure their MTA¡¯s dont get blocked by spamhaus and other blacklist providers.
The tradeoff is some degree of privacy but since ecommerce vendors will sell your marketing data anyway not much of a loss.
And i have a separate private email system for the rest of my mail.
