While I don’t use Apple’s built in Mail app in Mavericks, I read about all the problems it has with Gmail (and IMAP in general). I read a couple of articles that recommended moving away from Gmail to FastMail.
A year or so ago, I looked around for a decent alternative. At that time, FastMail didn’t cut it. It was slow and the UI was clunky. I was pleased to discover that it has been completely overhauled. So, I’m doing the 60-day-free-trial experiment. I migrated all my mail from Gmail and changed my address forwarding to the new account. So far, so good! It’ll be $40 a year for the most popular plan, the one most similar to Gmails storage and capabilities.
At the same time, with the new version of Safari and its separate processes per tab, I’m trying it out as my primary browser instead of Chrome.
Months ago I switched to Feed Wrangler for my RSS reading, as soon as Google announced that Reader was going away. Years ago I killed my Google+ account (after only dabbling with it).
Google is still the best search engine by light-years, and Google Maps is still my go-to map tool. I may never get completely away from Google’s best services. But I’m no longer logging into them to provide tracking info. I just don’t like the way they are conducting business today, and I want to diversify my suite of web-based tools.
NOTE: The instructions I found on the web for migrating from Gmail to FastMail seem to be outdated.  In FastMail, go to the upper left drop-down and choose Account. Then select Migrate IMAP. The correct server to use is “imap.gmail.com”, select SSL, and leave the remote server prefix blank. Worked like a charm after I got the note from support.
