content: It gives you the option to have your servers in a country somewhat less likely to hand them over to NSA or your local oppressor of choice.  You always have the option to run your own mail servers (Zimbra and others have been mentioned) however these can always be seized by the local police. Besides, managing a mail server is HARD, much harder than a simple web server or virtual machine. The workload is simply not justifiable for single users and small organizations.  There are only two things Linux people wouldn't advise you to do on your own - encryption algorithms and mail servers.