And that's why I run my own mail server nowadays. Privacy, control over data, and at least I'm responsible for my own downtime without impacting more than a few people. Decentralisation for the win, in my opinion.
Also credits to my ISP for allowing hosting of my own server, running native IPv6 and of course opening port 25. Xs4all is a really cool ISP to have in the Netherlands :)
CNET: Microsoft blames technicians for massive outage (2001) http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-251427.html
Wired: How, Why Microsoft Went Down (2001) http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2001/01/41412?...
Can you imagine in those days, everyone was on hotmail, gmail hadn't even been invented yet.