As we converge on a handful of major email providers, are we really much better off? Would you be singing the same song of Hotmail a decade ago, or is it just because Google seems to be the Monopoly with a Heart of Gold?

If hotmail gave better service than your typical bigcorp's email servers (which is subjective) I'd be saying the same thing. I'm not too worried about a monopoly on email hosting, just because there's very little lock-in; it's trivial to set up as a new email hosting company, and almost as trivial for companies to migrate.