[yakireev]

Records, shmekords.

The practical experience of having your own domain for your email is that you delegate your domain to Google / Fastmail / Proton / whatever, and it takes care of everything else. Some webmail providers will also let you buy a domain on their own website as a part of registration flow.

It really is not hard. Harder than not having a domain of your own, but not as hard as you make it sound.

[999900000999]

Okay, do you think if we just picked some random person they would have any idea what we're talking about?

It's just not something normal people do, but I don't like the snarkiness of implying that's an indicator of intelligence. Otherwise we go down the no true Scotsman rabbit hole, what do you mean you're using Proton. You didn't set up your own mail server ?

What do you mean you're using AWS, your not using a solar powered raspberry pi?

[kelnos]

It's not an indicator of intelligence, but mail providers (including Google) could offer this if they want to, with a simple "Choose a personalized email address, like [e-mail], for $9.99 per year" radio button on signup. They don't do this because:

1. Most people will choose the free option, so it wouldn't be much of a useful revenue stream.

2. People having @gmail.com email addresses is a little bit of zero-cost marketing for them.

[Retric]

Random people don’t know how to do most things, but how easy it is to follow the directions is what matters here not knowing all the individual steps.

[robertlagrant]

You're both wrong (-:

Currently it's too hard for normal users, but it would be possible for e.g. Proton to add a feature where you can either import your domain name, or create a new one.