> spam annoys users more than the occasional missed message.
For me it's the other way around. I don't care about occasional spam. But the possibility of missing message means that I'm forced to read ALL spam periodically.
I think there's a paradox here: I also don't care about occasional spam, and the possibility of missing messages matters much more to me. But I probably wouldn't select an email provider with no spam protections at all, and Google is optimizing for new user registrations.
