Set your GC email account to forward to your new email account. This way you'll be able to receive any messages sent to your GC email address right up until the time the account is closed. Then you can keep your personal Internet usage separate from your work place. At the low end, you may be permitted 20-40 hours of access per month and a limited amount of storage space for email. At the higher end, you can expect unlimited Internet access and plenty of storage space for email, attachments, files and web pages.
Internet access comes in many flavors.
In recent years, many of the very local or regional access providers have been bought up by larger access providers. They'll provide you with local dial-up access to the Internet in many different cities across the country. These all offer web-based email. It is convenient to have both email and web publishing at the same hosting service. We recognize that not everyone is able to afford a monthly cost for Internet service, and so the free sites serve a useful purpose.