I think this is everywhere. In India, people in the departments, especially the Governments usually ask, "What is your Gmail?" Almost everyone uses Gmail here and it is extremely rare to find their own custom domain.

I'm actually surprised that the Government Departments do not have a service that takes care of these! They will fine Google but almost all of the government email IDs are Gmail.

I was one of those that distributed hundreds if not thousands of Gmail invites when it started. However, since 2010-ish, I left Gmail to be just for Newsletters, and the ones that I'm not serious about. I'm always reminded that a day will come when I will just have no access, lock out and be done with it.

I had used my name's domain and had used the web hosting provided email service and I felt nice using the likes of `webmaster@brajeshwar.com` (early 2000s). Then I got a shorter domain with our family domain and is, now, powered by Google Workspace (with a plan to move to the competitors soon before the yearly plan expires). I had so many domains under the Google Suite free version since its beta. I did upgraded my primary domain to the paid version, when I had few mail delivery issues so I can talk to a person and that was also the time I realize I cannot go back. That was almost/about 10 years ago.