I might be confusing it with Nord which does spend a fortune on YouTube, but wouldn't call Mullvad small on a relative basis, point is it's not obscure enough to be trusted for critical privacy concerns.

Agreed, my point was if you do in fact care about their email provider then you probably shouldn't be using it in the first place.

It's just the straight dope... the realm of privacy is filled with so much larp because people are generally too lazy or uninformed to think about what they're trying to achieve exactly.

Sure, VPN's aren't inherently useless, but they're also not the the right tool for the job if you're someone who has to worry about them using gmail.