Meta is currently acooping all my data as someone who does not a Meta account, which I would need to create ao I could pay them money not to do that.

No, not all the targeted advertising that they collect data for is through Facebook/whatever else they own now.

Were the other free emails like hotmail selling user data?

Was there a reason to assume google was doing it differently than other email providers before they were caught selling user data?

No, user agreements/terms of service don’t count because we all know nobody reads those things and they can change at any time.