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If Yahoo goes down, I won't have email; or at best I'll maybe keep a Zoho. I hate Google's mail interface, I hate the way they make 'conversations' out of discrete emails, and I especially hate their lack of folders. I use GMail begrudgingly at work, and only when necessary, and every time, I look at it and go, "what dipshit ever thought this was a functional way to deal with email?" As a dedicated Windows user, I'm more likely to use iCloud than GMail if Yahoo goes down; but I doubt that.

I like Yahoo email as a user. Yes, they've made mistakes, and I accept that. I'd prefer their mistakes over Google's superiority complex.

> I hate Google's mail interface

Their IMAP interface is both standards compliant and fully functional. I'm not terribly fond of the Gmail web/native apps either, so I just don't use them (though I do occasionally hop on the web app when my client isn't searching the email as effectively as google does).

With 2FA it can be a bit more work adding devices, but it's not a deal breaker for me.

I don't download my email. I have a webmail for a reason - I don't want a mail client with all its attendant files gumming up my PC. I moved off Netscape Communicator to webmail because it took up over 40% of my drive, and I've never regretted the decision.

And I don't like 2FA either. It's a hassle and never, ever, worth my time or energy. There was one gaming service (I think it was an MMO) that demanded 2FA or bust. I don't use that service and never will.

> I don't like 2FA either

That seems to be a rather dangerous position to hold these days. I personally dislike that googles 2FA is SMS based (unless there's a way to use e.g. Authy with it that I'm unaware of), but still seems that the only way to be reasonably safe is a strong password and 2FA.

I'll add that The authy app on the Apple Watch has made 2FA for services that support it rather painless.

Google also allows you to use google authenticator, but I don't believe they allow third party services.

Google does allow other apps (I think it is still same as GAuth) SASS pass and other authenticators with good. But yes they don't allow other token provides like Yubikey or RSA fobs

> But yes they don't allow other token provides like Yubikey or RSA fobs

I think this is incorrect, at least provided you're using Chrome. The implementation was buggy somewhere in the chain the last time I tried it, but it's there.

Google is one of the major proponents of U2F, which is based on hardware tokens. Yubikeys support it, either the cheap U2F-only one or a Neo / 4. I use it and it works flawlessly. At the moment, only Chrome implements the required APIs as far as I know, but Mozilla is working on adding it to Firefox.

You can use any TOTP app you like, they all use the same QR code format. You can even build your own, it's all well documented.

I use 1Password as my 2FA app for Google services. I only set it up relatively recently so maybe support for non-SMS is new. Or region-based?

It's been there for years. Since ~1yr ago they also support U2F (hardware token based, un-phishable)

Their IMAP implementation is anything but compliant or functional. They implement labels as folders. Every time you use a label, it downloads that message multiple times and puts it into folders.

Also when you try to write drafts in Thunderbird for Gmail, it stores them in such a way as each saved draft turns into part of the conversation (WTF?!) It makes conversations totally unreadable.

I quite gmail years ago and do not miss their broken IMAP implementation.

Fair enough, I guess it's about differing usecases. The few labels that I do use on gmail are set up such that they are indistinguishable from folders (if they match a filter, they don't go in my inbox, and I don't have any overlapping labels). I also rarely have lingering draft emails, so I guess I've not noticed that particular issue (though I do use Mail.app, not thunderbird). Gmail's imap support has been adequate for me since they introduced it however long ago that was. YMMV

Edit: my point about standards compliance for gmail imap was purely about it actually working with third party clients, I've always known that it doesn't conceptually work the same way as a standard imap server.

> I especially hate their lack of folders

GMail supports labels as folders. When you create a new label it will ask you if you want to nest the label under another label and you can do this repeatedly to make a nested folder structure.

Crucially, this will show up as nested folders via IMAP.

No, no - I understand that you can think this, and that they claim it, but from a UI angle, it's wrong. I hate the implementation of labels.

They don't actually disappear when I click on inbox. When I want my inbox, I want just that folder - all filtered content goes elsewhere and disappears until I want it. That's not GMail's way.

I have a giant folder hierarchy in my gmail, so I assure you this can work.

In your case it sounds like you're taking a message with the "Inbox" label and adding the "some/folder" label, which will indeed still show it in both places. If you move the message, which removes "Inbox" and adds "some/folder" it will no longer show up in the Inbox.

They should use IMAP labels. Their IMAP implementation has always been terrible and broken. Anything you label gets put into an IMAP folder and therefore you download it multiple times per label.

I agree; fuck everything about gmail usability. It was a cool trick when it came out. Now it's just overly bloated AJAX, non-standards compliant garbage.

You don't like GMail, I understand that (I don't either), but why stick with Yahoo? There are more providers with "old-fashioned, boring" web interfaces...

You can disable 'conversation' mode. I did that 2 days after they make it the default.

> If Yahoo goes down, I won't have email; or at best I'll maybe keep a Zoho.

Zoho needs a phone number verification for signup. Unless you're confident that Zoho will never get hacked like Yahoo has been (multiple times), your phone number could be one more piece of information that's exposed yet again whenever it gets hacked (this also depends on how you use email and if you include your phone number in emails).

I never gave them a phone number...

Migrating e-mail is very difficult, especially if you're like me and decide to setup your own e-mail server. The biggest problem I had was my e-mail getting falsely classified as spam:

http://penguindreams.org/blog/how-google-and-microsoft-made-...

I've also occasionally found really old services that use my old e-mail account. Even thought I have the password, they still require e-mail verification; which can't be done because the gmail account doesn't exist and it bounces.

Just use google apps, $5 a month gets you unlimited domains, an account with like 40+ aliases, email, and all the other applications. Setup SPF, and DKIM records, and away you go. There's no reason to deal with running your own email service at this point.

What irritates me is that there's really no safe place for email.

Even if you pay for a host they still have access to it all. You have to really trust them.

If you try to set it up at home you need a static IP and need to be prepared for it never working because of spam filters and stuff not trusting dinky self hosted services.

And no matter what you do - barring PGP which nobody uses - it's all sent over plain text anyway.

But that's less worse than anyone having your entire email life with one hack. Sigh.

Just use your own domain. That gives you the ultimate power over the your emails regardless of the mail provider you end up using.

haha I don't understand why this comment isn't more prevalent, especially here on Hacker News. Like really, why are so many using vanilla yahoo.com and gmail.com addresses?

> Lastly (and I really hope this happens), Yahoo implodes/collapses (cause the average Joe won't migrate willingly) and leaves a vacuum for their 500+ million email users.

You do realize this makes you sound both terrible and ignorant, right? I happen to have a Yahoo account, which I registered way back when the options were that, Hotmail, and maybe AOL. I have self-hosted mail now, and a redirectable primary address, but that Yahoo address lives on in various address books.

If you want to realize your email dream, you should try to turn the Yahoo addresses into an eternal forwarding service for current accounts. Maybe you could sell space on the signup page to smaller providers.