Hitting send on the next 15 years of Gmail
blog.google
blog.google
"You could also store 1GB of data in exchange for letting us read your emails and build an Ad profile based on everything you do in Gmail – nearly 100 times what was available at the time, because no one else dared to do something similar and had no means to profit from this data."
Privacy-aware folks, it's time to move on if you haven't done already.
I've heard that this is why Amazon purchase confirmation emails no longer list all the items in your order, and now read "You ordered Truncated Product Name... and 5 other items!") -- they didn't want another major tech company getting so much insight into their business.
Google's dominance and ubiquitous surveillance is causing email email to evolve into something less useful for all of us.
Every email service has a computer "read" your emails. If it didn't then your inbox would be filled with spam.
If it's specifically the ads you don't like, then it's probably not news to anyone here that free search, email and social networking is funded by ads.
I for one am highly "privacy aware", and I've also found tremendous value in Google's search, email and docs.
I found Google's products to be far superior to those from Yahoo, Microsoft and others.
While I'd prefer Google's products to be both free of cost and free of ads, I trust Google more than the other guys and I'm happy with the tradeoff.
They also don't support sending plain-text email (a bit of an odd restriction, and it means most mailing lists will drop your emails -- making it unusable as a primary email service if you use mailing lists often).
In addition much of their "secure email" features are only super useful if all the recipients are using ProtonMail (they use PGP under the hood, but all the keys are managed by ProtonMail -- though encryption is done client-side). You can set up a symmetric encrypted email for non-ProtonMail users, but that basically gives the user a link and they have to enter a password you've given them over a different secure channel (making it little more than a nice interface to gpg --symmetric).
All-in-all while ProtonMail is nice, for my usage it wasn't workable. I ended up using Mailbox.org which is a more traditional email system (though they have a cool feature where you give them your PGP public key and they will encrypt all plaintext emails they receive so that they are all encrypted when stored both remotely and locally).
I have 15GB in gmail and proton only offers 5GB for a single user plan.
You can't use a regular email client with Proton without some proxy software. [1]
https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/third-party-em...
It doesn't have a calendar, so you can't send or accept meeting invites if that's something you need to do.
They keep saying they're going to open source the app when the next version comes out, but development seems super slow on that front, no major app updates in a couple of years.
They have a bridge app that lets you use outlook, thunderbird, etc. and it works great, but the Linux version has been in beta for about 2 years, and you have to email someone to get on the beta list.
Something seems wrong. Some random PM didn't promise me this product. The CEO did. This relationship with a giant service provider (Google) feels more like the relationship I loathe with the average monopolizing telecom. I've been taken advantage of and my commitment in the end to this, as I learn, unclear experiment has generated enormous benefits for Google and today results in a frustrating realisation that I wasted my time trying for years to make it work.
One day, I really do hope there's a way I can take my email address and leave Google. Number portability deserves an analog in the email world.
It has one; register your own domain, then you can move it to any registrar and provider you like.
The analog going the other way would be if you took a Google desk phone number where people had to dial Google's offices into their phone system and then dial your extension, and you wanted to take your (Google office + extension) number elsewhere. That kind of service doesn't exist in the phone number portability world either.
Gmail has an option to forward all incoming mail to another address, so when you do eventually leave you won't miss any mail.
I once received itinerary details of the Brazilian VP's trip to South Korea...
Early on, first@gmail.com and yes absolutely.
Even military fucking emails.
This will be downvoted, but your comment made me smile for a second, thinking on what kind of strange pr0n about military is flooding your inbox.
I use Fastmail for somethings but sadly it's not quite as good as Gmail (and not as bad in many ways). Anyone care to wager what an idealized email platform will look like in 15 years?
Now this is a good question. I've wondered (half-assedly) myself recently. I've been on the gmail hook since 2005 (I remember getting approved for the Beta and how in awe I was of having a whole GB of online storage).
I've grown so accustomed to the use of gmail that I have a hard time distinguishing what it is that really holds me there. One item is ubiquity. Everyone knows it now so there's no ambiguity about the address as long as one knows the name I use. That's not a huge detail, but one minor feature I find I don't have to think about.
Outside of that I think the main deterrent to changing is the migration process. It sucks.
I'm hesitant to move from one external provider to another as my faith in the longevity of other services has waned over the years. That said I'm also hesitant to run my own node because of the maintenance and security concerns.
I'm not abreast to any innovations in the space, however. I'd also love to hear from others who might have a lot more experience and knowledge in the area.
I recommend even if you are not ready to migrate away from Gmail though, to hedge your bets and make the migration process easier eventually. Get an email address at your own domain name, and forward it straight to your Gmail. Over time, adjust all your accounts and contacts to send to your new, forwarded address. Then if it any time, you need to move providers, all you have to do is change where your address is forwarded to (and of course, use IMAP to drag all your old emails from Gmail to the new service). I spent about a year and a half using Gmail, but migrating things over to my own email address. Make it a lot easier when the time came.
I have, in the past, maintained my own email address but found I often gave up after a while—mainly due to saturation of my existing address.
But with a bit of dedication it does sound like your advice would at least be a helpful stop-gap for the future. Thanks.
If the trends continue, in 2035 I'll be checking my email a few times a year.
Outlook has a PST file, I suppose you could sync a Windows PC to Gmail and then move it up to some other service, or keep the PST file around (as easily corrupted as they are) with the original stored a few other places.
Unfortunately, every company I've ever worked for has required the use of Gmail and other G-suite tools at one point or another. I really hate that I can never seem to get away from it.
Even with plain autocorrect, these days, it's scary how often I read something and later discover it's not at all what the author intended.
I can't think of any software feature, offhand, with "Smart" in the name that I didn't end up hating and wanting to disable. Why do companies keep pushing these?
Some people wire their homes to turn on lights and TVs when they get home. I don't find that creepy because I know that it's just an electro-mechanical process.
Same thing with ML-driven features like smart replies. It's amazing, but it's just math and logic, so I don't find it creepy.
More of this, please.
Because other people don't hate them as much, and you're free not to use the suggestions. Have you checked the Gmail settings to see if there really isn't a way to turn it off?
Also, this may not seem like a big deal on the desktop client, but wait until you're carrying groceries on both hands and trying to send a quick but urgent e-mail... it really does address that occasional frustrating moment
In Chrome you need two tabs open and in the mobile app there's no way to default to 'All Inboxes'.
It's a huge pain point.
Please, just fucking stop. I know how to write my own emails; everyone does. Every single assistive feature introduced to Gmail has been a regression.