- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Google confirms Gmail is “here to stay” amid speculation over plans to scrap the email service::Claims that Google plans to sunset Gmail were a hoax, so there’s no need to panic
You must log in or register to comment.
Wait didn’t someone on Lemmy just make the fake Google shutting down Gmail image? Did it spread that far or was there already illiterate idiots already thinking that it was on the way out?
Google almost killed Gmail for me - I’m on a deprecated google apps free family plan they tried to kill recently. It was going to cost over a hundred dollars a month to move everyone on my personal family domain to a professional plan to keep it, and at the last minute they retreated and kept it free.
But for me that was a warning shot I can’t ignore. Way back I ran a Microsoft Exchange server for the family, before that postfix with squirrelmail. But I’m tired of all the tech support that came with it, so some kind of permanent, relatively spam free email option that we call rely on for decades would be welcome.
ProtonMail has a family plan, and they promise to encrypt your emails.
PurelyMail is nice and super cheap, the only downside is that it’s run by a single guy.
Zoho is like 10 dollars per year per user, even though it’s geared towards companies and not families.
Proton is way too overpriced for older accounts with a lot of stuff accumulated and encryption is a gimmick unless you’re only communicating with other Proton users. All companies encrypt email at rest.
I’m currently using and can definitely recommend purely mail. Obviously backup, but so far the service has been excellent. It’s the only fairly priced service out there for personal hosting that supports custom domains.
I’m finishing up moving all my accounts to Proton. I don’t trust them at all anymore. Late stage capitalism at its finest.
Gmail is the gateway to their entire product portfolio; no way they’d kill it.
Howeeeeverrrr…
Google has been looking for the thing to kill email for a looooooooong time though.
All it takes is one MBA with little foresight in the wrong position - the Gmail team is all expense (server hosting, labor), and no revenue; that’s the “Ads” and “Drive/One/Business” teams.
Remember. There is no such thing as free. They’re data mining the hell out of your email. You can rest assured that gmail is a revenue generator. Just in ways you don’t see.
This is the answer. Kinda surprised this is buried three comments deep TBH. The emails you receive and how you interact with them is a far better source for profiling than browser history.
The MBA. The only graduate degree you can get by attending class 3 days a month.
How some of these MBA programs can be considered a “masters” degree is an insult to people who actually had to spend years on 40-70hour a week graduate programs.
The program cost for the executive MBA class entering in July 2023 was $205,897, which includes tuition, required electronic textbooks, hotel accommodations during immersion weeks and core course sessions in terms 1-3, administrative fees, and most meals during residence periods.
(Emphasis mine)
They are just straight up purchasing a degree at this price point.
Pretty much. There are cheaper alternative, but there are lots of ways to get a “masters” while still being able to hold down a 9 to 5.
No fucking way I could work while doing my masters in interaction design. Only way to way to do that was to take out a student loan because the program required even more commitment than full time undergraduate course work.
You are awfully confident about a company that kills things like a Russian dictator. I think what perhaps you mean is there’s no way they’d kill it now. If they wanted to push users to some different type of platform they would certainly entertain the idea.
deleted by creator
That would be insane if they actually scrapped it.
Not their first rodeo
With the terms of service for their “anti spam” and “productivity auto-sorting” features, they must gather SO much data about people by reading their emails - there’s no way they’d turn that off lol
I dunno Google has a cancelation tick so like i wouldn’t be that surprised
I would imagine Gmail is the primary reason people create an account with Google.
Yeah that and youtube I’d think
No way will they cancel gmail. Google is using Gmail to train Gemini and power their Ad business. It might be a free email service in terms of not having a monetary cost, but you are paying for it with your data.
Ugh, I’ve gotta switch from Gmail, any good email recommendations?
Fastmail is fantastic.
I love their app… it’s replaced the default iOS app for me it’s so good.
Yeah it’s amazing. You have to pay, but at least you’re not the product 👏
Agreed, it’s so good.
It feels like everyone hates Apple, but their hide my email service is bundled into their family plan, and it’s real nice just being able to give every site an email address you can then just delete if they spam you.
No one knows who I really am, and I’m good with that.I guess my recommendation is to find a service that lets you make throwaway emails.
And I think Proton does that. Mozilla has a service for that, but their new CEO has thrown some question marks into that mix. There are definitely others.duckduckgo does that with @duck.com email addresses too, I’ve liked using them so far
Get your own website and you too can have infinitely emails
disroot
Proton mail is the peak email service money can buy (it’s also avilable for free but i suggest paying)
If you work for Proton then username checks out haha. Real talk I’ve been on the unlimited for a bit and it’s dope.
Thank you for this recommendation, I’ll look into switching. It’s a slow process of moving towards less convenient but more private services but your comment has moved the needle for me at least.
Less convenient
What are you talking about ? If anything proton is more convenient.
I think part of convenience is name brand recognition. I don’t know how you took a heartfelt compliment and made it hostile, but the reality is I grew up knowing what Google was and using it as a verb. Gmail was an obvious and convenient tool to pickup.
I just found out about Protonmail, or at least heard of it for the first time that it broke the barrier of not-caring into carrying. I imagine user numbers reflect that pretty readily.
That’s all I’m saying. I’m not saying Protonmail is worse in anyway, please don’t assume I am. It’s okay to like a product and admit it’s flaws, in this case the only flaw I’m suggesting it has is being less known than Gmail and even then only for me and my small corner of the world.
Bruh i thought you were thinking proton mail maybe inconveniant to use that’s why i corrected you . Sorry if i sounded hostile the problem is whenever people think of privacy they think like its for the paranoid ones and must be tough. I just wanted to clear it up for you.
It takes a little bit of effort but it’s a great time to do the following:
- get a password manager if you don’t have one already. I like 1password
- get an alias service. Proton bought simplelogin so it’s integrated, there’s also anonaddy
- gradually work through updating your online accounts from your old gmail to new aliases for each account (eg [email protected]) and set a complex password through your password manager that’s unique for each account
In a couple months you’ll eventually stop receiving emails to your gmail as you work through the accounts you use, and most incoming mail will all be through aliases. Then if you get spammed, you know what site leaked your email + you can turn off the alias and not get spam.
Wait wait! You’re saying proton lets you use aliases? As many as I’d like?
I guess Gmail does too, if you do the ole [email protected]. But not all websites allow the +
Proton integrates directly with simplelogin. But you can use gmail for aliases with anonaddy or simplelogin, they just forward the alias emails to your real inbox.
Of course it is. I know Google scraps a lot of things, but Gmail is for the most part liked and, far more importantly to Google, is an absolute treasure trove of personalised, easily parsable data, yet nowhere near as costly to maintain as, say, YouTube.
The fact that after making search, an email provider was their next big project, shows how serious they are about it.
Too bad I’m degoogling as we speak.
Hey Liz Lemon do you kind if i degoogle myself in your office?
I just now created a Proton mail account just minutes before seeing this. I think I’m glad I did.
I’ve been thinking about de-googling myself for some time now. After being with them since they created the Gmail service in the early 2000s, I practically have my whole adult life on Google. I’ve been using drive and photos as well for as long as it has existed. It’s going to be a lot of work to sort through all of this data and start over on a new service.
I don’t trust Google anymore over anything. Whether it’s privacy (though I was pretty naive to think I had any in the first place) or their ability to keep a service up long enough for anyone to commit.
It’s a shame because they started as a really nice company with their do no evil motto with great services and then everything went to shit. Even their killer feature, the search engine, has become complete shit.
Good for you. I degoogled in 2019. It’s been fine.
I agree, but just a counterpoint…
Back in the day, after Hotmail and Yahoo! email but before Gmail, people started becoming really skeptical of emails from @xyz.net and started treating anything that didn’t come from a major email provider as “spam.”
I’ve kept my old gmail accounts around for “spam” and “work” respectively because despite people (finally) waking up to the privacy issues of Gmail, I cannot trust that emails with a @protonmail.com address won’t be viewed skeptically by people recieving the email. Especially in regards to jobs. Unless you’re in Cybersecurity and taking privacy seriously is your professional obligation, you’re not going to run into tons of people who view ProtonMail very favorably.
De-googling is good, but don’t leave yourself stranded and ignored by people because you had the audacity to use a different fucking service.
Does proton mail allow me to use custom domain names?
It’s a paid option afaik
I’ve never had a problem with that. My simplelogin aliases on the other hand, they’re much more weird. But for email I share to people, it’s a protonmail.com address. Even my parents use it, it’s fine.
I don’t think that’s really much of a concern. I can’t imagine any world where a proton.me email will cause you any issues. I’ve had mine for years now, in fact on my resume and job applications I used my own domain’s email addresses and I’ve never experienced a problem. What you’re saying isn’t entirely impossible but it’s definitely not a problem you’re very likely to run into. You’re not likely to run into a single person that cares about your proton email much less one that views it disfavorably.
*Indian government: hold my lassie
https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/16/india-may-block-proton-mail/?guccounter=1
All it takes is that some services you use have mail hosted in India, and your emails might never reach.
They’re not blocking ProtonMail due to it being “not gmail” or any other recognizable domain or having a poor reputation, they’re blocking it because ProtonMail is doing what they promised to do and not divulging customer information to Indian authorities.
I suppose if OP lives in India then yeah that might be an issue but otherwise they’re still totally fine.
I guess it speaks more to the idea that there’s definitely people out there who look skeptically on a ProtonMail address. There’s a lot of people who know what it is and also hold a “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” mindset and immediately assume the worst about the person with the ProtonMail address. Because of course, in their minds, if you have such an address, you surely must be unsavory and have things to hide. It’s not just autocratic governments who don’t like it.
On the contrary, I think it’s autocratic governments specifically that don’t like it. Which is more or less the point, in the same way that any service that uses encryption and doesn’t give up user info is something they won’t like. Otherwise everyone with a Mac, IPad or IPhone would be considered shady, which as we know isn’t the case.
The people who hold the view you mentioned more than likely don’t even know what ProtonMail is.
I don’t necessarily disagree, but I have personally met a few people who did know what it was and also thought it was very sketchy and didn’t trust it.
However, at the same time, I know how worthless a personal anecdote is in the bigger scheme of things, so you’re probably right that most people that hold that attitude don’t know wtf it is.
Good counterpoint, and to add, Gmail itself is more than happy to throw any email into spam if it isn’t from a major provider. I had this happen with my own domain email, and even after telling Gmail the email is legit, it still spam filters it.
Plus, guess what email provider HR often uses but shouldn’t… That domain isn’t Gmail but you better believe their boss paid the 6 dollars a head to get them a gsuite portal with Gmail Spam filters.
Use a custom domain to hide which email provider you use. Plus it let’s you move to another provider without having to inform all your contacts of a new address.
I’d wager most people who don’t think about cyber security even look at the sender email address these days.
Based on kb4 metrics I’ve seen at past jobs, you’d win that bet
Yeah, I don’t believe you though
Why would they voluntarily lose access to all my personal information?
They have enough to train an AI version of you and already predict your actions. Tracking real you is just boring now.
For the time being the compute required to simulate me is more expensive than tracking the real me.
Google+Nvidia : “we will fix that soon enough meat bag”
They need it for AI training I guess
It’s here to stay…for only $3.99 per month! *
*cost for monthly subscription only. Excludes fees for sending and receiving messages. Chat and others services extra.
Anyone want to take a bet, this is where we will be in 5 years?
Nah, they want to keep the data pipe wide open. Everything that can get you to voluntarily put your data into their service they’ll leave as free as air.
Plus, Gmail has the added bonus of being like a supermarket loyalty card: it gets their name into your browser toolbar and daily routine for bonus psychological impact.
I doubt they’ll give any of that up for a paltry $3.99.
I mean… I don’t expect them to scrap GMail, but their reassurance means nothing. IIRC they said the same thing about Stadia.
They make too much money from data harvesting to scrap Gmail, though.
The fact that the question is significant enough to deserve an answer means somebody somewhere got wind of something real.
It probably doesn’t mean a full cancellation of gmail but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear they’re trying something like Wave again.
Here’s a wild idea - you can read the article and discover that the whole thing was a hoax.
Nah, wildly jumping to conclusions makes for more fun
Stadia was destined to fail though. I still remember the key note in which it was introduced. The CEO started with the lines "I don’t play many games, but … ".
