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AMP for email is a terrible idea

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Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#261

Post by mstade »

scrollaway wrote: post #256
mrtksn wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a way to keep my.name@gmail.com but moving to another provider? I'm quite a bit uneasy with Google lately but it's not feasible for me to move to another e-mail provider because my user account on many other websites is tied to my Gmail account and not all websites support e-mail changing. At this point, I would argue that Gmail reached a public infrastructure status and it's not acceptable of Google to take…

> Is there a way to keep my.name@gmail.com but moving to another provider? Yes and no. GMail does support IMAP access (Go here to enable it: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#settings/fwdandpop ). IMAP is a standard that allows you to access an inbox remotely. OTOH, as long as you are using @gmail.com in your address, you are at their mercy. Go to https://www.gandi.net and purchase a domain name, it'll cost you FastM…

I've used Gandi for years, but only migrated to FastMail fully about two years ago I think. The migration was painless, much more so than I expected, thanks to the integrated support for migration. It's a great setup, can't think of a single instance where I've had an issue with it. It just works.

The only thing really bothering me is that you can't seem to set a default email app in iOS so mailto: links won't open the FastMail client. This is a super annoying client issue, but the service works incredibly well, no complaints here.

N.B. I have no affiliation with FastMail or Gandi whatsoever, just a very happy customer.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#262

Post by satish-setty »

jacquesm wrote: post #105

Poor frogs. The water temp just got upped a couple of degrees. Too late to jump out or not just yet? Some relief for frogs that make it out of the pot: https://mailinabox.email/ https://redmail.com/ https://protonmail.com/ https://www.fastmail.com/

Also, https://mail.zoho.com.

They have a 5GB free-tier if you've got a custom domain. I've been a customer for years and very happy overall.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#263

Post by wklauss »

tarsinge wrote: post #243
mankash666 wrote: post #207

I'll get down voted for saying this, but the HN crowd's hypocrisy is baffling. 1. Gmail is a channel that Google has under monetized for a decade. This is an opportunity for them to extract value from the said channel. If you're allergic to Google offering free services that use your data for advertising, go pay for email. Google isn't a charity and you aren't entitled to a Gmail of your choosing. 2. Apple is a prime…

Nice try but there is no logic between your points 1 and 2 to come to the third. Apple sells hardware and is not a monopoly, so if their customers are happy with their choice then good for them. On the other hand Google is a monopoly, so a lot of people are not ok with them abusing their position to hijack the web (that they already “own”) and email. Edit: typo

More important:

1. You knew the trade-off when you purchased an Apple device.

2. This is an unexpected change on a service your digital identity is tied to.

That's why the equivalence the OP is making here is absurd.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#264

Post by cdubzzz »

madeofpalk wrote: post #244
StavrosK wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd just like to point out here that Fastmail is a great alternative to Gmail, one I like much better and regret not switching to it sooner. If you have your own domain, migration is as easy as importing your email and changing a few MX records, and it costs $3/mo for the largish package if you prepay.

The thing that's missing here is the email _client_ story. I really like Google's Inbox and there's no amount of money I can pay anyone else for a similar experience.

Honest question: do you think you really like it or are you really used to it?

When Google made the move to Inbox, I switched because I wanted to be using their newest interface. Over time I came to absolutely hate it and that drove me away from Gmail.

My wife still uses it so I occasionally find myself in the Inbox app on our tablet. Just a few days ago, actually, I read something in her inbox and for the life of me I could not figure out to mark it as unread from the inbox list. Maybe I was just missing something obvious, but it was very frustrating to not have such a simple action easily available.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#265

Post by mnsc »

mankash666 wrote: post #207

I'll get down voted for saying this, but the HN crowd's hypocrisy is baffling. 1. Gmail is a channel that Google has under monetized for a decade. This is an opportunity for them to extract value from the said channel. If you're allergic to Google offering free services that use your data for advertising, go pay for email. Google isn't a charity and you aren't entitled to a Gmail of your choosing. 2. Apple is a prime…

> 3. If you find Apple's practices more abhorrent than AMP and consistently oppose both - congratulations, you're a minority whose reasoning isn't clouded by brand jingoism

Yay! I won something on the internet today!

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#266

Post by mrtksn »

scrollaway wrote: post #256
mrtksn wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a way to keep my.name@gmail.com but moving to another provider? I'm quite a bit uneasy with Google lately but it's not feasible for me to move to another e-mail provider because my user account on many other websites is tied to my Gmail account and not all websites support e-mail changing. At this point, I would argue that Gmail reached a public infrastructure status and it's not acceptable of Google to take…

> Is there a way to keep my.name@gmail.com but moving to another provider? Yes and no. GMail does support IMAP access (Go here to enable it: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#settings/fwdandpop ). IMAP is a standard that allows you to access an inbox remotely. OTOH, as long as you are using @gmail.com in your address, you are at their mercy. Go to https://www.gandi.net and purchase a domain name, it'll cost you FastM…

I like Gmail a lot, my problem is with the lock-in due to the domain.

I don't really want to move to some other service - what I want is the assurance that Google is not going to do something funny with my account or service and unfortunately if they do I will have no recourse.

When I got my Gmail account in 2004 Google was this amazing website that will give away free services and their motto was "Don't Be Evil", at least that was my impression. I still like most of their services, just don't like the "free" deals anymore.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#267

Post by verifex »

jbg_ wrote: post #227
verifex wrote: post #178

I can't believe I read through this article and most all of the comments here with no mention of what the hell AMP actually is, so I did a bit of Googling so that someone somewhere won't have to. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerated_Mobile_Pages ): They are a competing technology with Facebook's Instant Articles that restricts the page from doing practically anything that isn't p…

You left out the very important detail that practically speaking, your content also needs to be hosted on Google's CDN if you want to get any of the benefits that content creators are likely to care about (being boosted in SERPs).

I don't know how I missed that, I must have skimmed around that point, yes that is very important. Looking through the wiki page I found it quite easily, but it doesn't stick out as much on the ampproject official page.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#268

Post by xg15 »

mankash666 wrote: post #207

I'll get down voted for saying this, but the HN crowd's hypocrisy is baffling. 1. Gmail is a channel that Google has under monetized for a decade. This is an opportunity for them to extract value from the said channel. If you're allergic to Google offering free services that use your data for advertising, go pay for email. Google isn't a charity and you aren't entitled to a Gmail of your choosing. 2. Apple is a prime…

> If you're allergic to Google offering free services that use your data for advertising, go pay for email.

... and don't ever write emails to anyone who uses GMail. And tell all your friends who use GMail they shouldn't write emails to you.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#269

Post by mcintyre1994 »

mankash666 wrote: post #207

I'll get down voted for saying this, but the HN crowd's hypocrisy is baffling. 1. Gmail is a channel that Google has under monetized for a decade. This is an opportunity for them to extract value from the said channel. If you're allergic to Google offering free services that use your data for advertising, go pay for email. Google isn't a charity and you aren't entitled to a Gmail of your choosing. 2. Apple is a prime…

I'm sure Google could monetise Gmail more than they have, but I've always thought the real business success of Gmail was sharing its login with google.com and moving Google to a position where many searches are done with a personal identity that they can track anywhere. It seems before Gmail there wouldn't be much reason to actually log in to Google, and having users logged in makes their product better and I'm guessing gets them way better data.

Re: AMP for email is a terrible idea

#270

Post by mstade »

madeofpalk wrote: post #244
StavrosK wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd just like to point out here that Fastmail is a great alternative to Gmail, one I like much better and regret not switching to it sooner. If you have your own domain, migration is as easy as importing your email and changing a few MX records, and it costs $3/mo for the largish package if you prepay.

The thing that's missing here is the email _client_ story. I really like Google's Inbox and there's no amount of money I can pay anyone else for a similar experience.

I thought the same, until I actually made the switch. Mileage varies of course, but in my case it turns out I don't miss any features at all. Ever since email clients started to look more like todo apps I've hunted for the perfect client, but turns out I didn't need much more than a simple client and some flags. It also helps that FastMail makes email aliases super easy, so I have many different emails going to the same inbox, allowing for super fast and easy filtering.
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