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What happened, Gmail?

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Re: What happened, Gmail?

#201

Post by freehunter »

zamber wrote: post #180
freehunter wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem with it is that I don't trust it. Outlook does the same thing, I'm not singling Google out for this. Anything that automatically sorts my email for me, I don't trust it to get it right 100% of the time. And the last thing I want to do is a miss a critical email because Google or Microsoft told me it wasn't important to me. Case in point: I run a website for my town and some user actions are sent to me via…

The idea with whitelisting is viable. Use a freehunter+superimportant@gmail.com email for these and then in the classic interface set a filter that will land these mails always in your inbox with an additional label. Been doing this kind of categorizing with filters since I discovered the feature and never looked back.

But then that's no better than just managing my email by hand. The whole point of these smart inboxes is to not have to do that.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#202

Post by hokoto »

sssparkkk wrote: post #197

Been thinking of switching back from Inbox to Gmail for one single annoying and IMO stupid design decision: if there are multiple recepients for the email the main reply button will by default perform a reply all. Had me look like a dork a few times, replying to everyone that I can't make it to a party or something. Anyone else been bitten by this?

I think the party host who is sending his invitations without using bcc is to blame here.

I use gmail mainly for business related mails and the default reply-all makes a lot sense - almost all the time other recipients ( managers, clients etc) are there to be kept in loop. If you forgot and just reply to it, then you have send the same mail again - or worse you never notice it.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#203

Post by bscphil »

alkonaut wrote: post #6

Those that don’t use inbox, why? I’m sure there are features of gmail that are missing from inbox but what are they? Why do Google keep these two “forks” of the same product?

I switched back from Inbox for the sole reason that it was appallingly slow on Firefox.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#204

Post by lmm »

praseodym wrote: post #5
pferde wrote: post #3

Among "needed innovations", the post lists: "A good method for telling users what’s important to read and what can wait for later." To me, it's downright scary that someone would want Google telling them what is important in their own mailbox. Personal responsibility bad, Hand-holding good, apparently.

Just as scary as having Google filter out mail that is totally not important, i.e. spam? In Gmail you can (un)label email as being important, which will then train an algorithm just like a spam filter. Besides that, it will learn to recognise email you reply to often as being important. I very much like this feature; I set up the Gmail app on iOS to only send me push notifications for important mail. For me that stri…

Yes, spam filtering is scary. The first thing I've done with every email account I've used is turn any black-box spam filtering down to the minimum (gmail was the first that wouldn't let me turn it off entirely, and it took a long time before I trusted gmail for anything important for just that reason).

Filtering into "email that I want a push notification for" versus "email that I'll read in a few hours when I check" makes sense. What I don't get is people who are using this as a way to divide into emails they'll read and emails they won't read. Given that genuine spam is so rare these days, any email that gets as far as you gmail "unimportant" inbox is an email that you in some sense requested; if your inbox is full of mailing lists and newsletters that you don't read, wouldn't unsubscribing be a better route than filtering them out?

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#205

Post by twblalock »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #111
mseebach wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Email was meant to be Email isn't a religion and originalism isn't a meaningful framework for analysis. Email started as a simple answer to a simple question, and has evolved from there to answer increasing hard questions. The original inventors totally failed to anticipate many important realities about email (most significantly, spam, but also encryption and signing), and email has evolved to deal with that. You'…

> increasing hard questions Over the past, what... 30 years? - e-mail remains what it had been in the first place: a protocol for exchanging messages. You're still sending text. You're still attaching links to your messages if you'd like to send a large file. You're still trying to keep concise in your comm. What have evolved, exactly? Sans encryption - that's not really a "hard question". Gmail's a great spam-free p…

Good spam filters, tags instead of folders, and a lot of storage were the features Gmail brought to the table, for free, that made it so popular.

It was also a nicer web interface than the competition -- so nice that it managed to get a lot of people to use it instead of desktop mail clients, which were the norm at the time.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#206

Post by twblalock »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #130
mikeash wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being spam free was revolutionary when Gmail was new. It also revolutionized email by offering enough space that you could actually keep an archive. When most providers offered maybe 10MB, Gmail offered 1GB. If those don’t sound revolutionary today, it’s only because Gmail revolutionized things so hard that everyone had to jump on board.

You're only seeing it from one perspective: from the perspective of a single non-power user - yes, Gmail made the difference. But in terms of proper e-mail usage: be it through MS Exchange, University campuses, corporate servers - they made no difference. Everyone already had enough space there anyway, and spam filters worked - as they had enough email volume to detect attack. And they still use these systems.

> You're only seeing it from one perspective: from the perspective of a single non-power user - yes, Gmail made the difference.

That's the perspective of most people. They are not power users, they don't have the technical ability to deal with complicated email systems, and they just want something free that works well.

Your concept of "proper" email usage doesn't cover most of the population.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#207

Post by twblalock »

pmlnr wrote: post #158
hota_mazi wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get off Gmail and get on... what? You're only offering non constructive criticism. Gmail is light years ahead of any other email client I have tried so far.

It's really not, nor the web client, nor the provider, and the options are plenty, mentioned even in this very thread. Fastmail, self hosted iredmail, protonmail, etc., are fine providers. Geary, rainloop, macos mail, k9, are very nice clients. Have you actually tried any alternative clients, before you made this comment?

Do you honestly believe that self-hosting email is a valid solution for normal people?

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#208

Post by pmlnr »

twblalock wrote: post #207
pmlnr wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not, nor the web client, nor the provider, and the options are plenty, mentioned even in this very thread. Fastmail, self hosted iredmail, protonmail, etc., are fine providers. Geary, rainloop, macos mail, k9, are very nice clients. Have you actually tried any alternative clients, before you made this comment?

Do you honestly believe that self-hosting email is a valid solution for normal people?

Not for them to be run personally, but say, a friend can set up an raspberry pi like box, with yunohost or iredmail even at their home, turn unattended upgrades on centos, that's done for ~7 years.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#209

Post by techsupporter »

peatmoss wrote: post #96
Waterluvian wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I want to take my 20GB of email out of Gmail and put it elsewhere for the next 15 years without having to think about it, where do I go?

You might also consider registering a vanity domain to go with your Fastmail (or other) subscription. It’ll allow you to keep your email address even if Fastmail gets evil / bad in the future. When I bought my domain, it was before Gmail was as ubiquitous as it is today. My email was hosted by a mom and pop ISP. Then I moved to Gmail and later to Fastmail. Having my own domain is inexpensive, fun, and lets me maintai…

For those reading along at home, I want to strongly second your recommendation for people who really care about their e-mail (and, to some extent, overall identity on the Internet) to buy a custom domain.

Me, my spouse, and my teenaged kid all have our own domains. They're all hosted at Fastmail under a group account and we all can have as many additional addresses tied to our regular accounts as we want.

It does cost a bit more ($15/year/domain at Gandi, my preferred registrar) than just paying Fastmail directly and using one of their domains or sticking with the costs-no-money Gmail offering but it's been worth it in unexpected ways. My kid, for instance, is following in the "family business footsteps" and doing IT work for small clients. Since he had his own domain, he can have prospective clients e-mail him at "consulting@hisdomain.tld" My spouse uses a bazillion aliases for spam and inbound e-mail filtering without tipping off the spammers to the underlying e-mail address by having to use the + notation.

Someday, when my kid strikes out fully on his own, he'll be able to take his domain with him to wherever he wants (even host it on Gmail, if he prefers) without losing any of his addresses or other contacts. My domain has been around for over two decades and has been hosted in easily 20 different places, but my main e-mail address has remained the same.

It's nice and worth the money.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#210

Post by delecti »

8ytecoder wrote: post #179
freehunter wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem with it is that I don't trust it. Outlook does the same thing, I'm not singling Google out for this. Anything that automatically sorts my email for me, I don't trust it to get it right 100% of the time. And the last thing I want to do is a miss a critical email because Google or Microsoft told me it wasn't important to me. Case in point: I run a website for my town and some user actions are sent to me via…

First of all if it's something really important you need a better notification mechanism or a separate email address so you can whitelist it. I primarily use it for my personal email. There's nothing ever there that can't wait.

If there's nothing there that can't wait, then there's nothing there that's urgent, so why does the "important" stuff need to bubble to the surface?
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