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In killing Inbox, Google takes another swipe at its most passionate users

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Re: In killing Inbox, Google takes another swipe at its most passionate users

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. I can be as pissed at Google as they come, ready to pick up my pitchfork, but at the end of the month when I spent $120,000 on adwords and made $280,000 in profit as a return, I will gladly tattoo Google logo on my chest. The scary part is they will sunset gmail eventually. I know from someone inside “L team” that founders hate how much headache gmail brings for such little return. Initially started at the…

They still scan your Gmails though? I'd think the information they gather this way would still be worth something even if they don't "personalize" their own ads with it.

Last year they said they were going to suspend the practice of scanning the content of consumer emails

https://www.blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-tractio...

Re: In killing Inbox, Google takes another swipe at its most passionate users

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. I can be as pissed at Google as they come, ready to pick up my pitchfork, but at the end of the month when I spent $120,000 on adwords and made $280,000 in profit as a return, I will gladly tattoo Google logo on my chest. The scary part is they will sunset gmail eventually. I know from someone inside “L team” that founders hate how much headache gmail brings for such little return. Initially started at the…

They still scan your Gmails though? I'd think the information they gather this way would still be worth something even if they don't "personalize" their own ads with it.

Everyone scans emails. Google was just a high profile example and there was some backlash because they used for ads, not for "spam prevention", or "anti-virus".

Re: In killing Inbox, Google takes another swipe at its most passionate users

#83
post #16

I used to be a Google fan boy but am starting to dislike them more and more. This, they killed off reader and the creepy data collection they do is why I've started to look into alternatives for their products - anyone have any good suggestions?

Have a look at this HN thread called Alternatives to Google Products: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17280558

Re: In killing Inbox, Google takes another swipe at its most passionate users

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've worked in large orgs it makes sense. They had a strategic priority a while back to 'make mail good on mobile' ... whereas now they are folding it all back into the gmail umbrella because the overall strategic impetus would be to be gmail founded. So, short term strategy now important with the longer term issues of product portfolio. Collapse the 'good bits' of inbox into Gmail and move forward. You have to…

I think most of it can be explained by your very first sentence. Gmail is 15 years old. It has massive institutional inertia and clout. Hundreds of engineers ( https://www.quora.com/How-large-is-the-Gmail-team ), probably a similar number of PHBs. Some of those people have spent their entire professional lives working on Gmail. They are loath to admit it sucks. Understandably. You don't just phase that sort of thing…

Bingo. And it's this dynamic that requires a continual turnover of institutions.

> You don't just phase that sort of thing out

Things that "just can't be done" end up being perfectly feasible in the hands of a leader with some boldness and tolerance for organizational pushback. Often, all that's required to achieve the politically impossible is for an absolute authority to say "do it".

Re: In killing Inbox, Google takes another swipe at its most passionate users

#85
post #39

Google's shutdown of products and APIs seems to have led to critical level of trust loss amongst developers and influencers. It's time for Google to either fix this or get out of providing services and APIs to developers. Google doesn't seem to put any weight at all on the outcry every time its shutters another service/API. The trust must be restored. Google doesn't seem to understand that when they shut service X, t…

My company switched from AWS to Azure without considering Google's Cloud at all, and the loss of trust is the reason.

Out of the fire and into the flames with choices like that though, eh.

Re: In killing Inbox, Google takes another swipe at its most passionate users

#87
post #16

I used to be a Google fan boy but am starting to dislike them more and more. This, they killed off reader and the creepy data collection they do is why I've started to look into alternatives for their products - anyone have any good suggestions?

After being a keen Google user in the late 2000s to mid 2010s, I’ve been in on a process of extracting them from my life now their true creepy colours are on display. YouTube => Deleted Google plus => Deleted Gmail => Deleted, switched to Soverin [0], works great, less than $4 per month for 25gb email hosting Drive => Deleted, moved to iCloud Docs => Deleted, use iWork for docs and Bear [1] for text Search => Duck Du…

Soverin sounds like a good project. What do you make of the fact that the warrant canary hasn't been updated since May, though?

https://soverin.net/warrant-canary

Re: In killing Inbox, Google takes another swipe at its most passionate users

#88
Google Inbox did one evil thing. To delete an item in iOS's Inbox, you swipe left to right, whereas pretty much every other app in iOS you swipe right to left. This has thrown me into such confusion now in all apps that I'm happy to see Inbox go away.

Re: In killing Inbox, Google takes another swipe at its most passionate users

#89
post #22

The death of reader wasn't as bad as this for me. Soon after reader died, alternatives popped up left and right, and some of them are better than reader ever was. What alternative is there to gmail/inbox? Unlike an RSS reader, I think it's much more difficult to make an email service that's close to being as good as gmail/inbox while having the same level of features, especially across platforms.

I’m with you. Inbox is really nice and mailbox has been killed by Dropbox. The new gmail just isn’t the same thing.

Re: In killing Inbox, Google takes another swipe at its most passionate users

#90
post #55

Google's shutdown of products and APIs seems to have led to critical level of trust loss amongst developers and influencers. It's time for Google to either fix this or get out of providing services and APIs to developers. Google doesn't seem to put any weight at all on the outcry every time its shutters another service/API. The trust must be restored. Google doesn't seem to understand that when they shut service X, t…

To put a positive suggestion forward, Google could consider giving all services a "sunset guarantee I'd honestly even settle with something like a program where users can choose to enroll in these programs in some sort of test phase. Maybe put some kind of marker in the name or even on the logo that clearly informs and denotes "this product might not last long, it might go into production, it may die after 3 years, y…

Gmail itself was in beta, until recently. Everything was in beta.
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