Earlier quoted context omitted.
Get your own domain?
[deleted]
Okay, I understand.
Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?
41–50 of 267 posts
Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, and if my data disappeared tomorrow, I'd be pretty pissed off. But since Gmail has a sort of critical mass, it would be likely that other people would lose data too. You're picturing some massive server failure, but not the more likely case of your Google account being disabled for any random reason, which has happened to more than a few people. As Gmail gains more users, you become that much less important to t…
Back up your email! Just because your data is in the cloud doesn't mean you shouldn't make a backup. I just run getmail which retrieves mail via Gmail's IMAP interface every now and then. If Gmail went away tomorrow, I wouldn't be _that_ sad.
Agreed. Another compelling reason is data deletion -- accidental or malicious. While catastrophic loss due to hardware seems to have declined over the past few years, malicious deletion has gone up markedly.
I've pimped them out before, but this is why I set up backupify (handle more than just gmail, since your Google password is for all your Google accounts) and periodically export my data. I just wish they did more, like backup my Dropbox and Atlassian accounts.
Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?
#43Just to give you an idea of how popular Gmail is, about 67% of the 7000+ subscribers for Hacker Newsletter (http://www.hackernewsletter.com) use gmail and I'm sure a good bit more are Google app accounts.
To add to this, yahoo.com is second with 3%.
Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?
#44This article is link-bait, but I'll bite. Simply put, Gmail provides a compelling user experience: * fast and accurate search. This is key, and I don't know of a single desktop email client that even comes close to providing a decent search feature. Decent here means "answer full-text queries accurately within a second or so". I didn't realize how useful this was until switching to Gmail; now I have it, I can't switc…
> This article is link-bait
You should probably check out who Harald Welte is and what he does before making such accusations. I don't agree with him here, but "link bait" this is not.
Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?
#45This article is link-bait, but I'll bite. Simply put, Gmail provides a compelling user experience: * fast and accurate search. This is key, and I don't know of a single desktop email client that even comes close to providing a decent search feature. Decent here means "answer full-text queries accurately within a second or so". I didn't realize how useful this was until switching to Gmail; now I have it, I can't switc…
My experience is the polar opposite. I have to rely on a native client to search because GMail search is so bad. It hasn't been that fast for a while -- waiting 30+s for a search is pretty routine nowadays. But worse, it's never really handled stemming well -- it has to be an exact word match, even for singular vs plural. And the number of false positives I get usually doesn't even make it worthwhile. I had resorted to deleting mail rather than archiving it, but that only helped marginally.
Having said that, I rely on too many marketplace apps now to make switching a reasonable alternative. So, I make do with native clients.
Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?
#46There is really no alternative. Set something up with the same features and I'll gladly pay to use it.
Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?
#47Why don't all people make their own food?
The same argument applies to almost any category of product, with varying ramifications unique to each.
If I made my own soda, I'd leave out high fructose corn syrup. Why do I let Coca Cola poison me? And so on and so forth.
Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?
#48This article is link-bait, but I'll bite. Simply put, Gmail provides a compelling user experience: * fast and accurate search. This is key, and I don't know of a single desktop email client that even comes close to providing a decent search feature. Decent here means "answer full-text queries accurately within a second or so". I didn't realize how useful this was until switching to Gmail; now I have it, I can't switc…
I use Rackspace Email, over IMAP on the desktop, IMAP on my phone, and webmail when on someone else's computer. It's never slow in any way. When I sign up for things, I hear the ding of the confirmation e-mail within 2-3 seconds of submitting the form -- fast as push mail.
It's using IMAP IDLE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMAP_IDLE), which is push email.
Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 2. No open source webmail servers that I've seen come close to Gmail's functionality, and I don't have time to write one that is. Obligatory comment pointing out an opportunity for disruption, etc., why aren't we all millionaires., etc. etc.
The business model isn't there. I have yet to see a large group of consumers willing to pay for secure email and the only other alternative, advertising, leads to the exact same problem that you face with GMail.
I would pay and so would many others.
Re: Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?
#50So why is there such a high degree of Gmail usage among those groups? Because we're lazy. you give away control over your personal data Yes, and if my data disappeared tomorrow, I'd be pretty pissed off. But since Gmail has a sort of critical mass, it would be likely that other people would lose data too. Lots of pissed off users would tarnish Google's reputation and it's in their interest to avoid that. you put your…
Yep, they data-mine my email anonymously, but they try to not be evil about it.
Eventually, as it happens in all public companies, the "do no evil" people are going to be out, and the "maximize the buck" people are going to be in.