271–280 of 549 posts
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For a while Amazon stopped giving detail about the purchased items in their emails, to prevent Google from doing exactly that. A year or two ago they returned to full detail. I've always wondered if it was customer pressure or a backroom deal with Amazon was reached. I kind of doubt that Google would cave to the former, right?
i wonder how AMZN hasn't started its own mail yet.
People complain a lot about Gmail, but honestly I kind of understand Google's plight here. They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free . If they ever shut it down the whole world would end up rioting because it's so widely used. But it's expensive, complicated and time-consuming to maintain - and both a source of and recipient of endless waves of spam and scams.…
In exchange, Google gets to surveil half of the world's population, extract personal information from their email, and resell that information to governments and ad companies.
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> They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free. I’ll stop you here. Google offered it for free and, at the time, offered such an high amount of mail storage for free it sounded insane. At the time, my ISP gave me a 25MB or 50MB inbox and that was considered pretty decent, when Google was trying to get people in with 1-2GB. They absolutely have a right to take ant…
> and certainly aren’t obligated to provide it for free And I'll stop you here. It's less than obvious that there's no obligation. If you provide a critical service that folks rely on at a price less than your cost, you drive out competition, and it's a critical part of your own business model, dropping the service without warning is IMO on the border of what Google should be allowed to do.
I've paid for email nearly forever (Earthlink, not the most high tech provider but good enough) and get nearly zero spam. Their price went up again recently, but apparently if you mention Fastmail they'll match the cost.
I was listening to the local TV news a few weeks ago and the reporter talked about an SMS scam insisting that you owe unpaid turnpike charges. He said "most of us have seen them". I'm thinking, I've never received anything like that!" and then realized it could be because I don't give out my phone number to just anybody who asks. And tend to push back when they do.
People complain a lot about Gmail, but honestly I kind of understand Google's plight here. They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free . If they ever shut it down the whole world would end up rioting because it's so widely used. But it's expensive, complicated and time-consuming to maintain - and both a source of and recipient of endless waves of spam and scams.…
> They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free What you mean for free? First, they have all the data they get from you. They now track you even when you are not using your phone. They can/could know if you are doing your number 2 regularly or not only. They control how the internet moves. Https? Sure can enforce. Trackers, etags ? Why not. They sell every single…
And it's isn't even like they're struggling with profitability, either. It'll be hilarious if this forces common folks to switch back to IMAP since once a user has been burned into spending the trivial cost to set up a local mailbox sync they're unlikely to go back into Google's arms (especially given how cheap (in money and time) disk space and cloud backups are these days).
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Gmail is not now nor has it ever been free. Everyone pays for it. To your point many people use it and for businesses to contact their customers they have to pay into whitelists for high volume delivery. The costs are passed onto the customers, including those that have never used Gmail. Companies that do not pay into such lists and that have many customers using gmail have to set up careful rate limits which means t…
Is this really true? Where are these lists? I’ve never heard of this so I’m quite intrigued.
People complain a lot about Gmail, but honestly I kind of understand Google's plight here. They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free . If they ever shut it down the whole world would end up rioting because it's so widely used. But it's expensive, complicated and time-consuming to maintain - and both a source of and recipient of endless waves of spam and scams.…
> But it's expensive, complicated and time-consuming to maintain - and both a source of and recipient of endless waves of spam and scams. It's an endless pile of data to hold onto, FOREVER, as well. They should let others do email. The more email service providers we have the better it is for everyone
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> and certainly aren’t obligated to provide it for free And I'll stop you here. It's less than obvious that there's no obligation. If you provide a critical service that folks rely on at a price less than your cost, you drive out competition, and it's a critical part of your own business model, dropping the service without warning is IMO on the border of what Google should be allowed to do.
Yeah! I can't believe people know basics about cartels, trusts and dumping.