What does an Android phone look like without Gmail access? Does a Gmail ban = Google account ban?
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The Case Against Gmail (2020)
41–50 of 70 posts
Re: The Case Against Gmail (2020)
#42Second question. Are there any other naive millennials who legitimately believed like me that Gmail, Maps etc was just corporate altruism back in the mid-late 00's?
Looking back I feel so stupid lol. But I really thought these technology companies were doing something alien to how corporations behaved in the "dark ages". Gullible.
Re: The Case Against Gmail (2020)
#43> We believe, any entity having access to so much personal information is a great risk to world peace, freedom and democracy. I often seen privacy advocates make sweeping statements like this, but I have a hard time understanding their concerns because I haven't really gotten an answer as to how they see it happening. EDIT: Also to be clear, I think it is completely valid to object to data collection on moral / ethic…
An example of how this could play out is how easily Google and other big tech cooperate with government requests nowadays (compared to, say, a decade or so ago, when Apple was openly fighting the FBI in court to not be forced to make a tool to unlock locked iPhones). It allows the government to censor things without having to explicitly deal with legal challenges, and in exchange the company gets good will and favors…
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Re: The Case Against Gmail (2020)
#44Re: The Case Against Gmail (2020)
#45Uuuugh that reminds me that one of these days I’m gonna have to set aside the four or so hours it’ll take to get most of my important things pointing at my owned-domain email address, so I don’t lose everything if Google’s ban hammer automatically decides the almost-nothing I do on any Google site violates policy and I lose it. We need a moved-permanently redirect for emails :-/
> We need a moved-permanently redirect for emails :-/
Most mail providers have an automatic forward system, and/or an automatic reply. There is more than enough for most of the biggest names.
Re: The Case Against Gmail (2020)
#46How much safer is "owning" your domain? An anecdote: A few years ago I used to have my own domain. Then one day my credit card expired, the new one did not work and my account got frozen. I fixed it, then I forgot to actually extend the domain and it stopped working. Of course, no incoming email, no access to my old mail, etc. Fortunately I could buy the domain again after a couple of weeks of time, so it did not end…
It's "own your condo" vs "rent a condo" safe. You aren't safe from standard stuff going out, but you are safe from your landlord evicting you.
Re: The Case Against Gmail (2020)
#47Second question. Are there any other naive millennials who legitimately believed like me that Gmail, Maps etc was just corporate altruism back in the mid-late 00's? Looking back I feel so stupid lol. But I really thought these technology companies were doing something alien to how corporations behaved in the "dark ages". Gullible.
I'm still waiting for the revival of Google Wave. But I don't think we were simply naive: as we grew up we understood the social and political aspects of it all that weren't taught massively, unlike Google's niceness. We can't blame ourselves for not knowing stuff that was voluntarily kept away.
Re: The Case Against Gmail (2020)
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you mean losing access to the archive of past messages stored in your gmail account? If not, can you explain why it would be crippling to switch to another email service?
Most online accounts are tied to my email as an id. Suddenly losing my gmail would mean losing those accounts too. I'm fairly certain I could recover eventually, but it would be a disaster. The message archive is not a consideration. Switching to another service is definitely indicated, but it would be months of toil to migrate all the aforementioned accounts.
> but it would be months of toil to migrate all the aforementioned accounts.
It took a year for me. The sooner you start, the sooner you're done with it
Re: The Case Against Gmail (2020)
#49The problem with email self hosting is that the internet wasn't built for people, it was built for organizations that employ dedicated staff. Let's say you wanted to host email with your own domain for the rest of your life. It's likely at some point you'd lose the domain.
Why do you say people would "likely lose the domain"?
I've had my own domain and been running my own email for almost 30 years (from back in the day you had to pay Network Solutions more than $100/year just for a domain). My current domain provider lets me renew for multiple years, I get plenty of notifications about it expiring, etc.
I can see a case where if something medical happens to me for a long term at the wrong time I could potentially lose it but I don't see why that would apply to most people, that's a very specific instance.
Re: The Case Against Gmail (2020)
#50> Gmail is not even a Freemium service. It does not have a paid tier with which it compensates the free tier. You can pay for Gmail through Google Workspace.
If your Google Workspace account only has a small number of users, can you get any real customer service?