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The Case Against Gmail (2020)

migadu.com

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Re: The Case Against Gmail (2020)

#51

Post by dghlsakjg »

metalliqaz wrote: post #44
kennywinker wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

migadu's basic plan includes 50gb of storage.

parent was referring to the era when gmail appeared. GBs of storage was entirely unheard-of

Can confirm.

If I recall, gmail started out with 1gb in ~2004.

It was pretty standard at the time for an email account to allow 20-100mb. 1gb of free, no questions asked email storage was completely wild, then they doubled it!

Prior to this, it was a regular thing for people to go through their emails and delete old ones, and download attachments several times per year or even more often.

Keep in mind that in this era, it was not uncommon for a computer to have just 20gb or HDD, so a free 2gb was a serious amount of storage.

Re: The Case Against Gmail (2020)

#52

Post by card_zero »

andrewla wrote: post #38

The idea that Google gets value from gmail user data is simply false. The pushback from when Google first tried to do ads on gmail was enough to kill the idea permanently. Gmail is a legacy of Old Google, like Maps -- it serves no profit motive, just engineers building something cool for everyone with some sort of flimsy pretext of "it keeps users in our ecosystem" tacked on to it. Google now does have a premium-ish…

Maps advertises businesses for free? And without tracking the user's possible interest in spending money on particular things? Really?

Re: The Case Against Gmail (2020)

#53

Post by thfuran »

indigochill wrote: post #39
tqi wrote: post #6

> 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…

I'll take a stab at it, since I'm one of those privacy advocates (and also prone to making sweeping statements like this). Let's say Alice and Bob are doing life and emailing each other about normal life stuff. Charlie runs their email server. Charlie also runs an advertising business to fund his email server. He somehow reads (not necessarily manually, but the details don't matter) the emails coming through his serv…

I certainly agree that the third party doctrine is a threat to freedom.

Re: The Case Against Gmail (2020)

#54

Post by dghlsakjg »

tqi wrote: post #6

> 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…

You don't see how a hacked email account or server could influence global politics?

Compromised email was arguably the largest determining factor in the 2016 US presidential election.

Re: The Case Against Gmail (2020)

#55

Post by beardyw »

iagooar wrote: post #18

How 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…

I have very much migrated my email away from my own domain to Gmail. I used to run a website but I have now retired (it and myself) but I retain the domain. My question was how long can I keep my domain viable as I get older, my health deteriorates, maybe my mind too. Having a Gmail account actually feels safer. My domain mail is redirected to Gmail and labelled so I can see what I am still getting.

Re: The Case Against Gmail (2020)

#56

Post by andrewla »

card_zero wrote: post #52
andrewla wrote: post #38

The idea that Google gets value from gmail user data is simply false. The pushback from when Google first tried to do ads on gmail was enough to kill the idea permanently. Gmail is a legacy of Old Google, like Maps -- it serves no profit motive, just engineers building something cool for everyone with some sort of flimsy pretext of "it keeps users in our ecosystem" tacked on to it. Google now does have a premium-ish…

Maps advertises businesses for free? And without tracking the user's possible interest in spending money on particular things? Really?

True -- I let nostalgia get in the way of reality here. For a long time Google didn't even try to monetize maps, and then they did a bunch of unsuccessful tweak to try to squeeze some money out of it.

Last time I checked Maps was still wildly unprofitable -- too many use cases of maps are searching for a particular destination rather than a general class of things, and balancing ad results and organic results has been something Google has gone back and forth on.

The extent to which Google uses user data from maps searches to track user interest is pretty overblown; there's a lot of struggle involved in trying to extract even slightly useful information.

But things like browsing maps, satellite pictures, and turn by turn directions are straightforward losses for Google, and reflect that earlier spirit.

Re: The Case Against Gmail (2020)

#57

Post by throwaway48476 »

cbull wrote: post #49
throwaway48476 wrote: post #36

The 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 wr…

>I can see a case where if something medical happens to me

All people get old. The chance of something medical happening in a life is near 100%.

Re: The Case Against Gmail (2020)

#58

Post by gmuslera »

hnpolicestate wrote: post #42

Second 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.

It could had been, back in the day, when the "Not be evil" was Google's motto. That not anymore. Nothing last forever, specially good intentions.

Re: The Case Against Gmail (2020)

#59

Post by pan69 »

iagooar wrote: post #18

How 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…

The other danger with losing your domain name is that a new owner can simply set up MX records and start receiving your email, e.g. password reset etc.

Re: The Case Against Gmail (2020)

#60

Post by card_zero »

andrewla wrote: post #56
card_zero wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maps advertises businesses for free? And without tracking the user's possible interest in spending money on particular things? Really?

True -- I let nostalgia get in the way of reality here. For a long time Google didn't even try to monetize maps, and then they did a bunch of unsuccessful tweak to try to squeeze some money out of it. Last time I checked Maps was still wildly unprofitable -- too many use cases of maps are searching for a particular destination rather than a general class of things, and balancing ad results and organic results has bee…

My impression is that it's the other way round: presumably via my card number, purchases I make at local businesses cause those businesses to appear more prominent on the map. They get unique icons, and are visible when zoomed out even to a range of five miles. Tracking is applied to the adverts on maps, I think, just like ads in search.
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