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Gmail Cracks Down on Third-Party Notifiers
crtfdgk writes "Recently, Google's gmail service has attempted to change login protocols to block third-party gmail notifiers that alert you to new email. Google has now taken it one step further and created a word-identification script filter as part of the login process. Personally, I find Google's gmail notifier annoying since it sits in my taskbar and doesn't have popup notification, unlike many other worthy Firefox or Mozilla plugins that feature gmail notification. Shouldn't I be free to use whatever third party software to check my email? Will we be seeing controls on browsers that can view gmail next?"
"Will we be seeing controls on browsers that can view gmail next?" Well, there already are restrictions in the way they have the site built. I can't use lynx (or links/elinks) or konqueror to access my GMail as it is.
Steal This Sig
I suggest either running your own email server, or getting a decent imap account from your isp. Although webmail services may be convenient at times, you have to come to grips with the fact thats its a webmail service, so you're not going to get all the bells and whistles. Gmail is neato, but I don't think it's good enough for the power user.
Hi there
That sounds a little illogical to me, because of the following counterexamples:
IMHO the only valid reason for going against third party notifiers is Google's ad system, which is a major source of revenue for them.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Maybe they're worried about Pop Goes the GMail, which provides a POP3 interface to a Gmail account. This is a real threat to them because if you use it you don't see any of the ads.
Maybe there are legitimate reasons for doing this. If Google fears that GMail's 1GB storage space could be used as a warez haven, they may have good reason for locking out automated tools.
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
--Aristotle
My feeling is that if it's a *FREE* service (meaning you don't pay Google anything to use Gmail) then no, you shouldn't be free to use whatever third party software you choose.
It's NOT a free service at all. Gmail is an ad supported service, which means you agree to get ads thrown at you in exchange for using their service. It is exactly the same thing as paying for it, except a third party (the advertiser) is paying your fee to Google so it can throw those ads at you.
Either way Google is getting money from you for their service, which means you should have the same rights as if you paid them directly.
My guess:
It has nothing to do with adsense: you have to open messages to receive ads, and notifiers don't do that.
I think it's probably to block other people who aren't yet on our radar, such as spammers automating logins for the purposes of evil, or someone trying to create a shell program around Gmail that blocks ads.
Has anyone considered the possibility that the reason they're blocking these notifiers isn't because they have a problem with the idea, but rather there isn't a standard upon which they've settled on?
What I mean is, Slashdot bans people when they abusively pull RSS feeds too often, and ask people to only pull RSS once every 30 minutes, and no more often than that. It's possible that these programs are pinging the crap out of the server, essentially DDOS'ing the sytem with mindless queries every few seconds to every few minutes. If the notifiers only queried once every half hour, there would be no issue, but hen people would find it useless since there would be up to a half hour delay on being notified of new mail.
I think therein lies the crux of the matter.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Yeah, not only is the Google Office Suite better and more stable than MS Office; the GoogleOS is finally ready for prime time
And this may as well be why Google actually represents more than a threat to Microsoft. It is not about the desktop operating system anymore; a new breed of software companies is out there using the Internet as their distribution channel. Google, Amazon, eBay, etc., are all software companies in disguise. Typically, you don't pay to use their software; advertisement and special services takes care of that. But still, you access their servers to use their software in order to get your information processed.
As broadband becomes ubiquitous, we should expect more and more innovative uses of the Internet (note I said the Internet, not necessarily the Web...) As for MS, how much more can they really grow? New machines cannot sustain their level of growth forever, and the users will not migrate to their next version of Windows or Office suite just because; they are now finding themselves diverting towards new initiatives and into new markets where they actually have to (gasp!) compete, lest they lose relevance in the larger scheme.
I don't see MS disappering anytime soon, but certainly it is not the good ol' times where they could just crush away their competition, and they are worried about that. Whether they have reason enough to be worried or not is up for debate, but just like with people, stress can be more harmful to companies that the actual situation they're stressing about.
Most of these ideas have been said before many times, and that includes several Slashdotters. You can go look for the posts yourself.
The revolution will not be televised.
Of course the whole idea could be worked around if Google created an instant messaging protocol, they could make it a server-push instead of client-pull action.
I agree with you that IMAP is superior, but IMAP's idea of folders and stuff doesn't really jive with GMail's "we have labels instead of folders" deal. That is unless you want dupes of every email that you have more than one label on.
... that's probably why.
IMAP just doesn't seem very GMail friendly. POP3 is dumb enough to just pull anything in the Inbox with a UIDL tacked on
DrPascal: Not the language, the mathematician.
...to locking out third party apps is to work with those making the apps.
Third party products likely cause excessive loads: ask people not to check their email too frequently (that's what Northwestern did when I was checking my mail every 5 minutes with Eudora) then ban belligerent accounts.
Assume that the offical gmail notifier creates less load per request than 3rd parties: open up your API and third party apps will use this too (it's probably easier to program anyway).
Loss of ad revenue: require third party apps to displace one ad everytime a pop up notification is displayed. This would be no more intrusive than the ads in gmail itself since you'd only see the ad when you do have email (which is consistent).
Gmail is still in beta: perhaps a lock-out is best until gmail is officially released. Then standards shouldn't change so google could be play "nice".
That said, Google can do whatever they want. You don't like it, find a better service.
Disclaimer: I don't have gmail and am relying on my intuition. If you think I should, send an invite to: jd0g85 at yahoo dot com
There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death.-Asimov
Your call : does your Bill of Rights define all of the rights which you have?
This is a great philosophy, but utterly irrelevant in this circumstance.
The bill of rights defines your rights with regard to the government. It has basically nothing to do with your rights when dealing with a private company. For example, Google could institute a new policy saying that they reserve the right to block emails discussing certain topics. The government doing this would probably violate the first amendment, but it would be legal for Google since it is a private company.
As for your "philosophical outlook on the law", courts have generally said that the constitution grants you certain rights only. Any right not specifically defined does not exist. So, for example, we do not have a right to privacy, even though the need for such is entirely created by modern technology (and therefore would have been irrelevant for the first 200 years the constitution was around. Too bad the founding fathers were only smart, not psychic). Unfortunately, philosophy & law only rarely coincide.
What they really want is for third party clients to change the way they check for new messages.
Look, the original thing that they had offered no easy way for a client to check for messages. So they created the Gmail notifier. Along with it, they created a low bandwidth simple way to check for messages. The Gmail notifier doesn't actually check the HTML version of the page. It pulls something down that is much simpler and less bandwidth/CPU intensive on their end.
By breaking the old way of doing it, they're forcing these apps to change what they do in order to work. Most likely, these apps will *copy* what the gmail notifier program does to check mail. And that's likely fine with Google. Hurts them no more than if the person was using the real notifier, in that case.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
to check my Gmail and then I found I was locked out of my account, and I tried the forgot password option and it told me I did not have a secondary email set (but I did, my Yahoo one).
I emailed Google's Gmail abuse address to ask them if my account was hijacked and if I can get back in, but they have not yet responded.
I had set my Yahoo Groups to send messages to my Gmail account. So I can better read and search the messages. Is this some sort of violation of the ToS, because if it is, I've missed that.
Google still has not contacted me back, and I find that very rude.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
As per the parent, "I don't know how you have it in the US", well, actually, I do.. but that's beyond the point. I'll talk about GSM here.
Can you run direct tcp/ip over most cell networks?
Yes, most GSM networks provide a GPRS access point for those who want to use the internet directly. One of the (CDMA, IIRC) other telcos over here, Hutchinson, is pushing their '3' service with PCMCIA cellular modems as of late.
Can you change the WAP gateway you're tied to?
Can you change the router you're tied to on your local LAN? Sure, but you'd have to be the one providing it. As with my mobile - the WAP gateway can be changed; but there's no others I know of on my telco's network.
Can you use the bandwidth you pay for, how you want to?
Yes! As per above point, many networks are touting the always-on aspect of GPRS, and you can do pretty much anything you want. The only limitation is the cost - many networks are charging 1-2c per kilobyte (that's $10-20 a megabyte, people). If it takes off, I can see it going down. But for the meantime, GPRS is going to be limited to those that can write it off as a business expense, or those who want to just check a few things online via a WAP browser.
That's exactly why Patrick Henry, among others, was *opposed* to the Bill of Rights - because people like you would say it was a complete list of rights, rather than a list of minimal guaranteed rights among many other rights.
What it boils down to is that you have whatever rights you have the ability and willingness to demand. What _that_ generally boils down to is that you have whatever rights your culture grants you. It is a bad, bad move as a culture for us to decide people have some minimal set of rights that can be enumerated somewhere - instead, keep pushing the envelope of your rights until it includes everything that doesn't hurt someone else.
That said, I don't believe we have a right to force Google to make it easy for 3rd party mail notifiers to work. It did miff me until someone pointed out how their notifier could be much more efficient. I wouldn't be surprised to see them solidify the notifier API and make it a public release after they have tested it for a while.
By "We'll try POP3 access" do they mean letting you get your email via POP3 from gmail accounts, or using the GMail interface to read your existing POP3 accounts (and store your mail). I thought the latter, myself.
Gmail already does this. Try using opera to view your Gmail account. And no, Google is not doing this because Opera doesn't work with the site... If you use Opera and switch its user-agent line to IE or Nutscrape, Opera will be able to access your Gmail account just fine.
I'm not saying that Google doesn't have reasons for doing this.. maybe they do. But at this point in time they're actively stopping perfectly good "alternative" browsers from getting to your Gmail.
Would this be tolerated if it weren't Google? Would Microsoft get away with this?
/dev/random
Google's own Gmail Notifier does not work with Win98.. and that's what I have to run at home because of legacy apps. The FireFox notifier worked fine, until Google broke it. Beta or not, this ain't the way to win friends and influence people.
There is nothing wrong with yr Internet. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling the transmission - NSA
Run your own mailserver at home and enjoy the 40/60/80/etc/GB of disk storage you have, and use whatever you like to access it (IMAP, POP3, Web).
Then convert your Gmail account into an archive, by making your client forward all mails to it. Easy to search for stuff you think you've missed, or deleted.
I would actually say view 1 is correct, but only because the Constitution was written to control the government not the people. So the proper viewpoint for answering the question is the government's not the people's.
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).