Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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
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 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.
...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
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.