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Large Web Host Urges Customers to Use Gmail
1sockchuck writes "LA hosting company DreamHost, which hosts more than 700,000 web sites, is encouraging its customers to use Google's Gmail for their e-mail, rather than the DreamHost mail servers. DreamHost is continuing to support all its existing e-mail offerings, but said in a blog post that email is "just not something people are looking for from us, and it's something the big free email providers like Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google can do better." DreamHost addresses a question about Google that has vexed many web hosting companies: is Google a useful partner, or a competitor that intends to make "traditional" web hosting companies obsolete? In this case, partnering with Google offers DreamHost a way to offload many of its trouble tickets, reducing the support overhead. Is Google starting to make web hosts less necessary?"
If Dreamhost doesn't want to include email with their web hosting accounts (and it looks like this is the first step towards phasing it out), then they need to get out of the web hosting business. They obviously don't have the kind of professionalism that it takes to run a web hosting company (as further evidenced by making glib comments referring to "studly CEO's" in an official blog).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
That way, I can handle spam they way I want, set up accounts for friends if need be (or businesses)
At the very least..."I" know who is storing and reading my mail. Me, not some corporation that holds it, reads it to display ads....and turns it over to the govt. at the govt's whim.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
to be fair throwing putty and your keys on a usb key *isnt* that big of a deal. but i really dont want to do email browsing in a cli, thanks.
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
I'm a very small webhost provider (< 20 domains), and for me, it was a no brainer to get all my customers to get GMail for Domains, point all their MX records to Google, and wash my hands of the SPAM. I use it for all my personal domains as well. Google does a far better job of SPAM filtering than I ever could with SpamAssassin and the blacklists thing... and for this small set of users (< 50 people total), it just wasn't worth it. My tech life got a lot easier when I decided I wasn't going to mess with email anymore, just like the day I decided I was going to ignore Microsoft's APIs. Both are losing propositions in the extreme. So, for me, Google is a VERY useful partner. And I like their web/chat interface too, both the browser version and the mobile edition, which I access from my Treo 650.
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It means that my communications are being scanned by a third party, and that I should self-censor accordingly.
:)
Most email are sent plain-text, so it doesn't take much effort to scan the contents. That is why you use PGP.
For a business? Absolutely, although it doesn't to some people. But for a home account or hobby account? Not so much.
If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.
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For your sake, I hope your company doesn't have any trade secrets.
For your sake, I hope you're not stupid enough to think that your company's trade secrets are safe in email that doesn't go through gmail...
Far more importantly, where does it say that you do not?
Gmail sounds on the surface like a good idea. However, there are a critical items why I'll never use it beyond a disposable email account.
First of all, what about when you have a problem. Have you ever tried to get help from Google. Their customer service is non-existent. If you follow their 'contact us' links it funnels you into an FAQ. If you do find the form to contact them (like finding an exit in a casino), you're lucky to get a reply (They openly state they will ignore any correspondence that might be in their FAQ) it's just a form email answering some other question. It may take several iterations (each taking a day or two) of explaining that they didn't answer your question. That's on the off hand chance you can finally get to someone.
If it would cause you problems to have an interruption to your email, you might want to consider this.
Second, Google uses information from your email 'for your benefit' so they can advertise more effectively. What other ways might they decide to leverage it? The idea of Google having access to all of a companies email sounds like a stage for problems.
Third, depending on how international you are, what if some foreign government or other entity, requests your emails? We hear about some public cases, but the probability is good that there are a lot more we don't hear about.
Fourth, take it out of context for a moment. Google's better UI aside, what if the company was Yahoo or AOL?
As as a fellow dreamhost user, I noticed recently that they started integrating Google Apps into the hosting management area of the control panel. Might be useful as an alternative to Squirrel Mail (which I also think is klunky, but I use it as IMAP usually, so almost never am actually in that interface).
So you sent people home, and productivity went up, so for "management reasons" you brought everybody back, to the low productivity work environment. What does this tell you about your managers.
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