Slashdot Mirror
The Case Against Gmail
stry_cat writes "Ed Bot makes the case against Gmail: 'Gmail was a breath of fresh air when it debuted. But this onetime alternative is showing signs that it's past its prime, especially if you want to use the service with a third-party client. That's the way Google wants it, which is why I've given up on Gmail after almost a decade.' Personally, I've always thought it odd that no other email provider ever adopted Gmails "search not sort" mentality. I've been a Gmail user since you needed an invitation to get an account. However Gmail has been steadily moving towards a more traditional email experience. Plus there's the iGoogle disaster that got me looking into alternatives to everything Google."
you forgot the US Government spying. until our IT giants tell the US government that they are leaving the united states if they don't stop, there is no reason to continue to freely use their service when an alternative is available.
Ed Bott has been sucking the Microsoft tit for years and he loves it.
I've been using Gmail since the old days when you had to have an invitation, and I've always used a third party email client because Gmail's web-based interface is stupid and pointless. Ed Bott is an idiot and I don't understand how he ever got a job writing for any computer/tech related magazine or website.
. . . and what's wrong with IMAP and POP? They're called "standards" because they're "standard" and consistent and don't change every day like some people's menu bars and web interfaces. My wife can read her Gmail from her iPhone, too. Neither of us is confused by their interface . . . In fact I don't know what this article is complaining about other than "MICROSOFT IS NONSTANDARD" which is not exactly a shock, but he's saying it as if everyone else in the world is supposed to conform to Microsoft's standards. Um m m m m , no.
If you're worried about privacy: I pay for Verizon FIOS. That includes email. I *pay* for this, it's *mine*, they're not supposed to be making money off it . . . except I know from other evidence that they are scanning the email just like Google does, especially when I'm looking at it with the webmail interface rather than Thunderbird. So I don't think you can trust paid services either. And I'll bet dollars to donuts that if you run your own server, someone is scanning things to the SMTP port. If you don't control the wires end-to-end, then you don't have control, period.
For the ultra-cool folks who ask "who uses a client" and "who uses email anymore" . . . what are you doing reading such an ancient site as Slashdot? Go read something that nobody else knows about yet, and let us dinosaurs roam in peace.
Because it's stupid. If you have to constantly search for things it means you are a lazy disorganized slob. The number of times I've had to search for an email can be counted on one hand because I have things organized so that I know where they are.
Why should I waste time manually organizing my e-mails when I can just search for them when I want to read them later? Computers exist to do menial work for me, so I don't have to do it myself.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
I don't understand the problem either. Gmail works fine with any IMAP client I care to configure. IMAP itself has some weirdness around how clients interact with various folders, but that's not Gmail's fault.
Yes they are, they decided to implement their IMAP support in a non-standard way.
Also, plenty of other issues ARE their fault.
A better question is why Google is using IMAP folders as labels instead of using IMAP labels as labels.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Exactly. His slant can easily be determined from his comments about using calendars in Outlook: he complains that Outlook can only open gmail calendars in read-only mode. But this appears to be a limitation of Outlook -- my Thunderbird client (with the appropriate calendar plugins) can update gmail's calendar, so why can't Outlook?
He then parrots the "scroogled" talking points.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
The insistence on using real names was what turned me completely off on G+
It was an obvious attempt to monetize my information to the point that they were getting more out of it than I would. Heck, Facebook while basically a cesspool at least uses "enticement" to get the information instead of "forced". While they gather what they can, they don't force me to participate. (I have massive ad-block capabilities so I don't worry about Facebook much.
That, and Google hooked it up with Youtube, forever linking what you watch and what you post with your real name, you CANNOT dissasociate them once Google has done that. And now you've got a company handing over your real name to the company that decides to have a copyright shit fit over the background music that happened to be playing on the radio while I filmed my cat getting it's head stuck in a watermelon and uploaded it to Youtube. G+ is downright DANGEROUS to privacy if you care about that.
I don't need that shit in my life, and if Google insists on it, I don't need Google in my life either.