Microsoft Improves Gmail Experience For Windows 10 Insiders, But There Are Privacy Concerns (betanews.com)

Reader BrianFagioli writes: Today, Microsoft announced a new Gmail experience for Windows 10. While only available for Windows Insiders as of today, it uses the same concept as the Outlook mobile app, but for the Mail and Calendar apps. Microsoft will provide you with an arguably improved experience as long as you are OK with storing all of your Gmail messages in Microsoft's cloud. What types of features will the new experience offer? Things such as tracking packages, getting updated on your favorite sports teams, and a focused inbox. "To power these new features, we'll ask your permission to sync a copy of your email, calendar and contacts to the Microsoft Cloud. This will allow new features to light up, and changes to update back and forth with Gmail -- such as creation, edit or deletion of emails, calendar events and contacts. But your experience in Gmail.com or apps from Google will not change in any way."

Comments

No more "BetaNews" submissions, please!

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot editors, can you please stop putting these "BetaNews" submissions on the front page?

These submissions are by far some of the worst ones that end up on the front page.

"BetaNews" is linked to from a submission almost every day! Hell, it was linked to twice on March 31, and from three submissions on March 25!

If want wanted to read "BetaNews" articles, which we don't, we would go directly to that site instead of coming to Slashdot!

Please stop putting mediocre content from "BetaNews" on the Slashdot front page, especially when it appears to be the authors of the articles who are submitting them here!

Please, no more "BetaNews" at Slashdot!

Re:No more "BetaNews" submissions, please!

[sexconker]

Slashdot editors, can you please stop putting these "BetaNews" submissions on the front page?

These submissions are by far some of the worst ones that end up on the front page.

"BetaNews" is linked to from a submission almost every day! Hell, it was linked to twice on March 31, and from three submissions on March 25!

If want wanted to read "BetaNews" articles, which we don't, we would go directly to that site instead of coming to Slashdot!

Please stop putting mediocre content from "BetaNews" on the Slashdot front page, especially when it appears to be the authors of the articles who are submitting them here!

Please, no more "BetaNews" at Slashdot!

I agree, but you missed the opportunity to call out "Reader BrianFagioli".

Inception

[DontBeAMoran]

To power these new features, we'll ask your permission to sync a copy of your email, calendar and contacts to the Microsoft Cloud.

So they're going to copy your data from one cloud to another.

When will the madness stop?

Clouds... apps.... hosts... files.... must resist madn....... MOO!!!!

Re:Inception

[fahrbot-bot]

To power these new features, we'll ask your permission to sync a copy of your email, calendar and contacts to the Microsoft Cloud.

So they're going to copy your data from one cloud to another.

When will the madness stop?

Hopefully before Joni Mitchell can look at both sides, 'cause she doesn't really know clouds at all.

Re:Inception

[93 Escort Wagon]

Microsoft may have Paved Paradise and Made it a Parking Lot; but I would've mentioned Judy Collins' rather than Joni Mitchell - Mitchell wrote it, but Collins released the first recording.

Microsoft Has An Odd Obsession With The Cloud...

[dryriver]

Yes, I get it. Satya Nadella is from Microsoft's Cloud Division so all things MS/Windows 10 have to go "cloud" now and of course all your dataz haz to bee in ze Maikrozoft Klaud az zoon az pozzible. But here's my question: If Windows 10 as an OS cannot be trusted with very basic Privacy - phoning home all the time and such - why on earth would I put all my Gmails in the Microsoft Cloud? If I cannot trust your OS sitting on my own harddrive, why would I trust your Cloud sitting on your servers somewhere? Can you trust Google more than Microsoft? I don't know the answer to that. All I know is - if Windows 10 isn't private, your Cloud service probably isn't very private either. My 2 Cents.

Re:Microsoft Has An Odd Obsession With The Cloud..

[Dracos]

This isn't even about cloud, this is about capturing user data so MS can mine it. MS is desperate for user data which is why they bought Skype, LinkedIn, and to a lesser degree MineCraft.

I guarantee gmail content will be used to feed ads to the desktop. That's their goal.

Before you trust Microsoft, remember...

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Remember what a great man said sometime back. "Fool me once shame on you, Fool me twice, .. no you can't fool me."

Is it Google sanctioned?

[HalAtWork]

Or will you get cut off when Google changes something on their end?

Re:Is it Google sanctioned?

[modmans2ndcoming]

It is probably using the same specification that allows any application to serve up Gmail and Calendar.

Re:Is it Google sanctioned?

[Trax3001BBS]

Or will you get cut off when Google changes something on their end?

At the very least you "should" get an email telling you of changes, where you get to ya or na it.

How can this be an improvement?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Letting one corporate giant rifle through your personal email is bad enough. Letting two of them? Why? "I have a hole in my head. Let me improve it by drilling another hole in the head"!!!! How can that be an improvement?

Re:How can this be an improvement?

[thegarbz]

You don't understand, everyone loves the cloud. CIOs love the cloud. In the past you wouldn't get fired for chosing IBM, now you won't get fired for cloud. So what does Microsoft do? Not one cloud but two clouds. A cloud within a cloud. A cloudception. We've created our data lakes which caused some localised fog computing and pushed all that up to the cloud. It only makes sense to add some more clouds otherwise we could never get the data out. You need clouds over clouds to get data rain, and then the logical next step is a data flood raising the level of the data lake.

Thus the cycle is complete and the CIO is happy.

Re:How can this be an improvement?

[Kjella]

Letting one corporate giant rifle through your personal email is bad enough. Letting two of them? Why? "I have a hole in my head. Let me improve it by drilling another hole in the head"!!!! How can that be an improvement?

More like if you don't care that the patio door is open, opening your bedroom window doesn't make much of a difference. Your data is as secure as the least secure place you keep them. If that's "in the cloud", well you don't care much if the thief uses the door or the window. If you keep your data in three vaults, it's still pretty secure same as one vault. If you keep your data in three clouds, it's still pretty insecure same as one cloud. It's the people thinking well I share my data with Google but at least not with Microsoft and think that makes a difference that are the foolish ones. If you don't care more install iTunes and put it in the iCloud too. The odds are hackers have stolen your data anyway.

Re:Microsoft Has An Odd Obsession With The Cloud..

[dryriver]

And I suspect that Windows as an OS is dying slowly, to be replaced by Android/iOS powered computing devices in the next 5 years. So Microsoft desperately needs a new "Windows" like platform - this time it is the Microsoft Cloud. They are trying desperately to shift all your shit into the Cloud, so you become DEPENDENT on using the Cloud. Once Microsoft has you in the Cloud, they will push SAAS - Software As A Service - on you hard. There won't be any significant "software" sitting on your harddrive anymore. Just little front-end "Apps" - essentially just GUIs - that connect to a cloud server back end. Of course you will have to "rent" those apps just like you have to with Adobe/Autodesk software. This means that you will have to provide things like credit card data to Microsoft, which of course Microsoft will datamine and sell to Big Data companies for a lot of money. Its "1984", just that this time, 1984 happens "in the Cloud".

IMAP & SMTP

[jawtheshark]

What exactly is wrong with just using IMAP & SMTP? We don't need "apps" for any of this.

Re:IMAP & SMTP

[MightyMartian]

Because there's nothing I love better than entering in SMTP and IMAP commands into a Telnet window to retrieve email!

Re:IMAP & SMTP

[manu0601]

openssl s_client -connect imap.example.com:993

That does not check certificates, see the man page to add the relevant options.

Re:IMAP & SMTP

[jawtheshark]

That is because you assume that "Apps" are the same as "Applications" or "Programs". That isn't really the case: "Apps" come from the mobile space and are usually touch optimized dumbed down versions. Often they are just fronts for web applications, instead of full native applications. Applications or programs like Thunderbird are not "Apps", they stand on their own and talk SMTP and IMAP and are compatible with all servers that speak these open protocols. That is inherently superior than proprietary "Apps" that do not talk open protocols.

MS, FYI

[SpaghettiPattern]

Dear MS,

I'd go through great lengths to not having anything to do with you.
The day you bought hotmail I jumped.
Do you really think I'd hand you over control to my email?
Stop sniffing glue!

Sincerely

Re:Brilliant

[dryriver]

I always knew that SAAS sounded kind of "surveillancy". =) Of course if the real product is YOU, then it should be called YAAS - YOU As A Service. 10 more years of this and nobody will know who is the product, who is the service a who is the server anymore. =)

I Just Got An Ad For The Microsoft Cloud

[dryriver]

Its in the top-right corner of my browserand IT KNOW THAT I AM HERE SHITTING ON IT. Microsoft has my Gmail's... They know EVERYTHING about me... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH... 1984 - 1984 - 1984 - 1984....

Re: Microsoft Has An Odd Obsession With The Cloud.

[dryriver]

You Sir are a Klutz... sorry... a Cloud a Cloud... You are a Cloud... A nice fluffy cloud in a blue sky, too... =)

Re:Microsoft Has An Odd Obsession With The Cloud..

[MightyMartian]

What I don't get is why Google doesn't bring more of its apps to Windows. While I realize Chrome is a platform for Google apps, I'd love to have a Windows version of the actual GMail app for my Windows tablet, rather than the pretty shitty built-in Windows Mail app.

Oh no

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

"Microsoft Improves Gmail Experience For Windows 10 Insiders..."

Uh-oh.

I've had enough experience with Microsoft's 'improvements' to know that it's going to be a huge clusterfuck of usability and privacy problems.

Re:What is the summary trying to say?

[Blaskowicz]

You prompted me to RTFA. Unsurprisingly, it gobbles data from features not actually part of email, but available in gmail, specifically calendar events and contacts.
RTFA also opens saying that by using the Outlook mobile app as a generic email client (not only for hotmail/windows live/outlook.com), Microsoft downloads all your email from all the email accounts you're using from within the application. So any vanilla 1980s email goes, I suspect you could run your own email server and get the email you receive on your own server forwarded to/downloaded by the microsoft "cloud" email client.

Of course, gmail started doing that in the first place years ago.

Privacy issues aside?

[King_TJ]

This is asking for headaches and issues because you're forcing all of your mail and calendar/contact data to get stored TWICE and synced properly and rapidly between both entities consistently, at all times. Twice the risk of something going wrong with 2 major points of failure in the mix.

Trust Google much?

[uCallHimDrJ0NES]

It's bizarre to me that so many commenters seem to trust Google more than Microsoft. I get not trusting either of them. I don't understand trusting Google.

Re:Trust Google much?

[modmans2ndcoming]

...."Because I worry about hyped nonsense from blogs"

Finished your sentence for you.

Re:Trust Google much?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what's really bizarre? The ignorance of people like you that think Microsoft is to be trusted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%29#/media/File:Prism_slide_5.jpg

In fact, Microsoft was the very first company to sign up.

According to The Guardian, NSA had access to chats and emails on Hotmail.com, Skype, because Microsoft had “developed a surveillance capability to deal” with the interception of chats, and “[f]or Prism collection against Microsoft email services will be unaffected because Prism collects this data prior to encryption.

Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data

Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users' communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company's own encryption, according to top-secret documents obtained by the Guardian.

The files provided by Edward Snowden illustrate the scale of co-operation between Silicon Valley and the intelligence agencies over the last three years. They also shed new light on the workings of the top-secret Prism program, which was disclosed by the Guardian and the Washington Post last month.

The documents show that:

Microsoft helped the NSA to circumvent its encryption to address concerns that the agency would be unable to intercept web chats on the new Outlook.com portal;

The agency already had pre-encryption stage access to email on Outlook.com, including Hotmail;

The company worked with the FBI this year to allow the NSA easier access via Prism to its cloud storage service SkyDrive, which now has more than 250 million users worldwide;

Microsoft also worked with the FBI's Data Intercept Unit to "understand" potential issues with a feature in Outlook.com that allows users to create email aliases;

In July last year, nine months after Microsoft bought Skype, the NSA boasted that a new capability had tripled the amount of Skype video calls being collected through Prism;

Material collected through Prism is routinely shared with the FBI and CIA, with one NSA document describing the program as a "team sport".

The latest NSA revelations further expose the tensions between Silicon Valley and the Obama administration. All the major tech firms are lobbying the government to allow them to disclose more fully the extent and nature of their co-operation with the NSA to meet their customers' privacy concerns. Privately, tech executives are at pains to distance themselves from claims of collaboration and teamwork given by the NSA documents, and insist the process is driven by legal compulsion.

In a statement, Microsoft said: "When we upgrade or update products we aren't absolved from the need to comply with existing or future lawful demands." The company reiterated its argument that it provides customer data "only in response to government demands and we only ever comply with orders for requests about specific accounts or identifiers".

In June, the Guardian revealed that the NSA claimed to have "direct access" through the Prism program to the systems of many major internet companies, including Microsoft, Skype, Apple, Google, Facebook and Yahoo.

Blanket orders from the secret surveillance court allow these communications to be collected without an individual warrant if the NSA operative has a 51% belief that the target is not a US citizen and is not on US soil at the time. Targeting US citizens does require an individual warrant, but the NSA is able to collect Americans' communications without a warrant if the target is a foreign national located overseas.

Since Prism's existence became public, Microsoft and the other companies listed on the NSA documents as providers have denied all knowledge of the program and insisted that the intelligence agencies do not have back doors into their system

Uh, Thunderbird?

[DoctorBonzo]

'nuff said.

Re:Uh, Thunderbird?

[Hasaf]

I am using Thunderbird and I see no compelling reason to change.

Re: Uh, Thunderbird?

[Brockmire]

Because Thunderbird sucks.

Re: Uh, Thunderbird?

[Hasaf]

Unfortunately, most of the alternatives are even worse.

Re: Uh, Thunderbird?

[DoctorBonzo]

got any specific complaints?

i use it for aol, gmail, & outlook & it suits me fine . . .

Re:Microsoft Has An Odd Obsession With The Cloud..

[Rick Schumann]

It's simple, really: Miscreant-o-soft understands that the average computer user is not very smart, and couldn't really understand the issues at hand even if you sat them down and spent as much time as your cared to explaining it to them. However, since Miscreant-o-soft is giving them something (ostensibly) worth hundreds of dollars for FREE (i.e., Windows 10), and since Miscreant-o-soft is telling them it's SAFER and MORE SECURE, the average sheep with a computer is going to believe them, not weird geeky computer nerds on the Internets. Really, they don't care so long as they can play their games, watch YouTube, and get their email. So if friendly, security-conscious Microsoft is telling them "hey, we'll do this thing for you for FREE, too, just because we like you so much!", the sheep will likely believe that, too, and give away their Google mail as well as everything else they're giving away.

Re:Microsoft Has An Odd Obsession With The Cloud..

[Anonymous Coward]

Diarrhea - the post.

Re:Microsoft Has An Odd Obsession With The Cloud..

[rtb61]

I don't think Windows as an OS is just dying, I think in their arrogant stupidity M$ are killing it. They seem to have this whole destructive management circle jerk going on, where the customers are stupid, gullible idiots who will accept any exploitation what so ever and who are not entitled to any privacy what so ever and ever worse, all small and medium businesses should have their proprietary secrets opened up to M$ for exploitation.

Think how badly M$ has performed, they had a massive lead over Google with MSN and they blew by being arrogant arse holes with whole page ads and web searches for the first bunch of pages being irrelevant ads. The turned a desktop GUI into a mobile phone GUI to try to force sales of mobile phones. Some of the OSs they released were bug ridden and awful, didn't care. Customers have complained again and again about invasions of privacy and M$ doesn't give care, just forcing it in deeper and deeper and deeper.

It's like they have gone full blown stupid, instead of making smart changes, they are stuck in a management circle jerk, doomed to follow the Lotus eaters to oblivion.

I don't mess with Microsoft and Email.

[Trax3001BBS]

I use Autoruns to disable Microsoft Windows mail then bring a shortcut to the desktop for Forte Agent (from a different drive).
I've done this since at least NT/Win98, I've never lost any mail, and already setup. And I still have a Hotmail.com account.

For all those who think Edge is a better browser

[Tony Isaac]

I've been using Outlook at work for years. The experience is hardly a selling point to lure me away from GMail! I so wish my company would switch to GMail for Business, it's so much easier and more intuitive to use. Not to mention, Outlook stinks at search.

For all those who think Edge is the best browser, you should probably sign up for this new Microsoft GMail service. For the rest of us, not so much.

Re: Microsoft Has An Odd Obsession With The Cloud.

[Brockmire]

They didn't for BB10 and it had more market share at the time. BlackBerry would have paid for Google to put their application on BB10.

Re:Microsoft Has An Odd Obsession With The Cloud..

[iampiti]

I'd prefer they'd improve the web app. That way it can be used anywhere and doesn't depend on Google porting their apps to your favourite OS

Re:Microsoft Has An Odd Obsession With The Cloud..

[Billly Gates]

I haven't seen any full blown desktop apps yet