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And still, the HN crowd uses Gmail a lot. Here's the most technical crowd on the planet and people are obsessed with Gmail as if it was impossible to get email

by WA 11y ago

And still, the HN crowd uses Gmail a lot. Here's the most technical crowd on the planet and people are obsessed with Gmail as if it was impossible to get email to work by any other means. Furthermore, I will never understand why people would use Gmail, if there's IMAP and hundreds of email clients to choose from. Same is true for Google Reader, that apparently caused a lot of buzz when it went away. Never understood this. The only Google product I use is Google Maps, and Google Search occasionally. Replaced the latter with DuckDuckGo mostly and works well most of the time.

leni536 11y ago
I only use Google maps for public transport route planning, otherwise I use openstreetmap. And osmand on Android is freaking awesome.
greghill 11y ago
Is the search as good or as fast at gmail on these IMAP clients? I used the mail app for iPhone for a while and it sure isn't.
- WA 11y ago
  I use Mail on OS X and it is good enough for my purpose. Could certainly be a bit more sophisticated, but most of the time, it works. I like to have a real email client for my mails and not use a web app. There might be dedicated search engines for emails though, if search is very important. See, if you use search a lot and Google has the superior product for your use case, that's totally fine. But I guess most people use Gmail out of habit and not because it is truly superior to other email clients.
  - Albright 11y ago
    I'm with you here - I also find OS X's Mail plenty "good enough," including for search. And it works great for connecting to Google Mail accounts via IMAP…
- toothbrush 11y ago
  Searching is a solved problem if you use OfflineIMAP to mirror your mail store locally, then run mu or notmuch on top of it. Honestly, it's faster for me to search my local mail store than using some web interface. Plus, i can do it in the train when i have no internet connection. I happily pay a few euros a month for an email server which provides me with IMAP.
Tepix 11y ago
Agreed. Even if Gmail is superior in some regards (I don't know - is it? There must be a reason so many people use it), as a tech savvy person I consider it a matter of pride (and privacy of course) to run my own mailserver with project like Sovereign https://github.com/sovereign/sovereign https://github.com/sovereign/sovereign
- Amanjeev 11y ago
  I have been thinking of doing this for a while. Thanks for sharing https://github.com/sovereign/sovereign https://github.com/sovereign/sovereign. Is that all one needs (whatever if mentioned on the README)?
- elwell 11y ago
  I would be worried about getting marked as a spam server.
  - johnmaguire2013 11y ago
    And this is exactly the reason I use Gmail.
  - ireflect 11y ago
    This is a common belief but it hasn't been an issue in my experience of running my email server (with Sovereign) for the last two years. I run about a dozen email addresses over a handful of domains for myself and some friends and colleagues. Sovereign includes instructions/configuration to run an upstanding email server citizen, including SPL, TKIP, MTA encryption, etc. Remote mail servers seem to respect it at least as much as gmail. It also runs a rbl-check script once a day to notify you if your IP ends up on a blacklist. In two years running on both DigitalOcean, I've had no issues. Even gmail routinely gets added to RBLs from time to time.
krzyk 11y ago
I would gladly use email client with IMAP server but desktop mail clients are really still in the 90ties. Do you have a good to alternative Gmail/Inbox which has Inbox like archiving, and easy cleanup of the ... inbox, hiding emails for some period of time, pinning emails? As for the hosting of emails (assuming I don't want to have 10GB dedicated to emails on my machine), do you have anything that gives me 10GB of mail and has the ease of use of Inbox on all the devices (desktop and mobile)?
moe 11y ago
And still, the HN crowd uses Gmail a lot. Ditching GMail changes nothing about your privacy situation. An E-Mail is a postcard. Sending a postcard via DHL instead of USPS doesn't make it any more confidential, even if you happen to be the owner of DHL.
- realityking 11y ago
  You're not wrong, but you're not right either. Disregarding the (slow) advancements of E-Mail encryption (DANE), and the fact that's desireable that no one company has your data. The big point is that it's fair to assume that everybody has access to your mails while in transit, but using gmail Google has access to all your mails at rest.
  - moe 11y ago
    There is no point worrying about your e-mail "at rest" when everyone has already seen it in transit.
- rsync 11y ago
  "Ditching GMail changes nothing about your privacy situation." Actually, there is quite a bit to be gained by running your own mail server - especially in relation to other people on your mail server. For instance, everyone at rsync.net logs into (al)pine over SSH. So yes, if you email rsync.net and we converse, that is like the postcard - every hop it goes through can see it. But no piece of internal rsync.net email has ever traversed a network of any kind. Internal rsync.net emails are just local copy operations from one mailspool to another. The same could be true of your company ... or your family.
sdrothrock 11y ago
> The only Google product I use is Google Maps I tried Bing Maps the other day and was surprised how much more usable it is. It loads faster, moves faster, and actually has a nicer interface because it uses semitransparent text to show names of areas.

by WA 11y ago

leni536 11y ago

I only use Google maps for public transport route planning, otherwise I use openstreetmap. And osmand on Android is freaking awesome.

greghill 11y ago

Is the search as good or as fast at gmail on these IMAP clients? I used the mail app for iPhone for a while and it sure isn't.

WA 11y ago
I use Mail on OS X and it is good enough for my purpose. Could certainly be a bit more sophisticated, but most of the time, it works. I like to have a real email client for my mails and not use a web app. There might be dedicated search engines for emails though, if search is very important. See, if you use search a lot and Google has the superior product for your use case, that's totally fine. But I guess most people use Gmail out of habit and not because it is truly superior to other email clients.
- Albright 11y ago
  I'm with you here - I also find OS X's Mail plenty "good enough," including for search. And it works great for connecting to Google Mail accounts via IMAP…
toothbrush 11y ago
Searching is a solved problem if you use OfflineIMAP to mirror your mail store locally, then run mu or notmuch on top of it. Honestly, it's faster for me to search my local mail store than using some web interface. Plus, i can do it in the train when i have no internet connection. I happily pay a few euros a month for an email server which provides me with IMAP.

Tepix 11y ago

Agreed. Even if Gmail is superior in some regards (I don't know - is it? There must be a reason so many people use it), as a tech savvy person I consider it a matter of pride (and privacy of course) to run my own mailserver with project like Sovereign https://github.com/sovereign/sovereign https://github.com/sovereign/sovereign

Amanjeev 11y ago
I have been thinking of doing this for a while. Thanks for sharing https://github.com/sovereign/sovereign https://github.com/sovereign/sovereign. Is that all one needs (whatever if mentioned on the README)?
elwell 11y ago
I would be worried about getting marked as a spam server.
- johnmaguire2013 11y ago
  And this is exactly the reason I use Gmail.
- ireflect 11y ago
  This is a common belief but it hasn't been an issue in my experience of running my email server (with Sovereign) for the last two years. I run about a dozen email addresses over a handful of domains for myself and some friends and colleagues. Sovereign includes instructions/configuration to run an upstanding email server citizen, including SPL, TKIP, MTA encryption, etc. Remote mail servers seem to respect it at least as much as gmail. It also runs a rbl-check script once a day to notify you if your IP ends up on a blacklist. In two years running on both DigitalOcean, I've had no issues. Even gmail routinely gets added to RBLs from time to time.

krzyk 11y ago

I would gladly use email client with IMAP server but desktop mail clients are really still in the 90ties. Do you have a good to alternative Gmail/Inbox which has Inbox like archiving, and easy cleanup of the ... inbox, hiding emails for some period of time, pinning emails? As for the hosting of emails (assuming I don't want to have 10GB dedicated to emails on my machine), do you have anything that gives me 10GB of mail and has the ease of use of Inbox on all the devices (desktop and mobile)?

moe 11y ago

And still, the HN crowd uses Gmail a lot. Ditching GMail changes nothing about your privacy situation. An E-Mail is a postcard. Sending a postcard via DHL instead of USPS doesn't make it any more confidential, even if you happen to be the owner of DHL.

realityking 11y ago
You're not wrong, but you're not right either. Disregarding the (slow) advancements of E-Mail encryption (DANE), and the fact that's desireable that no one company has your data. The big point is that it's fair to assume that everybody has access to your mails while in transit, but using gmail Google has access to all your mails at rest.
- moe 11y ago
  There is no point worrying about your e-mail "at rest" when everyone has already seen it in transit.
rsync 11y ago
"Ditching GMail changes nothing about your privacy situation." Actually, there is quite a bit to be gained by running your own mail server - especially in relation to other people on your mail server. For instance, everyone at rsync.net logs into (al)pine over SSH. So yes, if you email rsync.net and we converse, that is like the postcard - every hop it goes through can see it. But no piece of internal rsync.net email has ever traversed a network of any kind. Internal rsync.net emails are just local copy operations from one mailspool to another. The same could be true of your company ... or your family.

sdrothrock 11y ago

> The only Google product I use is Google Maps I tried Bing Maps the other day and was surprised how much more usable it is. It loads faster, moves faster, and actually has a nicer interface because it uses semitransparent text to show names of areas.