6 ms·

While the technology is very cool, this pushes me that much closer to a "dumber" email service. It's always a conflict for me as I love shiny new things, but I'

While the technology is very cool, this pushes me that much closer to a "dumber" email service. It's always a conflict for me as I love shiny new things, but I'd rather we let AI loose on someone else's email, especially when the AI's revenue stream is advertising (a business predicated on knowing as much as possible about your audience).

bobmichael 11y ago
I don't think I understand your reasoning. You're already tolerating an AI processing your email to produce the ads, so assuming that, why does a cool new feature push you closer towards a "dumber" service?
- dikaiosune 11y ago
  Because I'm lazy and switching would be time consuming. Each new privacy-related "innovation" motivates me a little more. You're right that the practical effect of this new service is negligible on a technical level, but it still reminds me that I should find an alternative I find acceptable.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    So basically, because pretty much every useful data-and-automation-based thing - especially on the social, not individual level - can be considered an erosion of privacy, should we just stop progress? That's the sentiment I feel radiating from yours and others' complaints about privacy here.
    - dikaiosune 11y ago
      Certainly not. I quite enjoy the features I get from having my data run through a lot of systems. However, you don't need to be a Luddite to recognize that sometimes some users of data (like sometimes Google) aren't as responsible or considerate of the privacy implications of their actions as they should be. When their primary financial incentive is user engagement to sell ads, I have a hard time believing that the latter doesn't influence the use of my data as much as the former. I still use a variety of Google products all the time, but when they're training machines to understand the meaning of my emails, I begin to think perhaps that's beyond my comfort zone. I think that machine learning has tremendous things to offer society, but I'm not sure I'm super excited about a company using smartish machines to pull meaning and context from my emails so that we can save some percentage of users 10 seconds when they reply to something. I get that in most cases this isn't ever going to have a practical effect, but I would be a lot more comfortable if our society's data stewards were less blase about that side of things.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        I see your point better now, thanks for clarifying. > When their primary financial incentive is user engagement to sell ads, I have a hard time believing that the latter doesn't influence the use of my data as much as the former. I don't agree with it in case of Google. I may be mistaken, but my impression was that they sort of separate their products into two groups - the ad-related are earning the money, and then the money is spent on funding something else (like GMail), with little direct connection between the two groups. That is, products like GMail certainly help Google earn more money on ads, but are not themselves optimized for ad-related purposes. > I think that machine learning has tremendous things to offer society, but I'm not sure I'm super excited about a company using smartish machines to pull meaning and context from my emails so that we can save some percentage of users 10 seconds when they reply to something. I think you're seriously underestimating the potential for productivity gains here. Mobile use case is perfect for replying to e-mails, but mobile experience totally sucks. This service, if it works as advertised, will be probably saving not 10 seconds, but something like one minute per e-mail. That + friction reduction have enabling properties that make people do things they didn't before (e.g. I often don't reply to e-mails on a phone only because it's too slow, opting to browse Facebook instead), and aggregated that can help liberate a lot of time.
    - danieldk 11y ago
      should we just stop progress? I would love if companies would explore on-device processing more. While it might not work in this case, it should work fine for e.g. data extraction for flight tracking, hotel bookings, package tracking, etc.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        Oh yes, so much this. The cloud business model thing leads to not just privacy-eroding solutions, but to implementations that are absolutely ridiculous from the engineering point of view, and exist only because the company thought it's a good way to extracting rent from the user. See, for instance, most of the work done around IoT, home automation and by hardware startups.
- quadrangle 11y ago
  how do you know the poster isn't blocking the ads? (or for that matter using a separate client?) and anyway, ads are stupid awful crap, so who cares if they get that part right? It's nothing like actual email messages.
- jonknee 11y ago
  More than just the ads (which you may not have if you're on a business account), you're also taking advantage of AI processing for the spam filter.
zitterbewegung 11y ago
You can make gmail "dumber" by using the IMAP api and then encrypt your email? Unless you use google apps for work since you aren't paying for the service you are the product.
- sunnyps 11y ago
  Stop with this "you're the product" nonsense. Please.
  - daveguy 11y ago
    Stop making the user the product. Please.
    - Karunamon 11y ago
      He's not wrong and you are. You are not "the product", and saying such is so divorced from the truth to be nothing more than a lie at this point. "You" are not being sold, access to you is. Look at some ads, get some great web services. Seems a fair tradeoff.
      - dikaiosune 11y ago
        I'm not entirely sure this is a semantic argument worth wading into, but I think there's a wrinkle worth addressing in the "you're the product" mentality. In order for Google to effectively serve you ads (and convince advertisers it's worth their prices), they accumulate vast amounts of information about their users. From some perspective one's identity is largely based on or equivalent to one's purchases, tastes, interests, friendships, knowledge, etc. Advertisers (like Google) try to know as many of these as possible about everyone they can, and I can see how for many people this is equivalent to Google selling "you" -- they have a digital representation of your identity, and their ability to comprehend it is the real service that sits behind the advertising.
        Karunamon 11y ago
ljk 11y ago
any "dumber" email service suggestion?
- dikaiosune 11y ago
  I've looked previously, and usually thought I would get some bare metal at a trusted colo and run my own server. However this has a variety of issues, including but not limited to getting the big email services (especially gmail, ironically) to trust your server as a non-spam gateway. Part of the problem here is that running a quality email service isn't cheap, and I'm not sure how much I'd have to trust a provider for it to be worth ditching google as my provider. In the past, the "easiest" answer to this in the abstract was for me to just do it myself, but I haven't had time and I'm concerned it would make it difficult for others to communicate with me.
  - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
    Running self-hosted mail is getting a lot harder because spam engines are much more hostile to it. Also, most well-known mail clients for self-hosters are very dated. There's a few new ones on the way, like Mailpile, but we aren't there yet.
claar 11y ago
Are you also willing to stop emailing others that use Gmail?
- dikaiosune 11y ago
  Probably not. I don't have a very absolutist perspective on these privacy issues, but I do think that I should probably be taking my advertising business elsewhere (if anywhere at all), and that I should probably find a way to limit the amount of my data they gobble up. I'm lazy and I would prefer something that works to something which keeps all my information safe, which is why I'm still using gmail even though I'm creeped out.
- ocdtrekkie 11y ago
  Arguably, the easiest way to contend with this would be to send Gmail users a private link with the text of your communication. Or encrypting the text.
Sevzinn 11y ago
Did Google decide not to invite you over to interview in person? Perhaps you feel bad because of that.
anemic 11y ago
advertising becomes scary when this service tries to suggest responses like "Yes, let's have a meeting tomorrow and why not enjoy a refreshing glass of ice-cold Dr.Pepper together!". But if not, I'm not that worried about the ad revenue aspect.
- kobayashi 11y ago
  Please drink a verification can.
smtddr 11y ago
Just fyi, https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html ...still works! I bet there are some people on HN who never saw the original Gmail.
- dikaiosune 11y ago
  Very cool, and that definitely takes me back to eagerly pursuing/waiting out my beta invite. Unfortunately I would guess that even with a retro interface all of one's email data is still subject to content trawling, but that's a nifty discovery nonetheless.
- Houshalter 11y ago
  Wow that look so much nicer than the real gmail. And it loads 10x faster too.

bobmichael 11y ago

I don't think I understand your reasoning. You're already tolerating an AI processing your email to produce the ads, so assuming that, why does a cool new feature push you closer towards a "dumber" service?

dikaiosune 11y ago
Because I'm lazy and switching would be time consuming. Each new privacy-related "innovation" motivates me a little more. You're right that the practical effect of this new service is negligible on a technical level, but it still reminds me that I should find an alternative I find acceptable.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  So basically, because pretty much every useful data-and-automation-based thing - especially on the social, not individual level - can be considered an erosion of privacy, should we just stop progress? That's the sentiment I feel radiating from yours and others' complaints about privacy here.
  - dikaiosune 11y ago
    Certainly not. I quite enjoy the features I get from having my data run through a lot of systems. However, you don't need to be a Luddite to recognize that sometimes some users of data (like sometimes Google) aren't as responsible or considerate of the privacy implications of their actions as they should be. When their primary financial incentive is user engagement to sell ads, I have a hard time believing that the latter doesn't influence the use of my data as much as the former. I still use a variety of Google products all the time, but when they're training machines to understand the meaning of my emails, I begin to think perhaps that's beyond my comfort zone. I think that machine learning has tremendous things to offer society, but I'm not sure I'm super excited about a company using smartish machines to pull meaning and context from my emails so that we can save some percentage of users 10 seconds when they reply to something. I get that in most cases this isn't ever going to have a practical effect, but I would be a lot more comfortable if our society's data stewards were less blase about that side of things.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      I see your point better now, thanks for clarifying. > When their primary financial incentive is user engagement to sell ads, I have a hard time believing that the latter doesn't influence the use of my data as much as the former. I don't agree with it in case of Google. I may be mistaken, but my impression was that they sort of separate their products into two groups - the ad-related are earning the money, and then the money is spent on funding something else (like GMail), with little direct connection between the two groups. That is, products like GMail certainly help Google earn more money on ads, but are not themselves optimized for ad-related purposes. > I think that machine learning has tremendous things to offer society, but I'm not sure I'm super excited about a company using smartish machines to pull meaning and context from my emails so that we can save some percentage of users 10 seconds when they reply to something. I think you're seriously underestimating the potential for productivity gains here. Mobile use case is perfect for replying to e-mails, but mobile experience totally sucks. This service, if it works as advertised, will be probably saving not 10 seconds, but something like one minute per e-mail. That + friction reduction have enabling properties that make people do things they didn't before (e.g. I often don't reply to e-mails on a phone only because it's too slow, opting to browse Facebook instead), and aggregated that can help liberate a lot of time.
  - danieldk 11y ago
    should we just stop progress? I would love if companies would explore on-device processing more. While it might not work in this case, it should work fine for e.g. data extraction for flight tracking, hotel bookings, package tracking, etc.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      Oh yes, so much this. The cloud business model thing leads to not just privacy-eroding solutions, but to implementations that are absolutely ridiculous from the engineering point of view, and exist only because the company thought it's a good way to extracting rent from the user. See, for instance, most of the work done around IoT, home automation and by hardware startups.
quadrangle 11y ago
how do you know the poster isn't blocking the ads? (or for that matter using a separate client?) and anyway, ads are stupid awful crap, so who cares if they get that part right? It's nothing like actual email messages.
jonknee 11y ago
More than just the ads (which you may not have if you're on a business account), you're also taking advantage of AI processing for the spam filter.

zitterbewegung 11y ago

You can make gmail "dumber" by using the IMAP api and then encrypt your email? Unless you use google apps for work since you aren't paying for the service you are the product.

sunnyps 11y ago
Stop with this "you're the product" nonsense. Please.
- daveguy 11y ago
  Stop making the user the product. Please.
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    He's not wrong and you are. You are not "the product", and saying such is so divorced from the truth to be nothing more than a lie at this point. "You" are not being sold, access to you is. Look at some ads, get some great web services. Seems a fair tradeoff.
    - dikaiosune 11y ago
      I'm not entirely sure this is a semantic argument worth wading into, but I think there's a wrinkle worth addressing in the "you're the product" mentality. In order for Google to effectively serve you ads (and convince advertisers it's worth their prices), they accumulate vast amounts of information about their users. From some perspective one's identity is largely based on or equivalent to one's purchases, tastes, interests, friendships, knowledge, etc. Advertisers (like Google) try to know as many of these as possible about everyone they can, and I can see how for many people this is equivalent to Google selling "you" -- they have a digital representation of your identity, and their ability to comprehend it is the real service that sits behind the advertising.
      - Karunamon 11y ago

ljk 11y ago

any "dumber" email service suggestion?

dikaiosune 11y ago
I've looked previously, and usually thought I would get some bare metal at a trusted colo and run my own server. However this has a variety of issues, including but not limited to getting the big email services (especially gmail, ironically) to trust your server as a non-spam gateway. Part of the problem here is that running a quality email service isn't cheap, and I'm not sure how much I'd have to trust a provider for it to be worth ditching google as my provider. In the past, the "easiest" answer to this in the abstract was for me to just do it myself, but I haven't had time and I'm concerned it would make it difficult for others to communicate with me.
- ocdtrekkie 11y ago
  Running self-hosted mail is getting a lot harder because spam engines are much more hostile to it. Also, most well-known mail clients for self-hosters are very dated. There's a few new ones on the way, like Mailpile, but we aren't there yet.

claar 11y ago

Are you also willing to stop emailing others that use Gmail?

dikaiosune 11y ago
Probably not. I don't have a very absolutist perspective on these privacy issues, but I do think that I should probably be taking my advertising business elsewhere (if anywhere at all), and that I should probably find a way to limit the amount of my data they gobble up. I'm lazy and I would prefer something that works to something which keeps all my information safe, which is why I'm still using gmail even though I'm creeped out.
ocdtrekkie 11y ago
Arguably, the easiest way to contend with this would be to send Gmail users a private link with the text of your communication. Or encrypting the text.

Sevzinn 11y ago

Did Google decide not to invite you over to interview in person? Perhaps you feel bad because of that.

anemic 11y ago

advertising becomes scary when this service tries to suggest responses like "Yes, let's have a meeting tomorrow and why not enjoy a refreshing glass of ice-cold Dr.Pepper together!". But if not, I'm not that worried about the ad revenue aspect.

kobayashi 11y ago
Please drink a verification can.

smtddr 11y ago

Just fyi, https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html ...still works! I bet there are some people on HN who never saw the original Gmail.

dikaiosune 11y ago
Very cool, and that definitely takes me back to eagerly pursuing/waiting out my beta invite. Unfortunately I would guess that even with a retro interface all of one's email data is still subject to content trawling, but that's a nifty discovery nonetheless.
Houshalter 11y ago
Wow that look so much nicer than the real gmail. And it loads 10x faster too.