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I'll get down voted for saying this, but the HN crowd's hypocrisy is baffling. 1. Gmail is a channel that Google has under monetized for a decade. This is an o

I'll get down voted for saying this, but the HN crowd's hypocrisy is baffling. 1. Gmail is a channel that Google has under monetized for a decade. This is an opportunity for them to extract value from the said channel. If you're allergic to Google offering free services that use your data for advertising, go pay for email. Google isn't a charity and you aren't entitled to a Gmail of your choosing. 2. Apple is a prime example of successfully monetizing a "channel". They sell you hardware that apparently you own, but cannot run apps that haven't received Apple's blessing. Even their fucking charging port is proprietary (lighting) and to build an accessory compliant with iPhones, one has to pay an Apple tax of $7/unit that can easily be avoided with open standards such as uUSB. Never in the history of computing has your hardware required the manufacturer's blessing to run apps. Why do I mention this? Because an overwhelming majority of those foaming at the mouth at AMP are doing so on their iPhones and iPads - I hope the irony isn't lost on you folks. 3. If you find Apple's practices more abhorrent than AMP and consistently oppose both - congratulations, you're a minority whose reasoning isn't clouded by brand jingoism 4. If you called bullshit on Google because a) mobile pages can be fast(er) even without AMP and b) JavaScript was restricted within email for security, then your opposition to this proposal is the most accurate. Cheers

puszczyk 9y ago
First rule of comments on HN, you don’t talk about downvotes.
StavrosK 9y ago
I'd just like to point out here that Fastmail is a great alternative to Gmail, one I like much better and regret not switching to it sooner. If you have your own domain, migration is as easy as importing your email and changing a few MX records, and it costs $3/mo for the largish package if you prepay.
- madeofpalk 9y ago
  The thing that's missing here is the email _client_ story. I really like Google's Inbox and there's no amount of money I can pay anyone else for a similar experience.
  - cdubzzz 9y ago
    Honest question: do you think you really like it or are you really used to it? When Google made the move to Inbox, I switched because I wanted to be using their newest interface. Over time I came to absolutely hate it and that drove me away from Gmail. My wife still uses it so I occasionally find myself in the Inbox app on our tablet. Just a few days ago, actually, I read something in her inbox and for the life of me I could not figure out to mark it as unread from the inbox list. Maybe I was just missing something obvious, but it was very frustrating to not have such a simple action easily available.
    - dagurp 9y ago
      I'm someone who definitely dislikes it but I'm too used to it. The automatic categorization is so useful that I feel like I can't be without it.
    - adambyrtek 9y ago
      I really like how Inbox encourages getting to "inbox zero" (and maintaining it). It makes it very easy to archive things, snoozing emails for later is great, and reminders allow to add some short todos to the inbox where they are less likely to be missed.
    - dm319 9y ago
      I find it surprising that my search seems more comprehensive and faster in mutt than by the king-of-search's very own.
      - ams6110 9y ago
        Yeah, I use notmuch in emacs for my mail, and searching is way better than in gmail. Gmail's interface is very limiting, actually. It's pretty good for a web app, and probably better than Outlook/Exchange, but when the competition is so poor it's easy to seem good.
    - corobo 9y ago
      > do you think you really like it or are you really used to it? Chiming in with a "both" - I tried switching away from Inbox for a bit but I love me them bundles. I don't want to switch between a bunch of folders, I just want mail in those folders to appear grouped in my inbox Edit: and Snooze. I don't think I'll ever like using a client that can't snooze an email anymore
B-Con 9y ago
> 1. Gmail is a channel that Google has under monetized for a decade. This is an opportunity for them to extract value from the said channel. If you're allergic to Google offering free services that use your data for advertising, go pay for email. Google isn't a charity and you aren't entitled to a Gmail of your choosing. This is part of the reason for why I've always used a vanity domain for e-mail that uses Gmail as a backend. I've used Gmail since beta invites were scarse, but there are a variety of reasons for why I won't trust any given e-mail provider permanently. The fact that most of them are free is just one, albeit an important one.
Vinnl 9y ago
You're making a lot of assumptions about your readers here, and you're doing so in a style that's not going to convince those for whom those assumptions hold...
adamsvystun 9y ago
> 1. Gmail is a channel that Google has under monetized for a decade. I disagree. Gmail brought Google millions of customers. It's all about the ecosystem that they are building, which helps them retain customers. If you use Gmail, than there is higher chance that you will use Google Drive than competition. Another example of this is Google Keep. There is no reason for them to have free notes app, other than making you use more Google products.
- Daycrawler 9y ago
  Gaining customers doesn't mean monetizing, and it's particularly relevant to point out that a channel is under monetized specifically when this channel has a lot of users.
  - vanderZwan 9y ago
    I highly doubt that mandatory monetisation of every channel is a sound economic strategy. EDIT: While not intentional, that was a bit flippant without extra arguments, my apologies. Also, this is more of a general "abstract" comment; Google operates in a real-world, concrete business context that it has to adapt to, and I am not burdened with knowing the details of that. Google (the search engine), Gmail, and really almost everything in Google's ecosystem are essentially freemium apps since before the words "freemium" and "app" were coined, let alone combined. You can use Google for free, but if you're trying to sell something you can use it's advertising. You can use Gmail, and other the services the implicit Google account it gives, for free, but for the niche use cases there are things like Gmail business, or extra disk space on Google Drive once you run out of space to upload those big photos and videos from your phone, and so on. What Google has expertly done is position itself as a public utility of the internet, despite being a private company. Whatever they are planning to do, I think that if they mess with that too much they risk a lot. That is what I believe adamsvystun's point was: compared to most other monetisation options, ensuring that they keep this "public utility" position in the public eye is the most lucrative form of long-term monetisation for Google. EDIT2: It gets worse the more I think about this: messing with email is especially risky, because email itself is tied very strongly to one's internet identity. It is the passport of the web. Think of all the "sign up/log in with" options: email is always the fallback option. So not messing that up is incredibly important to Google.
wklauss 9y ago
> I'll get down voted for saying this No, you'll get down voted for the way you are saying it. There's a difference, and it's an important one. Cheers
- Kesty 9y ago
  It's not wrong that AMP is a terrible thing in a pretty package. While the idea of having standards for mobile and slow connection might be a noble one, forcing everyone into it by using mobile search results as ransom is an evil practice. Especially since it's a google run, if it was set up as a non profit foundation with people on the board from different major players as a collaborative project then, yes It might be different.
  - wklauss 9y ago
    And I don't disagree with that. I think the view that drives AMP is misguided and self-serving for Google. I do, however, like to come to HN because it tends to be a very civil space in which to share opinions, not a vehicle for attention seekers to spout whatever false equivalences their brain just come up with. As far as I'm concerned everyone here is entitled to their opinion and I have never seen anyone's voice silenced in this forum. But when you start a message with "I know I'm going to get down voted but..." you are hedging on the value of your own opinion. You know it's unpopular but at the same time you are so concerned with the public validation of it that need to present yourself as a victim and the rest of us as some kind of oppressors.
    - bryanrasmussen 9y ago
      Saying something unpopular in most cases shouldn't get you downvoted, but often "I know I'm going to get down voted but..." also is a lead in to complaints of hypocrisy. It reminds me of a friend that used to start off particularly rude statements by saying "I don't want to be rude but..."
      - vog 9y ago
        > It reminds me of a friend that used to start off particularly rude statements by saying "I don't want to be rude but..." I don't see the contradiction here. I interpret these kind of phrases as: "I don't like to be rude, and normally I'm not, but in this case I need to make an exception." Frankly, not everybody actually meant to say that, but this interpretation still helps to deal with those situations in a civil, non-escalating way.
ekianjo 9y ago
> I'll get down voted for saying this, but the HN crowd's hypocrisy is baffling. I did not know we were a uniform, homogeneous crowd...
tarsinge 9y ago
Nice try but there is no logic between your points 1 and 2 to come to the third. Apple sells hardware and is not a monopoly, so if their customers are happy with their choice then good for them. On the other hand Google is a monopoly, so a lot of people are not ok with them abusing their position to hijack the web (that they already “own”) and email. Edit: typo
- RobertRoberts 9y ago
  Their search products are a monopoly, their email is not. I provide paid email services for my clients, they can use Gmail if they want, or not. But for SEO, it's Google all the way down...
  - r3bl 9y ago
    There's nothing stopping end users from using non-Google search engine. Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo... they're all viable products that you can use to accomplish 90ish% of what Google could find, and maybe even more now that Google strips historical data (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16153840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16153840, from a month ago). Since you're mentioning SEO, I just checked and 15.8% of searches for my website came from non-Google search engines in the last month (in my case, Yandex and DDG are the most popular ones). Bing is also taking a huge chunk of the traffic thanks to Windows 10 using it in the start menu, whether you like it or not. And while one example isn't viable enough to make general statements, it's clear that alternatives do exist and are used extensively. It's a product that's superior when compared to its competitors. It's not a monopoly though.
    - matt4077 9y ago
      Google's market is advertising. If you want to advertise in search, you do not have the freedom to avoid Google and just spend all your money with Bing.
    - akvadrako 9y ago
      Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo are not a list of competitors. Yahoo is based on Bing & Google¹. DDG uses a lot of sources, but I believe the bulk of results come from Yahoo and Bing. I agree there are options, but they are Bing and Yandex. The others are just mashups. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search
baxtr 9y ago
This comment is quite judgmental. I’m wondering how it’s the top comment
mrtksn 9y ago
Is there a way to keep my.name@gmail.com but moving to another provider? I'm quite a bit uneasy with Google lately but it's not feasible for me to move to another e-mail provider because my user account on many other websites is tied to my Gmail account and not all websites support e-mail changing. At this point, I would argue that Gmail reached a public infrastructure status and it's not acceptable of Google to take actions without public consent. It is perfectly acceptable if Google decides to charge for de services as it will happen with any public infrastructure that has running costs but it's not acceptable for Google to force people into situations or engineer their behavior just because provides the service free of charge. For example, in my country, the electricity is generated by private for-profit corporations. However it would not be acceptable if these corporations start changing the voltage of the frequency of the electricity and force people to use devices designed specifically for that electricity network. I don't remember Google forcing me into using Gmail but I also don't remember anyone forcing Google to provide an e-mail service. They did a great job, it revolutionized e-mail but they did it to compete with Microsoft and Yahoo, thus for profit(back in the day everyone was using Hotmail or Yahoo).
- xuki 9y ago
  > Is there a way to keep my.name@gmail.com but moving to another provider? Yes, forward them to your new email, preferably using your own domain name. Start giving out your new email to people, reply to your gmail email from your new email. It takes time but after a few years you can ditch the gmail completely.
  - mrtksn 9y ago
    That is not entirely true though, is it? The forwarded e-mails won't become non-Gmail over time and I will still be dependant on Google to forward the e-mails to me.
    - bluGill 9y ago
      Somewhat. You have to remember to notice and tell everybody who sends to the gmail address to change. Some mail programs make this easy for your friends some do not. Over a few years people update their address book, and eventually almost nothing goes to gmail anymore.
dozzie 9y ago
> If you're allergic to Google offering free services that use your data for advertising, go pay for email. Google isn't a charity and you aren't entitled to a Gmail of your choosing. The problem is that Gmail is the most prominent e-mail provider and at the same time they make it difficult for other e-mail providers to operate, especially small ones. Gmail's spam detection is totally opaque and you can't do much if your mail lands in junk folder. For this single reason Google is no longer in a position when you can cut them some slack for anything related to Gmail.
mnsc 9y ago
> 3. If you find Apple's practices more abhorrent than AMP and consistently oppose both - congratulations, you're a minority whose reasoning isn't clouded by brand jingoism Yay! I won something on the internet today!
xg15 9y ago
> If you're allergic to Google offering free services that use your data for advertising, go pay for email. ... and don't ever write emails to anyone who uses GMail. And tell all your friends who use GMail they shouldn't write emails to you.
- zamalek 9y ago
  I use Fastmail and I can communicate with everyone just fine. I simply had to follow their instructions for setting up my domain. Without that configuration, near every email provider will reject your mail - for good reason.
mcintyre1994 9y ago
I'm sure Google could monetise Gmail more than they have, but I've always thought the real business success of Gmail was sharing its login with google.com and moving Google to a position where many searches are done with a personal identity that they can track anywhere. It seems before Gmail there wouldn't be much reason to actually log in to Google, and having users logged in makes their product better and I'm guessing gets them way better data.
- disgruntledphd2 9y ago
  I think that Youtube was more successful in that space (for regular people at least). I base this entirely on the fact that around the time of G+, the redirect urls for all Google products started going to YT, which I took to mean that YT had a much broader cookie pool. FWIW, I agree entirely with your point, but I think Youtube is the secret sauce that makes it work.
bryanrasmussen 9y ago
I have had a corporate Gmail in the past, and will probably get it again for a new company. is it going to be AMPed?
pedroaraujo 9y ago
I would think that Google uses your Gmail to build your profile and to serve better ads to you. There is nothing more personal than your private email, so having access to your private things is a gold mine for their ad business.
simias 9y ago
I'm not sure I understand your point. You're projecting a lot, there's more to the world of computers than Google and Apple. At any rate you choose to buy into Apple ecosystem. A big email provider changing how email works is not the same thing. For the record I host my own email server and use mutt as my main email client. The only Apple device I own is an old pre-iphone iPod. If Google changes the expectations of email users everywhere then it won't be long until you end up with a broken experience if you don't support AMP email out of the box. Exactly what happened with HTML email: it's not rare these days to receive a multipart/alternative email where the plain text version is simply "see HTML". If AMP mail becomes mainstream it'll be like this but worse. Soon you'll have an HTML page that will tell you to "see AMP content". I don't know if it's completely on purpose but that's by the book "embrace, extend and extinguish" by Google there.
- rident 9y ago
  Falling into the 3-4 crowd myself I also agree with this. Changing emails - perhaps in an automatic fashion - to use AMP is going to do nothing but harm to anyone outside Google. Image inclusion the AMP way [1] alone will ruin HTML email for other services. If Google really wanted to improve emails they would push for full compliance HTML5 support. Because if emails could be built with grid layouts, content could be more semantic, you wouldn't need a plain text version, we'd use less mark up and save on server space and bandwidth. [1] https://ampbyexample.com/components/amp-img/ https://ampbyexample.com/components/amp-img/
  - sli 9y ago
    Amazing. That link is solid white with JS disabled. Why does Google routinely refuse to display text unless JS is enabled? Their developer blog does almost the same thing.
    - Andrex 9y ago
      I think AMP is built on web components, which require JS.
    - pitaj 9y ago
andrepd 9y ago
What a tremendously unconstructive post. >I'll get down voted for saying this Well don't mind if I do. (read the guidelines friend, this kind of crap is specifically frowned upon). > Google isn't a charity and you aren't entitled to a Gmail of your choosing. This is a pet peeve of mine. What does this mean? That you can't force to charge their ways? Yeah, maybe you can't. Doesn't mean you're not allowed to make criticism? If course not. The argument "they're a private company therefore they do what they please" is a facile but invalid way to shut down criticism. >You can't complain about Google because Apple does other unrelated bad stuff. Well and you can't complain about Apple because Monsanto does even worse stuff and I don't see you mentioning then. Classic whataboutism. In other words, if you really wanted to do constructive criticism you would have (1) presented your arguments clearly instead of playing the victim in your very first sentence, and (2) you would have limited yourself to the facts of the matter and not to external stuff (which you only kinda did in your 4th point).
justaguyhere 9y ago
"you're allergic to Google offering free services that use your data for advertising, go pay for email" Yes, email is such an important tool that it would make sense for all of us to pay for it. That said, the big internet companies trained millions of users to expect everything for free on the internet (intentionally or not). Many people seriously think "if it is on the internet, it should be free - I am paying for my internet connection, aren't I?". If you don't believe me, try talking to a non-HN, non-tech-savvy person about it. The fault is on these companies as much as the users. It would take a big change in mindset to make non-advertising models work in consumer world
- josteink 9y ago
  Indeed. If I try to offer non-gmail email options to people, even here on HN, people will go “Oh. But they cost money”, as if that’s something deeply unnatural. Me, I’m happy to pay, because it means that I know I’m a customer, not a product.
  - zerocrates 9y ago
    This probably isn't so true for the pay email services, but I just wanted to note that these two things are by no means mutually exclusive. Plenty of services are more than happy to take your money and "make you the product." It's so easy to do on the web, few can resist.
  - taeric 9y ago
    For me, I confess paying for it has the risk of it being held hostage if I miss payments. Worse, my data can turn into leverage for increases price.
    - josteink 9y ago
      Which is why you should always choose a service which offers full access via standards-based protocols so that you always have the option of owning your own data.
daveheq 9y ago
They already make a profit without AMP in Gmail.
wruza 9y ago
c) without amp sites work with no misbehaving header bar that they cannot fix. Every time I scroll down it pops up. If you have an iphone, you know how safari header behaves and it is convenient/usual. This damned amp plate only allows you to scroll down and close. Note: I’m not talking about “tap clock to scrool to top” here. If you don’t understand these UX details, well, don’t blame then. I’m pretty okay with google substituting ssl/dns/content even for their cash flow, I don’t care until they turn my browser into common-standards web crap. It turns safari into chrome, which I tested on an expensive sony sevice and couldn’t stand any more than two days. Edit: I know that my “don’t care” is not popular among hn users, but it resembles regular non-tech folks thinking — amp is that thing on some sites that annoys you when you scroll and share links. 98% of us really don’t care and notice inconvenience only.
- feikname 9y ago
  AMP header breaks even Chrome UX for me. It somehow ends hiding the address bar and replacing it with the AMP one once I've started to scroll down, and the only solution is to scroll all the way to the top again. I have the address bar set to never hide, which makes this even more annoting.
so33 9y ago
Apple can lock down their devices however they damn please. No matter how much they lock it down, it will not directly affect the majority of people, who use Android. If Apple made everyone use Apple News, only a minority of people will be inconvenienced. (Incidentally, the MFi program has nothing to do with this.) But _publishers_ are pressured to support AMP because Google, the most popular search engine by far, prioritizes AMP results. If they do anything with AMP they can likely have their way. And the same will likely apply for email.
staticelf 9y ago
1. I do pay for email, just recently renewed my 2 year plan on fastmail. But I still do have a gmail account since I used to be heavy Google user until they started to be bad. I am still trying to move away from Google services all along, but it quite hard. The only thing I can't move away from is Youtube because there is no alternatives that has the content. 2. I use an iPhone, but it's only because I believe that Apple respects my privacy more than Google does with Android. I don't really like using an Apple device, because some of the reasons you mentioned. But I value my privacy over those things. 3. I consistenly opposes both and I really hope that I am not in the minority. 4. Yes. Thank you.
jitbit 9y ago
> Gmail is a channel that Google has under monetized for a decade Not because they're all nice and charitable. But because Google sometimes sucks at monetizing things.
mattlondon 9y ago
> If you're allergic to Google offering free services that use your data for advertising Just as a reminder for everyone (and I appreciate that the parent comment does not directly claim that this is the case), Google claims not scan or read your emails in Gmail to show you ads, nor to sell your information to advertisers. Source: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en Just thought I'd point that out before the FUD/tin-foil kicks in too much :)
- smeyer 9y ago
  Also a reminder, Google has lied about this in the past. E.g. http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/3/23/alumni-lawsuit-against-google/ http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/3/23/alumni-lawsuit-a... . That being said, I think it's probably true that they've stopped doing so.
Angostura 9y ago
Your argument boil some down to ‘its Google's platform, they can do with the want with it’. Which is true. It's equally true that people can point out if changes Google make are problematic for users. No hypocrisy required.
scarface74 9y ago
Never in the history of computing has your hardware required the manufacturer's blessing to run apps. Except for every game console that has existed since the early 80s. http://atariage.com/forums/topic/227899-atari-v-coleco-lawsuit/ http://atariage.com/forums/topic/227899-atari-v-coleco-lawsu...
zamalek 9y ago
I have one point of contention: Google is already monetizing Gmail with Gsuite. Gmail is to Gsuite as Fedora is to RHEL. It's a public testbed where they try out new ideas before moving them into LTS. Regardless, many of the disagreements with you seem to have stopped reading at (2). I am completely aware of the irony of my using Google devices while simultaneously criticizing them for their shitty practices. If you were to point that out to me I'd agree with you. Pointing that out to me isn't a personal attack, it's a statement of the facts of human nature: we are all hypocrites. I can honestly see why AMP is a clever idea from a technical standpoint. Heck, if Google made the switch while keeping the same look and feel (minus the dynamic content), I doubt most people would notice beyond "Gmail somehow got faster."

puszczyk 9y ago

First rule of comments on HN, you don’t talk about downvotes.

StavrosK 9y ago

I'd just like to point out here that Fastmail is a great alternative to Gmail, one I like much better and regret not switching to it sooner. If you have your own domain, migration is as easy as importing your email and changing a few MX records, and it costs $3/mo for the largish package if you prepay.

madeofpalk 9y ago
The thing that's missing here is the email _client_ story. I really like Google's Inbox and there's no amount of money I can pay anyone else for a similar experience.
- cdubzzz 9y ago
  Honest question: do you think you really like it or are you really used to it? When Google made the move to Inbox, I switched because I wanted to be using their newest interface. Over time I came to absolutely hate it and that drove me away from Gmail. My wife still uses it so I occasionally find myself in the Inbox app on our tablet. Just a few days ago, actually, I read something in her inbox and for the life of me I could not figure out to mark it as unread from the inbox list. Maybe I was just missing something obvious, but it was very frustrating to not have such a simple action easily available.
  - dagurp 9y ago
    I'm someone who definitely dislikes it but I'm too used to it. The automatic categorization is so useful that I feel like I can't be without it.
  - adambyrtek 9y ago
    I really like how Inbox encourages getting to "inbox zero" (and maintaining it). It makes it very easy to archive things, snoozing emails for later is great, and reminders allow to add some short todos to the inbox where they are less likely to be missed.
  - dm319 9y ago
    I find it surprising that my search seems more comprehensive and faster in mutt than by the king-of-search's very own.
    - ams6110 9y ago
      Yeah, I use notmuch in emacs for my mail, and searching is way better than in gmail. Gmail's interface is very limiting, actually. It's pretty good for a web app, and probably better than Outlook/Exchange, but when the competition is so poor it's easy to seem good.
  - corobo 9y ago
    > do you think you really like it or are you really used to it? Chiming in with a "both" - I tried switching away from Inbox for a bit but I love me them bundles. I don't want to switch between a bunch of folders, I just want mail in those folders to appear grouped in my inbox Edit: and Snooze. I don't think I'll ever like using a client that can't snooze an email anymore

B-Con 9y ago

> 1. Gmail is a channel that Google has under monetized for a decade. This is an opportunity for them to extract value from the said channel. If you're allergic to Google offering free services that use your data for advertising, go pay for email. Google isn't a charity and you aren't entitled to a Gmail of your choosing. This is part of the reason for why I've always used a vanity domain for e-mail that uses Gmail as a backend. I've used Gmail since beta invites were scarse, but there are a variety of reasons for why I won't trust any given e-mail provider permanently. The fact that most of them are free is just one, albeit an important one.

Vinnl 9y ago

You're making a lot of assumptions about your readers here, and you're doing so in a style that's not going to convince those for whom those assumptions hold...

adamsvystun 9y ago

> 1. Gmail is a channel that Google has under monetized for a decade. I disagree. Gmail brought Google millions of customers. It's all about the ecosystem that they are building, which helps them retain customers. If you use Gmail, than there is higher chance that you will use Google Drive than competition. Another example of this is Google Keep. There is no reason for them to have free notes app, other than making you use more Google products.

Daycrawler 9y ago
Gaining customers doesn't mean monetizing, and it's particularly relevant to point out that a channel is under monetized specifically when this channel has a lot of users.
- vanderZwan 9y ago
  I highly doubt that mandatory monetisation of every channel is a sound economic strategy. EDIT: While not intentional, that was a bit flippant without extra arguments, my apologies. Also, this is more of a general "abstract" comment; Google operates in a real-world, concrete business context that it has to adapt to, and I am not burdened with knowing the details of that. Google (the search engine), Gmail, and really almost everything in Google's ecosystem are essentially freemium apps since before the words "freemium" and "app" were coined, let alone combined. You can use Google for free, but if you're trying to sell something you can use it's advertising. You can use Gmail, and other the services the implicit Google account it gives, for free, but for the niche use cases there are things like Gmail business, or extra disk space on Google Drive once you run out of space to upload those big photos and videos from your phone, and so on. What Google has expertly done is position itself as a public utility of the internet, despite being a private company. Whatever they are planning to do, I think that if they mess with that too much they risk a lot. That is what I believe adamsvystun's point was: compared to most other monetisation options, ensuring that they keep this "public utility" position in the public eye is the most lucrative form of long-term monetisation for Google. EDIT2: It gets worse the more I think about this: messing with email is especially risky, because email itself is tied very strongly to one's internet identity. It is the passport of the web. Think of all the "sign up/log in with" options: email is always the fallback option. So not messing that up is incredibly important to Google.

wklauss 9y ago

> I'll get down voted for saying this No, you'll get down voted for the way you are saying it. There's a difference, and it's an important one. Cheers

Kesty 9y ago
It's not wrong that AMP is a terrible thing in a pretty package. While the idea of having standards for mobile and slow connection might be a noble one, forcing everyone into it by using mobile search results as ransom is an evil practice. Especially since it's a google run, if it was set up as a non profit foundation with people on the board from different major players as a collaborative project then, yes It might be different.
- wklauss 9y ago
  And I don't disagree with that. I think the view that drives AMP is misguided and self-serving for Google. I do, however, like to come to HN because it tends to be a very civil space in which to share opinions, not a vehicle for attention seekers to spout whatever false equivalences their brain just come up with. As far as I'm concerned everyone here is entitled to their opinion and I have never seen anyone's voice silenced in this forum. But when you start a message with "I know I'm going to get down voted but..." you are hedging on the value of your own opinion. You know it's unpopular but at the same time you are so concerned with the public validation of it that need to present yourself as a victim and the rest of us as some kind of oppressors.
  - bryanrasmussen 9y ago
    Saying something unpopular in most cases shouldn't get you downvoted, but often "I know I'm going to get down voted but..." also is a lead in to complaints of hypocrisy. It reminds me of a friend that used to start off particularly rude statements by saying "I don't want to be rude but..."
    - vog 9y ago
      > It reminds me of a friend that used to start off particularly rude statements by saying "I don't want to be rude but..." I don't see the contradiction here. I interpret these kind of phrases as: "I don't like to be rude, and normally I'm not, but in this case I need to make an exception." Frankly, not everybody actually meant to say that, but this interpretation still helps to deal with those situations in a civil, non-escalating way.

ekianjo 9y ago

> I'll get down voted for saying this, but the HN crowd's hypocrisy is baffling. I did not know we were a uniform, homogeneous crowd...

tarsinge 9y ago

Nice try but there is no logic between your points 1 and 2 to come to the third. Apple sells hardware and is not a monopoly, so if their customers are happy with their choice then good for them. On the other hand Google is a monopoly, so a lot of people are not ok with them abusing their position to hijack the web (that they already “own”) and email. Edit: typo

RobertRoberts 9y ago
Their search products are a monopoly, their email is not. I provide paid email services for my clients, they can use Gmail if they want, or not. But for SEO, it's Google all the way down...
- r3bl 9y ago
  There's nothing stopping end users from using non-Google search engine. Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo... they're all viable products that you can use to accomplish 90ish% of what Google could find, and maybe even more now that Google strips historical data (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16153840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16153840, from a month ago). Since you're mentioning SEO, I just checked and 15.8% of searches for my website came from non-Google search engines in the last month (in my case, Yandex and DDG are the most popular ones). Bing is also taking a huge chunk of the traffic thanks to Windows 10 using it in the start menu, whether you like it or not. And while one example isn't viable enough to make general statements, it's clear that alternatives do exist and are used extensively. It's a product that's superior when compared to its competitors. It's not a monopoly though.
  - matt4077 9y ago
    Google's market is advertising. If you want to advertise in search, you do not have the freedom to avoid Google and just spend all your money with Bing.
  - akvadrako 9y ago
    Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo are not a list of competitors. Yahoo is based on Bing & Google¹. DDG uses a lot of sources, but I believe the bulk of results come from Yahoo and Bing. I agree there are options, but they are Bing and Yandex. The others are just mashups. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Search

baxtr 9y ago

This comment is quite judgmental. I’m wondering how it’s the top comment

mrtksn 9y ago

Is there a way to keep my.name@gmail.com but moving to another provider? I'm quite a bit uneasy with Google lately but it's not feasible for me to move to another e-mail provider because my user account on many other websites is tied to my Gmail account and not all websites support e-mail changing. At this point, I would argue that Gmail reached a public infrastructure status and it's not acceptable of Google to take actions without public consent. It is perfectly acceptable if Google decides to charge for de services as it will happen with any public infrastructure that has running costs but it's not acceptable for Google to force people into situations or engineer their behavior just because provides the service free of charge. For example, in my country, the electricity is generated by private for-profit corporations. However it would not be acceptable if these corporations start changing the voltage of the frequency of the electricity and force people to use devices designed specifically for that electricity network. I don't remember Google forcing me into using Gmail but I also don't remember anyone forcing Google to provide an e-mail service. They did a great job, it revolutionized e-mail but they did it to compete with Microsoft and Yahoo, thus for profit(back in the day everyone was using Hotmail or Yahoo).

xuki 9y ago
> Is there a way to keep my.name@gmail.com but moving to another provider? Yes, forward them to your new email, preferably using your own domain name. Start giving out your new email to people, reply to your gmail email from your new email. It takes time but after a few years you can ditch the gmail completely.
- mrtksn 9y ago
  That is not entirely true though, is it? The forwarded e-mails won't become non-Gmail over time and I will still be dependant on Google to forward the e-mails to me.
  - bluGill 9y ago
    Somewhat. You have to remember to notice and tell everybody who sends to the gmail address to change. Some mail programs make this easy for your friends some do not. Over a few years people update their address book, and eventually almost nothing goes to gmail anymore.

dozzie 9y ago

> If you're allergic to Google offering free services that use your data for advertising, go pay for email. Google isn't a charity and you aren't entitled to a Gmail of your choosing. The problem is that Gmail is the most prominent e-mail provider and at the same time they make it difficult for other e-mail providers to operate, especially small ones. Gmail's spam detection is totally opaque and you can't do much if your mail lands in junk folder. For this single reason Google is no longer in a position when you can cut them some slack for anything related to Gmail.

mnsc 9y ago

> 3. If you find Apple's practices more abhorrent than AMP and consistently oppose both - congratulations, you're a minority whose reasoning isn't clouded by brand jingoism Yay! I won something on the internet today!

xg15 9y ago

> If you're allergic to Google offering free services that use your data for advertising, go pay for email. ... and don't ever write emails to anyone who uses GMail. And tell all your friends who use GMail they shouldn't write emails to you.

zamalek 9y ago
I use Fastmail and I can communicate with everyone just fine. I simply had to follow their instructions for setting up my domain. Without that configuration, near every email provider will reject your mail - for good reason.

mcintyre1994 9y ago

I'm sure Google could monetise Gmail more than they have, but I've always thought the real business success of Gmail was sharing its login with google.com and moving Google to a position where many searches are done with a personal identity that they can track anywhere. It seems before Gmail there wouldn't be much reason to actually log in to Google, and having users logged in makes their product better and I'm guessing gets them way better data.

disgruntledphd2 9y ago
I think that Youtube was more successful in that space (for regular people at least). I base this entirely on the fact that around the time of G+, the redirect urls for all Google products started going to YT, which I took to mean that YT had a much broader cookie pool. FWIW, I agree entirely with your point, but I think Youtube is the secret sauce that makes it work.

bryanrasmussen 9y ago

I have had a corporate Gmail in the past, and will probably get it again for a new company. is it going to be AMPed?

pedroaraujo 9y ago

I would think that Google uses your Gmail to build your profile and to serve better ads to you. There is nothing more personal than your private email, so having access to your private things is a gold mine for their ad business.

simias 9y ago

I'm not sure I understand your point. You're projecting a lot, there's more to the world of computers than Google and Apple. At any rate you choose to buy into Apple ecosystem. A big email provider changing how email works is not the same thing. For the record I host my own email server and use mutt as my main email client. The only Apple device I own is an old pre-iphone iPod. If Google changes the expectations of email users everywhere then it won't be long until you end up with a broken experience if you don't support AMP email out of the box. Exactly what happened with HTML email: it's not rare these days to receive a multipart/alternative email where the plain text version is simply "see HTML". If AMP mail becomes mainstream it'll be like this but worse. Soon you'll have an HTML page that will tell you to "see AMP content". I don't know if it's completely on purpose but that's by the book "embrace, extend and extinguish" by Google there.

rident 9y ago
Falling into the 3-4 crowd myself I also agree with this. Changing emails - perhaps in an automatic fashion - to use AMP is going to do nothing but harm to anyone outside Google. Image inclusion the AMP way [1] alone will ruin HTML email for other services. If Google really wanted to improve emails they would push for full compliance HTML5 support. Because if emails could be built with grid layouts, content could be more semantic, you wouldn't need a plain text version, we'd use less mark up and save on server space and bandwidth. [1] https://ampbyexample.com/components/amp-img/ https://ampbyexample.com/components/amp-img/
- sli 9y ago
  Amazing. That link is solid white with JS disabled. Why does Google routinely refuse to display text unless JS is enabled? Their developer blog does almost the same thing.
  - Andrex 9y ago
    I think AMP is built on web components, which require JS.
  - pitaj 9y ago

andrepd 9y ago

What a tremendously unconstructive post. >I'll get down voted for saying this Well don't mind if I do. (read the guidelines friend, this kind of crap is specifically frowned upon). > Google isn't a charity and you aren't entitled to a Gmail of your choosing. This is a pet peeve of mine. What does this mean? That you can't force to charge their ways? Yeah, maybe you can't. Doesn't mean you're not allowed to make criticism? If course not. The argument "they're a private company therefore they do what they please" is a facile but invalid way to shut down criticism. >You can't complain about Google because Apple does other unrelated bad stuff. Well and you can't complain about Apple because Monsanto does even worse stuff and I don't see you mentioning then. Classic whataboutism. In other words, if you really wanted to do constructive criticism you would have (1) presented your arguments clearly instead of playing the victim in your very first sentence, and (2) you would have limited yourself to the facts of the matter and not to external stuff (which you only kinda did in your 4th point).

justaguyhere 9y ago

"you're allergic to Google offering free services that use your data for advertising, go pay for email" Yes, email is such an important tool that it would make sense for all of us to pay for it. That said, the big internet companies trained millions of users to expect everything for free on the internet (intentionally or not). Many people seriously think "if it is on the internet, it should be free - I am paying for my internet connection, aren't I?". If you don't believe me, try talking to a non-HN, non-tech-savvy person about it. The fault is on these companies as much as the users. It would take a big change in mindset to make non-advertising models work in consumer world

josteink 9y ago
Indeed. If I try to offer non-gmail email options to people, even here on HN, people will go “Oh. But they cost money”, as if that’s something deeply unnatural. Me, I’m happy to pay, because it means that I know I’m a customer, not a product.
- zerocrates 9y ago
  This probably isn't so true for the pay email services, but I just wanted to note that these two things are by no means mutually exclusive. Plenty of services are more than happy to take your money and "make you the product." It's so easy to do on the web, few can resist.
- taeric 9y ago
  For me, I confess paying for it has the risk of it being held hostage if I miss payments. Worse, my data can turn into leverage for increases price.
  - josteink 9y ago
    Which is why you should always choose a service which offers full access via standards-based protocols so that you always have the option of owning your own data.

daveheq 9y ago

They already make a profit without AMP in Gmail.

wruza 9y ago

c) without amp sites work with no misbehaving header bar that they cannot fix. Every time I scroll down it pops up. If you have an iphone, you know how safari header behaves and it is convenient/usual. This damned amp plate only allows you to scroll down and close. Note: I’m not talking about “tap clock to scrool to top” here. If you don’t understand these UX details, well, don’t blame then. I’m pretty okay with google substituting ssl/dns/content even for their cash flow, I don’t care until they turn my browser into common-standards web crap. It turns safari into chrome, which I tested on an expensive sony sevice and couldn’t stand any more than two days. Edit: I know that my “don’t care” is not popular among hn users, but it resembles regular non-tech folks thinking — amp is that thing on some sites that annoys you when you scroll and share links. 98% of us really don’t care and notice inconvenience only.

feikname 9y ago
AMP header breaks even Chrome UX for me. It somehow ends hiding the address bar and replacing it with the AMP one once I've started to scroll down, and the only solution is to scroll all the way to the top again. I have the address bar set to never hide, which makes this even more annoting.

so33 9y ago

Apple can lock down their devices however they damn please. No matter how much they lock it down, it will not directly affect the majority of people, who use Android. If Apple made everyone use Apple News, only a minority of people will be inconvenienced. (Incidentally, the MFi program has nothing to do with this.) But _publishers_ are pressured to support AMP because Google, the most popular search engine by far, prioritizes AMP results. If they do anything with AMP they can likely have their way. And the same will likely apply for email.

staticelf 9y ago

1. I do pay for email, just recently renewed my 2 year plan on fastmail. But I still do have a gmail account since I used to be heavy Google user until they started to be bad. I am still trying to move away from Google services all along, but it quite hard. The only thing I can't move away from is Youtube because there is no alternatives that has the content. 2. I use an iPhone, but it's only because I believe that Apple respects my privacy more than Google does with Android. I don't really like using an Apple device, because some of the reasons you mentioned. But I value my privacy over those things. 3. I consistenly opposes both and I really hope that I am not in the minority. 4. Yes. Thank you.

jitbit 9y ago

> Gmail is a channel that Google has under monetized for a decade Not because they're all nice and charitable. But because Google sometimes sucks at monetizing things.

mattlondon 9y ago

> If you're allergic to Google offering free services that use your data for advertising Just as a reminder for everyone (and I appreciate that the parent comment does not directly claim that this is the case), Google claims not scan or read your emails in Gmail to show you ads, nor to sell your information to advertisers. Source: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en Just thought I'd point that out before the FUD/tin-foil kicks in too much :)

smeyer 9y ago
Also a reminder, Google has lied about this in the past. E.g. http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/3/23/alumni-lawsuit-against-google/ http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/3/23/alumni-lawsuit-a... . That being said, I think it's probably true that they've stopped doing so.

Angostura 9y ago

Your argument boil some down to ‘its Google's platform, they can do with the want with it’. Which is true. It's equally true that people can point out if changes Google make are problematic for users. No hypocrisy required.

scarface74 9y ago

Never in the history of computing has your hardware required the manufacturer's blessing to run apps. Except for every game console that has existed since the early 80s. http://atariage.com/forums/topic/227899-atari-v-coleco-lawsuit/ http://atariage.com/forums/topic/227899-atari-v-coleco-lawsu...

zamalek 9y ago

I have one point of contention: Google is already monetizing Gmail with Gsuite. Gmail is to Gsuite as Fedora is to RHEL. It's a public testbed where they try out new ideas before moving them into LTS. Regardless, many of the disagreements with you seem to have stopped reading at (2). I am completely aware of the irony of my using Google devices while simultaneously criticizing them for their shitty practices. If you were to point that out to me I'd agree with you. Pointing that out to me isn't a personal attack, it's a statement of the facts of human nature: we are all hypocrites. I can honestly see why AMP is a clever idea from a technical standpoint. Heck, if Google made the switch while keeping the same look and feel (minus the dynamic content), I doubt most people would notice beyond "Gmail somehow got faster."