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People seem to forget how god awful email had become with spam back around gmail was launched. Gmail from my recollection was the first service that really mana

People seem to forget how god awful email had become with spam back around gmail was launched. Gmail from my recollection was the first service that really managed to deal with spam in a way that worked, was free, was simple and which everyone could use. That's why people used gmail and it's why people still use gmail and why even the people arguing in this thread that google are evil are all still using gmail! (I'm generalising but I'm betting most do) When it comes down to it, despite what people say they care more about getting good services at no cost to themselves than they do about their privacy.

BeetleB 8y ago
>People seem to forget how god awful email had become with spam back around gmail was launched. While I used spamassassin (not simple), my friend used Thunderbird which did a good enough job. >That's why people used gmail and it's why people still use gmail and why even the people arguing in this thread that google are evil are all still using gmail! In the early Gmail days, I didn't know anyone who used Gmail for anti-spam use. It was all about: 1. Space (1GB) 2. Nice interface was a distant second. Most average people I know did not care about spam during those days. I mean, they cared and complained a lot about it, but getting anyone to change their provider (or software) to handle spam better was an exercise in futility. Keep in mind - this is during the days when IE 6.0 reigned supreme and had something like 90% of the browser share. Almost no one I knew was willing to change browsers, despite IE not having tabs, not having banner ad blocking or any other extension, and causing all kinds of Windows issues. If they're unwilling to change browsers, I can assure you they're unwilling to change email providers so easily. What tipped things in Gmail's favor was the extra space, when 50MB was advertised as large). >When it comes down to it, despite what people say they care more about getting good services at no cost to themselves than they do about their privacy. Agreed there.
- kbenson 8y ago
  > While I used spamassassin (not simple), my friend used Thunderbird which did a good enough job. Err, what? SpamAssassin is a filtering system and framework, Thunderbird is a MUA. There were plugins to use ApamAssasin in Thunderbird, and there may have been some built in filtering in Thunderbird, but you'll have to do a lot better than just saying it was good to convince me it existed as anything other than a joke. My job during the time Gmail launched and the years following was administering portions of an ISP, including mail servers and a separate set of SpamAssassin processing servers, as well as separate consulting work setting up SpamAssassin and a mail server for colocation customers. I also used Thunderbird off and on for a number of years during this same period (when it wasn't Thunderbird, it was Mutt). No MUA without something like SpamAssasin (or some paid for service or package) was even passable during this time period, to my recollection. > In the early Gmail days, I didn't know anyone who used Gmail for anti-spam use. It was all about: Believe me, they did. People noticed it. ISPs noticed it. The ISP I worked for thought about shifting over all email for our customers to hosted Gmail, because the spam solution was actually better than SpamAssassin usually could do and it would offload a lot of work. It didn't happen, but it was at least thrown around as a possibility. > Most average people I know did not care about spam during those days. My experience fielding support requests during this time period points towards the opposite conclusion. People cared a lot more, it was much more of a problem then. Google trends backs this up.[1] It was bad enough that legislation about spam was being passed during this period, such as the CAN-SPAM act of 2003.[2] I think perhaps you've forgotten just how bad it was, or were lucky enough to have an address that wasn't very badly affected. You were running SpamAssassin, so you would likely have been one of the better protected (and you could tweak your own rules, which might have helped if you did so). 1: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=spam https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=s... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN-SPAM_Act_of_2003 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN-SPAM_Act_of_2003
  - fl0wenol 8y ago
    The Bayesian spam filtering in Thunderbird was really good because it could be trained to the kind of spam you received personally. It was not a joke; I survived on that for my work email for half a decade before they finally bought an appliance to do the heavy lifting.
    - kbenson 8y ago
      I guess it was, I'm seeing reports of it working well in the bugzilla for Mozilla from around that time period, so I'll concede that Thunderbird had filtering and it may have been fairly good. I think my larger point, that Spam was a major problem of the time period, and that Google was seen as having very good spam detection, still stands.

BeetleB 8y ago

>People seem to forget how god awful email had become with spam back around gmail was launched. While I used spamassassin (not simple), my friend used Thunderbird which did a good enough job. >That's why people used gmail and it's why people still use gmail and why even the people arguing in this thread that google are evil are all still using gmail! In the early Gmail days, I didn't know anyone who used Gmail for anti-spam use. It was all about: 1. Space (1GB) 2. Nice interface was a distant second. Most average people I know did not care about spam during those days. I mean, they cared and complained a lot about it, but getting anyone to change their provider (or software) to handle spam better was an exercise in futility. Keep in mind - this is during the days when IE 6.0 reigned supreme and had something like 90% of the browser share. Almost no one I knew was willing to change browsers, despite IE not having tabs, not having banner ad blocking or any other extension, and causing all kinds of Windows issues. If they're unwilling to change browsers, I can assure you they're unwilling to change email providers so easily. What tipped things in Gmail's favor was the extra space, when 50MB was advertised as large). >When it comes down to it, despite what people say they care more about getting good services at no cost to themselves than they do about their privacy. Agreed there.

kbenson 8y ago
> While I used spamassassin (not simple), my friend used Thunderbird which did a good enough job. Err, what? SpamAssassin is a filtering system and framework, Thunderbird is a MUA. There were plugins to use ApamAssasin in Thunderbird, and there may have been some built in filtering in Thunderbird, but you'll have to do a lot better than just saying it was good to convince me it existed as anything other than a joke. My job during the time Gmail launched and the years following was administering portions of an ISP, including mail servers and a separate set of SpamAssassin processing servers, as well as separate consulting work setting up SpamAssassin and a mail server for colocation customers. I also used Thunderbird off and on for a number of years during this same period (when it wasn't Thunderbird, it was Mutt). No MUA without something like SpamAssasin (or some paid for service or package) was even passable during this time period, to my recollection. > In the early Gmail days, I didn't know anyone who used Gmail for anti-spam use. It was all about: Believe me, they did. People noticed it. ISPs noticed it. The ISP I worked for thought about shifting over all email for our customers to hosted Gmail, because the spam solution was actually better than SpamAssassin usually could do and it would offload a lot of work. It didn't happen, but it was at least thrown around as a possibility. > Most average people I know did not care about spam during those days. My experience fielding support requests during this time period points towards the opposite conclusion. People cared a lot more, it was much more of a problem then. Google trends backs this up.[1] It was bad enough that legislation about spam was being passed during this period, such as the CAN-SPAM act of 2003.[2] I think perhaps you've forgotten just how bad it was, or were lucky enough to have an address that wasn't very badly affected. You were running SpamAssassin, so you would likely have been one of the better protected (and you could tweak your own rules, which might have helped if you did so). 1: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=spam https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=s... 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN-SPAM_Act_of_2003 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN-SPAM_Act_of_2003
- fl0wenol 8y ago
  The Bayesian spam filtering in Thunderbird was really good because it could be trained to the kind of spam you received personally. It was not a joke; I survived on that for my work email for half a decade before they finally bought an appliance to do the heavy lifting.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    I guess it was, I'm seeing reports of it working well in the bugzilla for Mozilla from around that time period, so I'll concede that Thunderbird had filtering and it may have been fairly good. I think my larger point, that Spam was a major problem of the time period, and that Google was seen as having very good spam detection, still stands.