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What's wrong with GMail? Google stopped mining it last year: https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in-the-enterprise-g-suites-gmail-and-con

What's wrong with GMail? Google stopped mining it last year: https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in-the-enterprise-g-suites-gmail-and-consumer-gmail-to-more-closely-align/ https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in...

vageli 8y ago
> What's wrong with GMail? > Google stopped mining it last year: https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in.. https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in.... Google stopped mining it for ads, but it's disingenuous to say they stopped mining, period [0]. How do you think those Gmail suggested replies are generated? [0]: https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/google-gmail-ads-emails-1202477321 https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/google-gmail-ads-email...
- baddox 8y ago
  So now they only mine it for things that are good for the user experience?
  - wolco 8y ago
    I'm sure that is the orginal intent but can quickly morph.
- bduerst 8y ago
  > Smart Reply uses neural networks to figure out the main intent of an email, and then suggest short and adequate responses. It’s an incredibly useful feature, it works surprisingly well — and it clearly requires for Google’s computers to “read” your email. Would you stop using Protonmail if they offered the same feature?
  - ravenstine 8y ago
    I'm not sure who you are addressing, but I would stop using ProtonMail if they did. Then again, I've never found Google's response suggestions to be useful.
- annabellish 8y ago
  How do you think Gmail writes the content out onto the page? Goodness gracious, they have to store it and process it! I don't really see how running the contents through an quick reply generation function is different to running it through whatever function prepares the body for display, here. An implementation of that which involves wide-scale mining of email content is imaginable, but not necessary.
TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
All the other reasons you shouldn’t use a “free” email service. You can be locked out of your account for arbitrary-reason-of-the-day and good luck finding a contact number or email address for support. If email is important to you, you probably shouldn’t be using a “free” service.
- int_19h 8y ago
  The big problem with email lock-in is that when you switch providers, you can't take your old address with you. Best case, you can set up forwarding. Worst case, if your account just gets deleted, or the provider goes out of business, everyone who only knows your old address cannot contact you anymore. This, in turn, means that even when considering non-free email service providers, you need some reassurance that provider will be around and will not institute crazy policies in the future. Which favors large providers like Google over smaller ones, and reinforces the lock-in.
  - minikites 8y ago
    Fastmail has been around for almost 20 years and I've been using them for more than 10.
    - qrbLPHiKpiux 8y ago
      I use this with an rpi running offline imap read-only.
  - southerndrift 8y ago
    You register your own domain. Usually that comes with free email accounts. If the provider goes down then you still control the domain so that you can move to a new provider.
  - ravenstine 8y ago
    Transitions aren't really too difficult so long as proper steps are taken: - Notify your contacts of your address change. - Set your old address to forward to your new address and always reply to emails from your new one. - After 2 months, set your old email to auto-reply to all messages saying that you have changed your address and the old one will soon be deactivated. - Finally, turn deactivate the old email. It's work, but I've done it on multiple occasions. I wonder if there could be a service that could automate the entire process, since it could all be done via IMAP.
ravenstine 8y ago
It's not so much that I don't like Gmail, but I don't like Google in general. All other reasons aside, it's not a very good idea to ever put trust in an ad agency. I'd much rather support smaller companies that make money off their service or product, as opposed to Google which tries to compete in a lot of spaces in order to suck people in to its ecosystem. Over time, I've been replacing various Google services with smaller alternatives. At this point, it's down to Youtube, which is pretty hard to beat. But it feels a lot better to provide usership to smaller businesses that could use it more.

vageli 8y ago

> What's wrong with GMail? > Google stopped mining it last year: https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in.. https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in.... Google stopped mining it for ads, but it's disingenuous to say they stopped mining, period [0]. How do you think those Gmail suggested replies are generated? [0]: https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/google-gmail-ads-emails-1202477321 https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/google-gmail-ads-email...

baddox 8y ago
So now they only mine it for things that are good for the user experience?
- wolco 8y ago
  I'm sure that is the orginal intent but can quickly morph.
bduerst 8y ago
> Smart Reply uses neural networks to figure out the main intent of an email, and then suggest short and adequate responses. It’s an incredibly useful feature, it works surprisingly well — and it clearly requires for Google’s computers to “read” your email. Would you stop using Protonmail if they offered the same feature?
- ravenstine 8y ago
  I'm not sure who you are addressing, but I would stop using ProtonMail if they did. Then again, I've never found Google's response suggestions to be useful.
annabellish 8y ago
How do you think Gmail writes the content out onto the page? Goodness gracious, they have to store it and process it! I don't really see how running the contents through an quick reply generation function is different to running it through whatever function prepares the body for display, here. An implementation of that which involves wide-scale mining of email content is imaginable, but not necessary.

TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago

All the other reasons you shouldn’t use a “free” email service. You can be locked out of your account for arbitrary-reason-of-the-day and good luck finding a contact number or email address for support. If email is important to you, you probably shouldn’t be using a “free” service.

int_19h 8y ago
The big problem with email lock-in is that when you switch providers, you can't take your old address with you. Best case, you can set up forwarding. Worst case, if your account just gets deleted, or the provider goes out of business, everyone who only knows your old address cannot contact you anymore. This, in turn, means that even when considering non-free email service providers, you need some reassurance that provider will be around and will not institute crazy policies in the future. Which favors large providers like Google over smaller ones, and reinforces the lock-in.
- minikites 8y ago
  Fastmail has been around for almost 20 years and I've been using them for more than 10.
  - qrbLPHiKpiux 8y ago
    I use this with an rpi running offline imap read-only.
- southerndrift 8y ago
  You register your own domain. Usually that comes with free email accounts. If the provider goes down then you still control the domain so that you can move to a new provider.
- ravenstine 8y ago
  Transitions aren't really too difficult so long as proper steps are taken: - Notify your contacts of your address change. - Set your old address to forward to your new address and always reply to emails from your new one. - After 2 months, set your old email to auto-reply to all messages saying that you have changed your address and the old one will soon be deactivated. - Finally, turn deactivate the old email. It's work, but I've done it on multiple occasions. I wonder if there could be a service that could automate the entire process, since it could all be done via IMAP.

ravenstine 8y ago

It's not so much that I don't like Gmail, but I don't like Google in general. All other reasons aside, it's not a very good idea to ever put trust in an ad agency. I'd much rather support smaller companies that make money off their service or product, as opposed to Google which tries to compete in a lot of spaces in order to suck people in to its ecosystem. Over time, I've been replacing various Google services with smaller alternatives. At this point, it's down to Youtube, which is pretty hard to beat. But it feels a lot better to provide usership to smaller businesses that could use it more.