4 ms·

Finally. Google should be broken up, they have WAYYY too much power

bsder 7y ago
Agreed. At this point I can't run a private email server because Google simply will not deliver the emails anymore. Being able to simply dictate who can do what on the internet solely because they can undercut everybody's price (aka give away email free in return for mining your data) is far too much power.
- Bombthecat 7y ago
  Huh? I run a private email server... Took a ton of work though. But it works fine? Are those mails marked as spam? Or what happens?
  - bsder 7y ago
    Yes, they are now marked as spam. As I am the sole person to ever use this server and I have been sending to some of those emails since almost as long as gmail has even existed, the fact that they are now marked spam is simply an admission that Google doesn't actually give one shit about accuracy and solely trains their ML networks on things that bring them revenue.
    - jefftk 7y ago
      Has your IP changed during that time? How do you have SPF and DKIM configured?
      - jacquesm 7y ago
        These questions don't help. I get that you're trying to troubleshoot the OPs mail server and are trying to figure out what might be done to get their mail delivered again. But that's a form of victim blaming if that server was never used to send spam and the OP is not sending out spam their mail should not be classified as spam and if it is that is clearly uncompetitive behavior by Google because the difference between incompetence and malice is something for Google to illustrate, not for the rest of the world to bend over backwards to accommodate their demands.
        jefftk 7y ago
        Imagine for the moment that the OP's IP address has changed during this time and they don't have SPF or DKIM configured. Or imagine SPF is misconfigured to say "only IP 1.2.3.4 is qualified to send email for this domain" but they've since moved to another IP. Or imagine their DKIM configuration is broken and their messages aren't validating. There are a ton of ways you can configure a mall server so that recipients can't reliably tell you're not sending spam: it's not just what content you send but also the reputation of your IP and the signals you choose to send via SPF and DKIM. This isn't specific to Google: all the companies that receive email have the same difficult problem. Email is the only major fully open federated push protocol, and spam has come close to killing it. (Disclosure: I work for Google, nothing related to mail, speaking only for myself.)
        Isinlor 7y ago
        One of major advantages of GMail is lack of SPAM and phishing. If the trade-off is that Google accommodates mails sent from badly configured servers and I receive a lot of SPAM, or they drop that mails and limit SPAM, I will go with less SPAM. I know it's not cool for decentralized Internet, but that's the utilitarian reality for me.
AnthonyMouse 7y ago
The problem with breaking them up is that the search engine is the whole ballgame. Separating the search engine from, say, gmail would have negligible benefit. It might even make things worse if the newly independent gmail company started doing a lot of the scummy things free email providers sometimes do to make a buck against everybody's existing gmail account. What you really need isn't a breakup, it's some way to foster sustainable competition for search.
- bencollier49 7y ago
  Force federation of search data.
  - cromwellian 7y ago
    The data is already federated, that’s what crawlers do - they crawl federated data.
- headmelted 7y ago
  I’d go further, and I’d be all for a full ban on targeted search and ads in the EU. Google is programming people on a massive scale. Compare your news feed to your partner/friend/colleague’s phone. No-one I know outside of tech has any notion that what they’re seeing on that feed is only shown to them. Social targeting in tech has completely broken society with these tools - and Google is arguably worse than Facebook in this regard because their feed is ubiquitous, people just don’t realize they’re in Google’s world the entire time they’re on the phone because they didn’t touch a Facebook or Instagram icon to start an app. We assume non-tech people out in the world don’t know much about how this works, but the average user is even more naive than any of us realised.
- hos234 7y ago
  Search engine can be broken up regionally and the regional versions allowed to compete with each other globally. So Google France competes with Google Germany competes with Google Spain etc. This happened with Ma Bell - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System
nolok 7y ago
I don't disagree, but if we go that way then so do Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon. I doubt the EU can get into that without it triggering some massive and nasty reactions, and the US seems to have abandonned any kind of proper corporate control, so this will never happen.
alecco 7y ago
I wouldn't break them up but I would put very strict privacy laws.

Agreed. At this point I can't run a private email server because Google simply will not deliver the emails anymore. Being able to simply dictate who can do what on the internet solely because they can undercut everybody's price (aka give away email free in return for mining your data) is far too much power.

Bombthecat 7y ago
Huh? I run a private email server... Took a ton of work though. But it works fine? Are those mails marked as spam? Or what happens?
- bsder 7y ago
  Yes, they are now marked as spam. As I am the sole person to ever use this server and I have been sending to some of those emails since almost as long as gmail has even existed, the fact that they are now marked spam is simply an admission that Google doesn't actually give one shit about accuracy and solely trains their ML networks on things that bring them revenue.
  - jefftk 7y ago
    Has your IP changed during that time? How do you have SPF and DKIM configured?
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      These questions don't help. I get that you're trying to troubleshoot the OPs mail server and are trying to figure out what might be done to get their mail delivered again. But that's a form of victim blaming if that server was never used to send spam and the OP is not sending out spam their mail should not be classified as spam and if it is that is clearly uncompetitive behavior by Google because the difference between incompetence and malice is something for Google to illustrate, not for the rest of the world to bend over backwards to accommodate their demands.
      - jefftk 7y ago
        Imagine for the moment that the OP's IP address has changed during this time and they don't have SPF or DKIM configured. Or imagine SPF is misconfigured to say "only IP 1.2.3.4 is qualified to send email for this domain" but they've since moved to another IP. Or imagine their DKIM configuration is broken and their messages aren't validating. There are a ton of ways you can configure a mall server so that recipients can't reliably tell you're not sending spam: it's not just what content you send but also the reputation of your IP and the signals you choose to send via SPF and DKIM. This isn't specific to Google: all the companies that receive email have the same difficult problem. Email is the only major fully open federated push protocol, and spam has come close to killing it. (Disclosure: I work for Google, nothing related to mail, speaking only for myself.)
      - Isinlor 7y ago
        One of major advantages of GMail is lack of SPAM and phishing. If the trade-off is that Google accommodates mails sent from badly configured servers and I receive a lot of SPAM, or they drop that mails and limit SPAM, I will go with less SPAM. I know it's not cool for decentralized Internet, but that's the utilitarian reality for me.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

The problem with breaking them up is that the search engine is the whole ballgame. Separating the search engine from, say, gmail would have negligible benefit. It might even make things worse if the newly independent gmail company started doing a lot of the scummy things free email providers sometimes do to make a buck against everybody's existing gmail account. What you really need isn't a breakup, it's some way to foster sustainable competition for search.

bencollier49 7y ago
Force federation of search data.
- cromwellian 7y ago
  The data is already federated, that’s what crawlers do - they crawl federated data.
headmelted 7y ago
I’d go further, and I’d be all for a full ban on targeted search and ads in the EU. Google is programming people on a massive scale. Compare your news feed to your partner/friend/colleague’s phone. No-one I know outside of tech has any notion that what they’re seeing on that feed is only shown to them. Social targeting in tech has completely broken society with these tools - and Google is arguably worse than Facebook in this regard because their feed is ubiquitous, people just don’t realize they’re in Google’s world the entire time they’re on the phone because they didn’t touch a Facebook or Instagram icon to start an app. We assume non-tech people out in the world don’t know much about how this works, but the average user is even more naive than any of us realised.
hos234 7y ago
Search engine can be broken up regionally and the regional versions allowed to compete with each other globally. So Google France competes with Google Germany competes with Google Spain etc. This happened with Ma Bell - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System

nolok 7y ago

I don't disagree, but if we go that way then so do Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon. I doubt the EU can get into that without it triggering some massive and nasty reactions, and the US seems to have abandonned any kind of proper corporate control, so this will never happen.

alecco 7y ago

I wouldn't break them up but I would put very strict privacy laws.