20 ms·

I've been using Google pretty regularly for the past 11 years, and have had a gmail account since soon after it was announced. However with the release of Plus

• thwest 15y ago
  What are the best alternatives for email?
  • kb101 15y ago
    Don't know about best, but www.fastmail.fm/help/overview_features.html is pretty cool. It is what it says, fast. No graphics, clean web interface, runs quick on anything, including crappy old hardware or phones. Opera recently bought them so if you run Opera on your phone it is especially nice. Very reliable, hardly ever down and on the rare occasions it goes down it's usually back up within minutes. You can hook up pretty much any client you like, of course. And they don't read your mail to serve you ads.
    • mikescar 15y ago
      I recently converted to Fastmail. $20/year for spam protection and a 1GB inbox. For my personal mail on my Android phone it's gold. They have a lot of nice features for configurability too.
  • padenot 15y ago
    I personnaly use Fastmail and I'm very happy with it. As any other serious competitor, it's not free, though, around $50 a year for the best plan (10gB, custom domain and file storage, among other goodies).
  • sudonim 15y ago
    I've been playing around with OSX Lion Server installed on my home fios connection on a mac mini server. Apple built a webmail interface that's not as good as gmail, but works if you primarily use a client and just need webmail sometimes. I'm not ready to switch to it full time, but have been curiously looking around for alternatives to gmail. In general, running an email server yourself is a bit of a pain.
  • grosskur 15y ago
    http://www.tuffmail.com/ http://www.tuffmail.com/ You pay for mailbox size, with no limit on the number of email aliases or domains you can map to it. They also host Roundcube webmail.
  • nirvana 15y ago
    I started out looking for dedicated email services. But in the end I found that regular old shared hosting accounts provide email. Also, be advised that Iceland has implemented strong privacy policies, and that might be a good jurisdiction to host your email.
  • JoshTriplett 15y ago
    Personally, I use and recommend Gandi (https://www.gandi.net/ https://www.gandi.net/). If you purchase a domain name from them ($15/year or less), you can use their email with your domain. You can either use a standard mail client with their SMTP and IMAP servers, or you can use their webmail interface (roundcube). Plus, you get an email at your own domain, and you can thus easily switch email providers without changing your email address.
• mladenkovacevic 15y ago
  I think removing yourself from Google is a mistake. It will give anyone with malevolent intentions the opportunity to remake your account with the same name, pictures and possibly misrepresent you. A better way to boycott them is to maintain a static account. Simply take ownership of your identity but not give them any personal data about yourself or your friends. There's nothing they hate more than a user who doesn't +1.
  • ww520 15y ago
    I thought Google will verify the identity to prevent false claim of an identity, right? Without verification, what good is "Real Name"?
    • mladenkovacevic 15y ago
      I don't think they've started that yet except with celebrities... and I'm still unsure how that will take place, when or if ever. Also I'm just suggesting he keep that firstname.lastname@gmail.com account... just to have it. But not necessarily use it for anything personally identifiable.
    • sudonim 15y ago
      What techniques can they use to truly verify identity? When I set up my G+ account, they didn't ask for a credit card, or a copy of my drivers license. I'm pretty sure I could have put in Peter Parker if I wanted.
      • jarek 15y ago
        Just a note that you can easily get a credit card issued for Peter Parker.
  • eliasmacpherson 15y ago
    Excellent point. People have probably faked every possible form of identification in history. The other problem is that as soon as you do acquire an account, if you ever use it, giving it up - if the id is revoked and recycled, you've just left yourself wide open.
• esrauch 15y ago
  > They want to correlate my online activities with my offline identity. It seems to me that the only legitimate use of circles is with respect to people you are sharing with that you know in real life. If you want to talk to total strangers, then you want to be pseudonymous but you also have almost no reason to not post publicly. That's fine; there is twitter, tumblr, even HN fit that model. All pseudonymous posts, all public all the time. Discussions with strangers. Google+ can be used that way; I guess many people do. I somehow got marked as a redditor when I first signed up and I still have about 3 redditors that are strangers start following me every week, and I think it's pretty awful. There is a huge space for online interactions with people who you know in meatspace, and plenty of reason why Google would want to get into that game. Product recommendations is the first thing that comes to mind; would you rather buy an item that your real life friend says is good or that a random person on the internet says is good? That is a benefit both to you and to google if they can provide that. If you don't want to interact with people you know IRL, there are plenty of other services besides Google+ available online. Gmail remains one of them, it's a perfectly legitimate service to interact with strangers. It seems to me that you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater just because they are offering a product that you don't want to use, but that's obviously your choice. > The only reason that it would take months to implement is because they're using some authoritative method - maybe ISP customer info, or government supplied info- to correlate users to reveal real identity. This is seriously bordering on "batshit crazy" level conspiracy theory. What you are describing is impossible on so many levels; legal, technical and PR. I have no idea what they are implementing, but it's probably more along the lines of allowing people who are demonstrably known in real life by pseudonyms (like Lady Gaga, but less famous). The advantage is not from you using your real name, the advantage is from knowing the name that lots of people already know you by so all those people can easily find you on Google+. No one you know in real life would be able to find you on HN unless you specifically linked them to your profile; which again is fine, it is simply providing a different service, one where you could be talking to your best friend and never even know it.
  • 0x12 15y ago
    You can be pseudonymous to google but known to your friends, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. After all, google is just the transportation medium why should it have any knowledge on whose data it transports, as long as it reaches the intended destination it's all good.
• blantonl 15y ago
  Why on earth would you want to remain anonymous on social platforms as an entrepreneur? Frankly, most of your businesses' success rides on who is running the show, and investors and customers want to know about who is running the show. Even if you don't want a social media profile, that is OK. But to insist on an anonymous one? Why? Seriously, for an entrepreneur, what is the motivation for having an anonymous social media account? I certainly understand the issue of one's privacy, but if you are expecting to run a successful online business, your identity will need to be defined across the social media platforms. If that profile is not defined and you are a successful entrepreneur, your profile will be created for you (in wiki style).
  • mcantelon 15y ago
    Wanting support for pseudonymity doesn't mean you're always using it. I can see someone using a non-anon account by day, anon during off-time.
    • blantonl 15y ago
      I still pose the question "why?" In social media, the reason you created your account is to socialize. I don't understand why in the context of developing and managing a business, one needs an anonymous profile.
      • mcantelon 15y ago
        Because you don't want your opinions and tastes unrelated to your business to be associate with your business.
      • mladenkovacevic 15y ago
        Because an entrepreneur should also have the ability to be an activist.
      • kb101 15y ago
        Well for one, in the context of developing and managing a business, secrecy is often of paramount importance. Why does Apple go apeshit every time an engineer of theirs leaves a prototype phone in a bar? Shouldn't they just relax and enjoy the free publicity? There might be times when you want to communicate with people on a topic, without their being aware of who you are and what you do for a living, which could color the conversation or potentially even jeopardize your business. Maybe you need to maintain contacts and industry awareness without alerting your competitors to your every move or to who your clients are. Maybe you are a victim of corporate espionage. Maybe you find yourself in the unenviable position of needing to both develop and manage a business and be a whistle-blower at the same time. There are any number of potential reasons.
• brc 15y ago
  I'm right with you on this one. I personally think the old 'don't be evil' motto is looking very tatty these days. That was always going to happen, I guess, but sometimes I find it very hard to find a difference between activities of companies Google used to speak out against, and modern Google. Google used to be the thing when it was a bare bones, super fast and accurate search engine. Nowadays trying to find an organic search result is getting very early-yahoo like. Just take an objective look at the search results for an even mildly-popular term and you'll find it buried under layers of ads and Google verticals like YouTube and others. I'm envious of some of my friends who just skipped the entire social networking thing. They are gloriously offline if you try and find them. I got into social networking while working at a social networking startup, and now I don't really get much value from it anymore. But all my 'stuff' is out there, so closing the accounts now is somewhat superfluous and pointless. I think Twitter is about the only thing to use - you get to communicate but you really do get to control how much people get to know about you. As for the comments about needing to be 'out there' as an entrepreneur - I've spent a token amount of SEO effort to get myself on front page search engine results - if people want to find me, they will. But the endless linked-in requests from people you've spoken too once via email - it's all getting very tedious.
  • chugger 15y ago
    Google is a false prophet hiding behind the veil of their "don't be evil" mantra. Google is the real evil corporation but these geeks are too blind to see it. Now they know what these guys at Google are up to.
    • mladenkovacevic 15y ago
      That describes pretty much every other for-profit corporation that we all do business with on a daily basis as consumers. I don't think they're any more or any less evil than other large company. But this is just about keeping them honest on an issue that is a very big deal with most of their customers. Also I think most of these geeks are pretty smart and aware of what's going on around them.
      • 15y ago
• tptacek 15y ago
  You think Google might be using government-supplied information to figure out real identities on Google+? You seem like a pretty reasonable guy. I'm surprised you'd write something like this.
  • nirvana 15y ago
    Do you remember in 2009 when the White House issued an RFQ for companies to bid on the contract of taking Social Network feeds and analyzing them looking for "terrorists"? The national security state that has built up over the past decade is not unaware of social networks, and sees them as an excellent opportunity to look for "terrorists". I'm sure they really are looking for terrorists, but a key purpose of that process is correlating online and offline identities. It isn't very implausible that they would provide google with this information, because it would allow google to help provide them with the information they're seeking. There isn't really much of a legal privacy protection anymore for anything plausibly having to do with "national security", and social networks seem to qualify. I don't really know, I'm just deducing this from the fact that google says it will take a couple months to implement. It could be something completely else, but this is my guess.
  • eps 15y ago
    Imagine you are a state and you have this company that sits on an incredible treasure trove of personal information, something that was previously available only to your own specialized agencies. Not trying to get a hold of this information would mean not doing the best job protecting state security. So it is highly likely that Google is already very tightly fused with the state. And that would trivially explain the push for real names - Google doesn't really need it to advance their business, but it'd be incredibly useful for the state.
• stock_toaster 15y ago
  I have tried a few other mail services, but finding one I am as happy with as gmail has proven difficult. Not even considering how difficult it can be to communicate your email address verbally to someone. Most people you can just say "at gmail dot com" and they get the rest of it. I haven't had to spell out my email address one letter at a time in quite a while. Not so with some of the other hosts I have tried. The other gotcha for me is google reader. I use it constantly.
• haberman 15y ago
  > But requiring a real name, tells me that google doesn't just want to track me to advertise to me. They want to correlate my online activities with my offline identity. Do you then conclude the same thing about Facebook, which has had a "real names" policy since basically forever? "Facebook has always been based on a real-name culture. We think this leads to greater accountability and a safer and more trusted environment for our users." --Facebook spokesman Simon Axten, 2009 Is it possible that Google's social networking platform is following this principle for the same reason, and not because of some dastardly plan to build a dossier about you? I still don't understand why Facebook gets a pass on this issue, when they have had a "real names" policy for much longer.
  • bad_user 15y ago
    Who says Facebook gets a pass? Everybody thought Google+ was going to be a better Facebook, remember? But no, it's the same crap.
  • rednaught 15y ago
    As bad_user said, who said Facebook is getting a pass? Facebook started out with very limited reach requiring a university affiliation. Seemed pretty safe and close-knit at the time. Membership has grown to anyone and privacy has slid ever since.
  • rst 15y ago
    Facebook gets a pass in part because they've been a lot less aggressive in enforcing the policy. They'll shut down a pseudonymous account when someone brings it to their attention (most notoriously, the Chinese writer who was going on Facebook by his longtime pen name, Michael Anti), but they don't go searching them out. The upshot is that pseudonyms used mainly within circles of friends can exist without getting hassled --- to the point that this commenter on an earlier jwz post, with numerous pseudonymous friends, refused to believe that Facebook even had a "real names" policy at all: http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/08/nym-wars/#comment-93494 http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/08/nym-wars/#comment-93494 (The largest such circle I'm aware of involves dozens of kids with pseudonymous Facebook accounts at a local middle school; I heard about this from a parent, who in turn is aware of it because their kid sometimes forgets to log out. So much for Zuckerberg's line about pseudonymity being a marginal concern of old fogies.) They certainly could be more aggressive in tying Facebook accounts to real people, for instance, by requiring everyone to "verify" with a credit card or mobile number after a certain period of time. But they don't.
• magicalist 15y ago
  This is seriously silly. I agree with the other poster that I normally see sane things written by you, so I don't totally understand where this is coming from. Moreover, why is this being held to the top of this comment section? (I guess the subject brings in people that agree) To respond: First, it doesn't follow at all that the only reason to include a real name is to correlate online activity with your real life person. For instance, the reasoning could be exactly what they are saying it is. Now, there's no reason to trust corporations (large or small, startups certainly aren't white knights in this area), but that does not preclude that as a possible answer. Second, do you honestly think, after keeping your email account with google for (presumably) 7 years and doing every single web search through them for 11 years that they need some "authoritative method" to figure out your identity?? I could see if you're starting an account today, but your conclusion here just makes no sense at all. You trusted a freaking privacy policy for all these years, but now that they offer pseudonyms for google+ accounts, the only possible conclusion is that they are now partners with the NSA to do....some unspecified evil? I'm trying to stay civil here, but I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
  • rednaught 15y ago
    Trust is ever-changing. For instance, if you trust sane thoughts or actions from an entity only to one day perceive that the same source creates not so-sane thoughts or actions, do you lose trust in that entity? Perspective is an interesting thing just as is your pseudonym here.
    • magicalist 15y ago
      My point is perhaps narrower than you are seeing. It was not that trust levels don't change, or advocating for some level of trust. Just that his conclusions do not follow from the evidence presented, to the point where the connection borders on the irrational (to me). I don't think my username here is particularly interesting, just a variation on a typical one that was already taken.
      • rohern 15y ago
        I agree entirely with magicalist. I've tried to get my head around the stink about real names on Google+ since it first went crashing through the internet, but it seems like people shouting about teacups being too small. The point of Google+ seems to be to do networking with your friends and co-workers. Why would one want to be anonymous in this environment? You're going to anonymously share pictures of yourself? I do not get it. If it's a pseudonym that you just happen to really like, then okay -- maybe you've kept it since your days on AIM and are really fond of it, after all things like JHR1987ILOVETHEBEATLES are pretty cool -- but other than that what is the point of this? It seems like wanting the right to carry a gun in space. It's not going to do you any good, so why are you fighting about it?
• csmt 15y ago
  I agree with you nirvana. I have been using Google search for 12 years and Gmail for 7 years. But recently Google has been trying to do each and everything. Google+ tied with enormous Google adsense+display ads reach is scary. Google has recently started putting +1 button on their display ads. And may be soon they will put +1 button on text ads. And then any site you visit with Google ads, Google will know who you are. More and more I am feeling Google's focus is ads not social, mobile, etc. Google+ and Android is just there to reach out and target ads better, which makes me sick :(
  • deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  • macavity23 15y ago
    Of course Google's focus is ads - that's how they make their money. Why would you expect them to focus on anything else? Remember, if you can't see what the product is - it's YOU. :-)
  • rohern 15y ago
    At first blush, targeted advertising seems scary. Upon a second look, who cares? This isn't the Gestapo, they're trying to sell you hamburgers. So what if they know that you like Orson Scott Card? I like that Amazon occasionally introduces me to a book I will enjoy, that's a benefit to me. I only look at ads for ~.3% of the time I'm on a website anyway, so what difference does it make to me if they're more to my taste?
• idspispopd 15y ago
  For a long time I thought that google's services were "free", a nice exchange for being advertised to in response to searches. However now they're scrambling to win the emerging market of following consumers around the web and they're pulling all the strings they have to get a competitive advantage. It's now so ridiculous that we recommend web clients not to use Google Analytics - as it's providing google the ability to assess visitors to our client's site, only for the 'highest bidder'(namely a bigger competitor) to be able to advertise to them in response, squashing the smaller businesses who can't afford to drop 200k on advertising. It lets whoever has the most money to pour into google's coffers effectively trample their competitors. Often we're using Google Analytics because our client isn't able to afford much to begin with. To me, it's unsurprisingly that google dropped their "don't be evil" motto a few years back. This product lets people mark themselves as the little guy so the cashed up big-guns can stomp them out before they become a threat.
  • j_col 15y ago
    It's interesting what you say about Google Analytics, I've always suspected that but then dismissed it as my personal paranoia. Is there any way to prove such a theory, or are there any studies into this available online?
  • mdwrigh2 15y ago
    > To me, it's unsurprisingly that google dropped their "don't be evil" motto a few years back. Wait, when did this happen? They appear to still have it, at least on their investor's code of conduct page[1]. [1]: http://investor.google.com/corporate/code-of-conduct.html http://investor.google.com/corporate/code-of-conduct.html
    • idspispopd 15y ago
      Back in 2009. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/foremski/google-drops-dont-be-evil-motto/435?tag=mantle_skin;content http://www.zdnet.com/blog/foremski/google-drops-dont-be-evil... http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2009/04/google_quietly.php http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2009/04/goog...
• mayanksinghal 15y ago
  [I am surprized that this post is still on the top!] Here are my comments: > I'm removing myself from google. I'm setting up mail services elsewhere, I'm migrating my Google Apps and App Engine accounts to other services. I've stopped using Plus, and as I move things elsewhere I'm deleting them from google. Gmail Accounts are still 'anonymous' and largely disconnected from plus accounts. If a person is really bothered by the pseudonym policy they can chose to continue using other services but plus. > But requiring a real name, tells me that google doesn't just want to track me to advertise to me. They want to correlate my online activities with my offline identity. Well, if you had seen other comments, there are 2 reasons they have given for not allowing pseudonyms: (A) User behaviour is better and more dignified when real identities are used (Youtube comments vs Facebook comments on various blogs. HN is a niche community of professionals - doesn't count) (B) They cannot provide a fake support of pseudonyms - if they do they will provide full support > ...online activities with my offline identity Possibly. Which is still fine for most people. As their online actions shadow their offline behaviour. Refer to previous point on how they think it will help the online community > The search results stuff There was a recent article on HN itself I think, where this issue was discussed. Google is now focusing less on the technologically skilled users and trying to serve a larger mass. For them, autocorrect and instant are good. Again, this is NOT the topic of discussion here. You can turn off some of the features, I guess. >PS: Last I remember, they were adding features using which you could opt out from analytics, adsense and other forms of tracking. If the direction you are suggesting is true, either Google has two very very different instances in existence or you will never be able to trust anyone. And by that, I mean that you will be in deep unrest as some distrust is necessary.
  • vidarh 15y ago
    > (A) User behaviour is better and more dignified when real identities are used But they are not enforcing real identities, but real sounding names, which is the worst of both worlds: It makes people more likely to think they are dealing with real names, while it is trivial for those who want to use pseudonyms to continue doing so if their purpose is to be trolls. > Which is still fine for most people. That it's fine for "most people" still means it will effectively silence a lot of people on Google+ that a lot of other people would like to be able to communicate with. It massively reduces the value of the service for me, and others.
• markokocic 15y ago
  Good points. Just out of curiosity, are you moving to another webmail and which one? Ease of use and convenience of using Gmail is the only reason why I haven't switched yet.
• tsycho 15y ago
  I have been considering this recently as well, and exploring the alternatives... * Search - DDG is good enough most of the time * Google+ - I can live without this, no biggie * Reader - I love it, but it's not critical. Any suggestions for alternatives? * Gmail - This is a big one. I don't want to use Hotmail/Yahoo either because that is just jumping from one frying pan to another. So anyone.....are you willing to build a DDG for Gmail? I am willing to pay for it as well. But I need a large inbox (5GB+), speed, reliability, great spam protection, priority inbox, don't sell my data, no personalized ads....and my money is yours :) I might even be willing to work with you on this, just don't have the time/inclination to do this alone. * Google apps for business - at the moment, I just use the email feature of this extensively, so once again, the Gmail alternative can work here. * Google analytics - there are pretty good competitors out there, though not necessarily free (but that's okay) So in my opinion, apart from email, I think it's possible to move off Google's services without disrupting your life.
  • Kototama 15y ago
    You could try Netvibes, they have a news reader which was good enough for me to make the switch. You can have two different views. Check the second and third screenshots of this page: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/netvibes-wasabi-a-blow-your-socks-off-feed-reader/ http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/netvibes-wasabi-a-blow-your-soc...
  • ajross 15y ago
    Just host your own mail. You're never going to get those requirements met by a service. The incentives don't match. Spamassassin can't match gmail, but even for my address (in use for 15 years!) it's reasonable: maybe 6-10 false negatives per day. Whether moving off google specifically is really that useful, I'm mixed. No other cloud providers have a better record certainly. I guess I don't see the logic, except as a knee-jerk "enemy of the week" thing (mild troll: you're an iPhone user, right?). Getting your data out of the cloud in general makes more sense to me, but is a lot more difficult.
    • Symmetry 15y ago
      Spam filtering is just one from a long list of features that Gmail has that I don't know of any other email service providing, though.