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Sounds cool in theory but almost impossible and impractical. For example, you can have a newsletter but google could decide your domain belongs in Spam forever.

Sounds cool in theory but almost impossible and impractical. For example, you can have a newsletter but google could decide your domain belongs in Spam forever. There goes that “owned platform”

convolvatron 4y ago
I don't think there is any fix for that except for people to deliberatively and incrementally take that power from their hands. not betting on the outcome. I guess the old real hope is that 15 years from now when google is finally no longer relevant, that smaller business and individuals diffuse that control more broadly. or we get google 2.0
c2h5oh 4y ago
Well, technically it's still an owned platform, just in this context it's a platform that got owned by google.
gerdesj 4y ago
From your comment you seem to think that Google somehow owns your arse. Perhaps you use them for your email and other functions and fail to see over the top of their walled garden? There is no doubt that Google largely own Search and several other functions but they really don't own the internet as a whole. Often we see sad articles on HN about how the monster in the room twats someone into oblivion thanks to a stupid "AI" making a judgement call that a human would be embarrassed about. To avoid or perhaps slightly mitigate that fate is well documented hereabouts and elsewhere. For what it is worth (in my experience) Google is not inimical on an arbitrary basis. They really don't decide anything - it's all algorithms, pixie dust and bollocks. Avoid that and you are golden. As it turns out, I've been able to run many "local" email systems and even my own little IT company quite happily for over two decades, without giving much thought to Google. We do have a newsletter email that we send out too. Some of my customers fly quite close to the edge of the spam/ham boundary. I operate in the UK. Bizarrely, I can quite happily run SMTP from a domestic FTTC connection here, with a little care.
- sneak 4y ago
  What GP meant is that Google owns the email of all the people you would send mail to, and can decide that all messages from you go unseen by your recipients.
nmilo 4y ago
The bin forever? I don't know anyone who gets their news and blog posts straight from Google search. Google can't stop you from putting up an RSS feed, sharing the link to friends, or posting it to content aggregators like HN or Reddit, which I think are far more important for building a real audience than Google search.
- bacon_waffle 4y ago
  I interpreted the reference as being to Google's email product, not search. As a techie (but not email expert), I have tried to run a couple small mailing lists for community projects over the years, and wound up giving up because of gmail/hotmail/etc's aggressive spam filters catching too many of our legit emails.

Sounds cool in theory but almost impossible and impractical. For example, you can have a newsletter but google could decide your domain belongs in Spam forever. There goes that “owned platform”

convolvatron 4y ago

I don't think there is any fix for that except for people to deliberatively and incrementally take that power from their hands. not betting on the outcome. I guess the old real hope is that 15 years from now when google is finally no longer relevant, that smaller business and individuals diffuse that control more broadly. or we get google 2.0

c2h5oh 4y ago

Well, technically it's still an owned platform, just in this context it's a platform that got owned by google.

gerdesj 4y ago

From your comment you seem to think that Google somehow owns your arse. Perhaps you use them for your email and other functions and fail to see over the top of their walled garden? There is no doubt that Google largely own Search and several other functions but they really don't own the internet as a whole. Often we see sad articles on HN about how the monster in the room twats someone into oblivion thanks to a stupid "AI" making a judgement call that a human would be embarrassed about. To avoid or perhaps slightly mitigate that fate is well documented hereabouts and elsewhere. For what it is worth (in my experience) Google is not inimical on an arbitrary basis. They really don't decide anything - it's all algorithms, pixie dust and bollocks. Avoid that and you are golden. As it turns out, I've been able to run many "local" email systems and even my own little IT company quite happily for over two decades, without giving much thought to Google. We do have a newsletter email that we send out too. Some of my customers fly quite close to the edge of the spam/ham boundary. I operate in the UK. Bizarrely, I can quite happily run SMTP from a domestic FTTC connection here, with a little care.

sneak 4y ago
What GP meant is that Google owns the email of all the people you would send mail to, and can decide that all messages from you go unseen by your recipients.

nmilo 4y ago

The bin forever? I don't know anyone who gets their news and blog posts straight from Google search. Google can't stop you from putting up an RSS feed, sharing the link to friends, or posting it to content aggregators like HN or Reddit, which I think are far more important for building a real audience than Google search.

bacon_waffle 4y ago
I interpreted the reference as being to Google's email product, not search. As a techie (but not email expert), I have tried to run a couple small mailing lists for community projects over the years, and wound up giving up because of gmail/hotmail/etc's aggressive spam filters catching too many of our legit emails.