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I would love to use a different email provider (I'd be prepared to pay up to 10$ a year for it), but it would need to be as fast and as good at searching and ha

I would love to use a different email provider (I'd be prepared to pay up to 10$ a year for it), but it would need to be as fast and as good at searching and have at least as much space as gmail. I'd like to be using a google docs alternative that was at least as performant and supported. Other players are actually now catching up on search and maps, but even so, it's difficult to find products that are as good as google. I was hoping this article was going to give me suggestions on how to 'unplug' but in fact it had a very low information content.

huhtenberg 14y ago
> 10$ a year Woah, really? You must be really wealthy to shell out this much for an essential service. Try this - say, someone would be willing to offer you free heating for your place, but in return they would install discreet cameras in every corner of the house and be scanning and retaining a copy of every piece of mail that goes in or out and every phone call. Moreover, they will not only record your life, but also that of your guests even if these people would've objected to that had they have known it's happening. Would you take this offer? Rhetorical question.
- ubercow13 14y ago
  I am sure Google make less than $10 a year out of my using gmail as it is and they can still offer the service they do.
- jasonlotito 14y ago
  Well, I'd let them install devices to track my heating usage. Just like I accept that Google, who is handling my email, will check that email for relevant content to display ads. However, if Gmail was trying to access to other things that it wasn't associated with, we'd have a problem. Sort of like your "rhetorical question."
  - huhtenberg 14y ago
    Fine, replace "heating" with "mail services". Would you be OK with letting a company to scan and retain a copy of every letter you sent and receive in exchange for being able to not use stamps? Bonus question - do you think your correspondents would be OK with it if they knew you had such arrangement?
    - jmillikin 14y ago
      Gmail is a webmail provider. They have to retain a copy of every email sent/received, or you would only be able to read them once. They have to scan email, because otherwise you couldn't search them. It is easy to set up Gmail such that Google doesn't have access to the text content of your mail -- simply install a desktop mail client (e.g. Thunderbird) and enable encryption. But now you've essentially disabled every feature of Gmail except for being a dumb SMTP relay.
      - huhtenberg 14y ago
        This is all fine and dandy (and obvious), but the point is that Google is not just a webmail provider. When someone switches to Gmail, it affects me, because it lets Google track and profile me that much better. Hence the original comment - "unplugging" from Google is basically impossible, because of the proliferation of Gmail use.
        jmillikin 14y ago
        If you're sending someone an email, Google keeping track of "John Doe emails huhtenberg@whatever.com" is much less of a threat than all of the dozens of intermediate parties that will record your email indefinitely.
        jasonlotito 14y ago
        This would be a problem if GMail was the only means by which to contact people. It's not. You have a choice to use email. The truth is, when you contact someone, you don't know what is happening to that information. Gmail, if anything, makes it more clear than most other means of communication.
- kybernetikos 14y ago
  I ran a personal email server for years and I currently have a server I can run things on, so I can set up a passable system myself for next to nothing. However, it won't be as good as gmail for reliability, spam, speed of searching, integration with my android phone, etc. The point isn't that a good email service has extremely high utility to me, it's that I have a large number of options with a cost of nearly free. That's why I wouldn't be prepared to pay a lot for it. Not to mention the fact that I hate recurring costs.
bobcattr 14y ago
I use lavabit. It's cheaper than $10 a year and has a far superior web interface to googles. It uses squirrel mail.
- kybernetikos 14y ago
  Thanks for the suggestion. How fast is the web interface? How good is the search?
  - gtt 14y ago
    No unicode support in web interface and for some people I know this is instantfail. And more importantly it is a market opportunity.

huhtenberg 14y ago

> 10$ a year Woah, really? You must be really wealthy to shell out this much for an essential service. Try this - say, someone would be willing to offer you free heating for your place, but in return they would install discreet cameras in every corner of the house and be scanning and retaining a copy of every piece of mail that goes in or out and every phone call. Moreover, they will not only record your life, but also that of your guests even if these people would've objected to that had they have known it's happening. Would you take this offer? Rhetorical question.

ubercow13 14y ago
I am sure Google make less than $10 a year out of my using gmail as it is and they can still offer the service they do.
jasonlotito 14y ago
Well, I'd let them install devices to track my heating usage. Just like I accept that Google, who is handling my email, will check that email for relevant content to display ads. However, if Gmail was trying to access to other things that it wasn't associated with, we'd have a problem. Sort of like your "rhetorical question."
- huhtenberg 14y ago
  Fine, replace "heating" with "mail services". Would you be OK with letting a company to scan and retain a copy of every letter you sent and receive in exchange for being able to not use stamps? Bonus question - do you think your correspondents would be OK with it if they knew you had such arrangement?
  - jmillikin 14y ago
    Gmail is a webmail provider. They have to retain a copy of every email sent/received, or you would only be able to read them once. They have to scan email, because otherwise you couldn't search them. It is easy to set up Gmail such that Google doesn't have access to the text content of your mail -- simply install a desktop mail client (e.g. Thunderbird) and enable encryption. But now you've essentially disabled every feature of Gmail except for being a dumb SMTP relay.
    - huhtenberg 14y ago
      This is all fine and dandy (and obvious), but the point is that Google is not just a webmail provider. When someone switches to Gmail, it affects me, because it lets Google track and profile me that much better. Hence the original comment - "unplugging" from Google is basically impossible, because of the proliferation of Gmail use.
      - jmillikin 14y ago
        If you're sending someone an email, Google keeping track of "John Doe emails huhtenberg@whatever.com" is much less of a threat than all of the dozens of intermediate parties that will record your email indefinitely.
      - jasonlotito 14y ago
        This would be a problem if GMail was the only means by which to contact people. It's not. You have a choice to use email. The truth is, when you contact someone, you don't know what is happening to that information. Gmail, if anything, makes it more clear than most other means of communication.
kybernetikos 14y ago
I ran a personal email server for years and I currently have a server I can run things on, so I can set up a passable system myself for next to nothing. However, it won't be as good as gmail for reliability, spam, speed of searching, integration with my android phone, etc. The point isn't that a good email service has extremely high utility to me, it's that I have a large number of options with a cost of nearly free. That's why I wouldn't be prepared to pay a lot for it. Not to mention the fact that I hate recurring costs.

bobcattr 14y ago

I use lavabit. It's cheaper than $10 a year and has a far superior web interface to googles. It uses squirrel mail.

kybernetikos 14y ago
Thanks for the suggestion. How fast is the web interface? How good is the search?
- gtt 14y ago
  No unicode support in web interface and for some people I know this is instantfail. And more importantly it is a market opportunity.