5 ms·

I have ambivalent feelings about this. All in all, this is my stuff.

by lukasm 13y ago

jmathai 13y ago
Agreed but it takes time, effort and money to make sure that you can take your stuff with you.
- ithkuil 13y ago
  Yes, after all, you already could access your email via imap and do the backup by yourself.
  - bradbatt 13y ago
    My mom couldn't. Nor about 95% of the rest of my friends and family. But clicking export and then download? All of them can do that.
    - Groxx 13y ago
      Really? Every email application I've used in the past few years asks for your name / email address / password on the first wizard-page. They automatically detect gmail, hook everything up, and start downloading without any further steps.
      - smithzvk 13y ago
        Yes, to the point that it is very easy to crash Thunderbird if you blindly hook it into your GMail account.
        Groxx 13y ago
        I've never had that problem. I have plenty of other annoyances with Thunderbird (so much that I'm paying for what's essentially a custom UI), but it's usually stable. It hasn't complained when I've hooked up a half-dozen accounts, collectively about a half-million emails, and it did everything reasonably quickly.
        smithzvk 13y ago
        Hmmm... not seeing the same behavior today. There have been upgrades in the meantime, of course, but I doubt that this was addressed. Must have been something off that day. It did run off and start downloading the header of every single message in my GMail account, which I would rather it didn't as I really only care about the mail that I have received recently (I only use Thunderbird for encrypted emails but the web interface otherwise). That is still annoying, but since I don't want to bad mouth people with false information: Let the record show that Thunderbird no longer becomes unresponsive for me when accessing my GMail account, must have been a glitch on that day when I first set up GMail in Thunderbird.
        Groxx 13y ago
        haha, I don't mean to imply that it's impossible that it did that, just that it shouldn't be normal :) usually bugs like that are fixed pretty quickly, especially for something as widely-used as gmail.
    - ithkuil 13y ago
      That's exactly why this thing is useful and appreciated.
  - tedunangst 13y ago
    Until you get the "lockdown in sector 4" error message and have to sit in the timeout corner to start again. It took me over 48 hours to actually download all my mail out of gmail. (about two years ago.)
  - outworlder 13y ago
    Have you actually tried? There is throttling in place, meaning it can take ages depending on your account size.
resu_nimda 13y ago
To play devil's advocate - you willingly gave it to them, with almost zero contractual expectations. In a technical sense it is their stuff, and they have graciously implemented a feature allowing you to retrieve a copy of it. I definitely agree that it's the "right" thing to do, but this kind of comment speaks of entitlement and lack of personal responsibility. They're offering a service, they don't have any inherent obligation, and you can choose not to use it.
- fragsworth 13y ago
  Absolutely not. The implicit agreement is that they provide a service to hold, manage, and use your stuff, and you give up a certain amount of privacy by allowing them to see it - and they get to advertise at you while you use the service, and maybe make money in other ways off your information. So in other words, it really is your stuff. Imagine if they locked your accounts from you out of malice - it's legal gray area, since I don't believe there have been any court cases, but I'm pretty sure the result would be obvious. You would easily be able to sue them to get back your access to it.
  - resu_nimda 13y ago
    Why would you have the expectation of an implicit agreement? There is no implicit agreement, that's an unfounded assumption by the user. I imagine they could completely shut down all unpaid gmail access at any moment with no legal implications (though I haven't read the fine print, and in that extreme case the courts would probably step in just to keep the country running smoothly). What precedent is there to support your hypothetical lawsuit? I kind of disagree, they would just get a lot of negative PR.
    - rhizome 13y ago
      If Google simply shut down Gmail, their stockholders would pretty much fire the entire leadership of the company. It would be professional suicide to approve something like that.
      - 13y ago

I have ambivalent feelings about this. All in all, this is my stuff.

by lukasm 13y ago

I have ambivalent feelings about this. All in all, this is my stuff.

jmathai 13y ago

Agreed but it takes time, effort and money to make sure that you can take your stuff with you.

ithkuil 13y ago
Yes, after all, you already could access your email via imap and do the backup by yourself.
- bradbatt 13y ago
  My mom couldn't. Nor about 95% of the rest of my friends and family. But clicking export and then download? All of them can do that.
  - Groxx 13y ago
    Really? Every email application I've used in the past few years asks for your name / email address / password on the first wizard-page. They automatically detect gmail, hook everything up, and start downloading without any further steps.
    - smithzvk 13y ago
      Yes, to the point that it is very easy to crash Thunderbird if you blindly hook it into your GMail account.
      - Groxx 13y ago
        I've never had that problem. I have plenty of other annoyances with Thunderbird (so much that I'm paying for what's essentially a custom UI), but it's usually stable. It hasn't complained when I've hooked up a half-dozen accounts, collectively about a half-million emails, and it did everything reasonably quickly.
        smithzvk 13y ago
        Hmmm... not seeing the same behavior today. There have been upgrades in the meantime, of course, but I doubt that this was addressed. Must have been something off that day. It did run off and start downloading the header of every single message in my GMail account, which I would rather it didn't as I really only care about the mail that I have received recently (I only use Thunderbird for encrypted emails but the web interface otherwise). That is still annoying, but since I don't want to bad mouth people with false information: Let the record show that Thunderbird no longer becomes unresponsive for me when accessing my GMail account, must have been a glitch on that day when I first set up GMail in Thunderbird.
        Groxx 13y ago
        haha, I don't mean to imply that it's impossible that it did that, just that it shouldn't be normal :) usually bugs like that are fixed pretty quickly, especially for something as widely-used as gmail.
  - ithkuil 13y ago
    That's exactly why this thing is useful and appreciated.
- tedunangst 13y ago
  Until you get the "lockdown in sector 4" error message and have to sit in the timeout corner to start again. It took me over 48 hours to actually download all my mail out of gmail. (about two years ago.)
- outworlder 13y ago
  Have you actually tried? There is throttling in place, meaning it can take ages depending on your account size.

resu_nimda 13y ago

To play devil's advocate - you willingly gave it to them, with almost zero contractual expectations. In a technical sense it is their stuff, and they have graciously implemented a feature allowing you to retrieve a copy of it. I definitely agree that it's the "right" thing to do, but this kind of comment speaks of entitlement and lack of personal responsibility. They're offering a service, they don't have any inherent obligation, and you can choose not to use it.

fragsworth 13y ago
Absolutely not. The implicit agreement is that they provide a service to hold, manage, and use your stuff, and you give up a certain amount of privacy by allowing them to see it - and they get to advertise at you while you use the service, and maybe make money in other ways off your information. So in other words, it really is your stuff. Imagine if they locked your accounts from you out of malice - it's legal gray area, since I don't believe there have been any court cases, but I'm pretty sure the result would be obvious. You would easily be able to sue them to get back your access to it.
- resu_nimda 13y ago
  Why would you have the expectation of an implicit agreement? There is no implicit agreement, that's an unfounded assumption by the user. I imagine they could completely shut down all unpaid gmail access at any moment with no legal implications (though I haven't read the fine print, and in that extreme case the courts would probably step in just to keep the country running smoothly). What precedent is there to support your hypothetical lawsuit? I kind of disagree, they would just get a lot of negative PR.
  - rhizome 13y ago
    If Google simply shut down Gmail, their stockholders would pretty much fire the entire leadership of the company. It would be professional suicide to approve something like that.
    - 13y ago