This is ham-handed and frankly not nearly as funny as I'm sure it seemed on campus.
If you want premium levels of email service, then sign on with a premium email service provider.
Which is to say, you're not wrong, but maybe not seeing the point I was going for. Google's drawn my negative attention an awful lot lately in terms of whether I'd feel comfortable recommending them to somebody who had somehow remained untouched by Google, and I found the "intervention" conceit to be going too far in terms of tone-deafness.
No sarcasm. In the meantime, I'll stick to Gmail.
Sorry, but using the "no third party blah blah blah" is just a strawman looking for a match.
I can understand that Google is trying to collect as much user data in as accurate way as possible, but recently it's been increasingly annoying how they are trying to fix what's not broken.
I have multiple google accounts for different purposes, and recently Google started disallowing multi-user access to their sites. This is extremely inconvenient and annoying for me that I'm even thinking about switching to another email provider. In fact I have already started using ymail for certain purposes.
I might be a minority for now, but I see this annoyance will only accelerate in the future for even ordinary people as Google tries to fight against Facebook with identity.
What do you all think?
But I find it creepy knowing that Google is keeping an eye on everything I do. Therefore, I started to diversify: use Bing for search, use Bing or Yahoo! maps, never stay logged into Google services... actually these are the only Google services I use regularly, so that's pretty much it. I do have to say, for searching programming stuff Bing is kinda "meh" but livable.
I do have a question: suppose you sign into your Google account, and now your account is correlated with your IP address, then you sign out. I wonder if Google keeps track of searches from your IP address while you are signed out and correlates it with your account (perhaps with a little less weight)?
Edit: Forgot to mention Android. Definitely more than creepy.
Also, even if Microsoft is collecting information, it means MS will have only some of the info.
What I'm annoyed about is that they seem like they are trying to commit suicide. I can understand they want to "leverage" their existing assets, but the sacrifice is too much.
As you said, there's no problem if you use IMAP and POP access with your desktop client, and therein lies the problem. Google is supposed to bring everything to the cloud. They used to be good at it. But they are now going backwards and making people become dependent on devices. I already see many people using the mail client Sparrow just for that reason.
I think they've lost their mind being too obsessed with Facebook and Twitter.
Internet in 2020: Using a Google Laptop to access the Google.com with a Google browser, using a Google search engine that searches mostly through Google services (other services died), talking to people via Google talk, phoning them via Google Voice, checking you Google email, managing your documents on Google docs, your schedule on Google calendar, share your pictures on Google picasa, your videos on Google youtube, your life on Google+
Heck, you don't see it coming yet?! What do you need more?
Internet will be Google and world domination is rather near. Yeah I know it sounds funny but it's not actually just a joke - it looks pretty damn much near to our actually present already.
Use a Microsoft Windows laptop to access Bing with IE, use Bing and Hotmail, talk to people on Windows Messenger, [no GVoice equivalent], checking Hotmail, managing docs on Live or Office 365, etc, etc. What a bunch of nonsense.
[no GVoice equivalent]
Maybe that's just me, but I also have never heard of anyone using the "Invite to Gmail" feature (at least since registration is open to everyone).
Interesting nonetheless, not something I'd care to use. Any of my friends / family not on GMail probably wouldn't understand the email anyway, and would probably assume it was spam.
Like Sweep, I can delete or move all the emails from a certain -- or multiple -- addresses in a few clicks. I can even check a single dialog box and make this in to a permanent rule.
If I mark a message as Junk, but they're in my contact book, I get a check box that says "I think this person was hacked!" ... I have no idea what it does, but it seems like a neat idea in theory. Plenty of times I've gotten junk email from someone I know because they were compromised on some level.
And those are just the features I've noticed, because I don't use Hotmail as my primary email contact.
Google has set up a dedicated website to help push people towards using their email service.
That's just one side of the medal. The other is that Google wants people to stop using their current email provider and move to them.
"Save your friends from YOUNAMEIT"
Maybe we'll also see more sites that help you save your friends from continuing to use Gmail, Facebook, Skype,...
Plus I've found it unreliable with certain ISPs, mail just doesn't arrive. Black holed, never making it to the spam folder, not being bounced back.
So sorry its amatuer mail and I'll let people choose there own life style, but I will not recomend it for work related stuff.
Also hotmail has caught up on the spam issue, there isn't a real reason to switch except for ego.
What's with the Gotham though? I know H&FJ keep talking about making their fonts embeddable one day, but it hasn't happened yet: http://www.typography.com/ask/faq.php?faqID=126#Faq_126
The service looks for emails that end with @gmail.com, but fail to take into account companies with email provided by Google Apps.
Well, better send them a FreedomBox for Christmas, then.