Gmail is the gateway to their entire product portfolio; no way they’d kill it.
this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
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Google getting rid of gmail would have to be hands down one of the biggest internet shakeups since its inception. Gmail has been the de facto free email service for almost two decades now. They have like a 53% market share of emails in the U.S.
Also the shitstorm it would cause, when you can't access an account that you used Gmail to sign up.
Maybe it would finally force the surprising number of websites out there that don't allow for email changes to change their policies. I recently switched every account I could to a personal domain and I couldn't believe how many just don't allow for it.
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With the terms of service for their “anti spam” and “productivity auto-sorting” features, they must gather SO much data about people by reading their emails - there’s no way they’d turn that off lol
Ugh, I've gotta switch from Gmail, any good email recommendations?
Proton mail is the peak email service money can buy (it's also avilable for free but i suggest paying)
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I dunno Google has a cancelation tick so like i wouldn't be that surprised
I would imagine Gmail is the primary reason people create an account with Google.
Yeah that and youtube I'd think
I mean... I don't expect them to scrap GMail, but their reassurance means nothing. IIRC they said the same thing about Stadia.
They make too much money from data harvesting to scrap Gmail, though.
Stadia was destined to fail though. I still remember the key note in which it was introduced. The CEO started with the lines "I don't play many games, but ... ".
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Why would they voluntarily lose access to all my personal information?
I just now created a Proton mail account just minutes before seeing this. I think I'm glad I did.
I've been thinking about de-googling myself for some time now. After being with them since they created the Gmail service in the early 2000s, I practically have my whole adult life on Google. I've been using drive and photos as well for as long as it has existed. It's going to be a lot of work to sort through all of this data and start over on a new service.
I don't trust Google anymore over anything. Whether it's privacy (though I was pretty naive to think I had any in the first place) or their ability to keep a service up long enough for anyone to commit.
It's a shame because they started as a really nice company with their do no evil motto with great services and then everything went to shit. Even their killer feature, the search engine, has become complete shit.
I agree, but just a counterpoint...
Back in the day, after Hotmail and Yahoo! email but before Gmail, people started becoming really skeptical of emails from @xyz.net and started treating anything that didn't come from a major email provider as "spam."
I've kept my old gmail accounts around for "spam" and "work" respectively because despite people (finally) waking up to the privacy issues of Gmail, I cannot trust that emails with a @protonmail.com address won't be viewed skeptically by people recieving the email. Especially in regards to jobs. Unless you're in Cybersecurity and taking privacy seriously is your professional obligation, you're not going to run into tons of people who view ProtonMail very favorably.
De-googling is good, but don't leave yourself stranded and ignored by people because you had the audacity to use a different fucking service.
I don’t think that’s really much of a concern. I can’t imagine any world where a proton.me email will cause you any issues. I’ve had mine for years now, in fact on my resume and job applications I used my own domain’s email addresses and I’ve never experienced a problem. What you’re saying isn’t entirely impossible but it’s definitely not a problem you’re very likely to run into. You’re not likely to run into a single person that cares about your proton email much less one that views it disfavorably.
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Killing Gmail would be like killing search or youtube, they would NOT dare.
Yeah, I'd drop Fi, Pixle, and use of Google in a second. Gmail is the backbone of everything Google is. Had it since day 1 and will have it until it disappears, and then I will disappear into the woods forever.
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It's funny that most comments here are debating this seriously when the article (that apparently nobody bothered to read) clearly says it was a hoax.
Doesn't matter. It's in the aether now that "Google promised Gmail won't go anywhere," so it will definitely be eliminated. People believing a Google product won't be discontinued is the Google product kiss of death.
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Gmail is untouchable. That more than any other product has kept me tethered to Google since 2004. That being said I wouldn't be surprised if some greedy, future regime at Google botches it up.
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Any of these large business coming out to explicitly say "this will not happen" is concerning.
Especially Google who is famous for randomly getting bored of developing and then suddenly cancelling services
I mean this would be insane. Gmail is probably the most used email service in the world, and even though I'm not a Google fanboy, it's also probably the best.
What are people gonna use? Outlook? Fuck that. I only use that piece of trash because of my job.
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Exactly, it's like if a company said "We're not going to launch a bomb, trust us"... It would totally mean that they're considering launching a bomb
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The biggest thing holding me to Google is Gmail and photos.
They scrap Gmail and I'm literally out. No more Google accounts, except to use an android.
Google offers very little value to the consumer these days
I bought a domain and started using it for all my email last year. It’s the best and I suggest it to everyone.
The combination of your own domain, Fastmail, and Bitwarden is powerful.
You can move email services by changing a few DNS records and Fastmail has an API that Bitwarden hits to create new masked email addresses using your domain so every site gets a different email address. Start getting spam? You know exactly who leaked/sold your info and you can now send that address right to the trash.
Is google photos free?
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One thing that's very clear to me is that when a tech company says something is "here to stay," it doesn't actually mean it's here to stay.
I’m starting to worry Lemmy users read the article at a lower rate than redditors.
Of course it is. I know Google scraps a lot of things, but Gmail is for the most part liked and, far more importantly to Google, is an absolute treasure trove of personalised, easily parsable data, yet nowhere near as costly to maintain as, say, YouTube.
The fact that after making search, an email provider was their next big project, shows how serious they are about it.
Why does anyone think Google would shut down Gmail? You'd have to be stupid to think that they would shut down the most used email service on earth, one that is deeply integrated into Google as an ecosystem.
Google does have a reputation for unnecessary and/or prematurely killing everything it makes so I wouldn't blame people for believing an email that looked like it was from Google saying that Gmail is shutting down in August
They shut down services that aren’t profitable. Gmail is highly profitable as it’s an important lever to identify people’s interests, which they use to sell ads at a higher price. They’d have to be stupid to shut it down.
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Next week: Fires 60% of the gmail staff
The week after: Google introduces AI Mail that will receive and automatically respond to all mail. This will happen without the users' consent or knowledge. In fact, users won't be able to access their mail anymore at all "for security reasons".
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Exactly what a company about to shut down their email product would say.
Stupid question: what the shit do you do with your 15 years of communication history if your email provider falls off a cliff?
You pop3 your mails or keep a local copy of you imap them. That'll make sure you don't lose any historical communication.
As soon as you start doubting if the service with persist, start switching services over to a new address, logins first.
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Nothing you can do. This is the implicit (and sometimes explicit) contract we have with cloud services, that they'll keep our data safe and keep the lights on forever. If you think about it, though, unless you're paying for it this is untenable. A single user, when paying with their attention, will only ever generate a fairly fixed amount monthly. And yet the cost of keeping them on as a user grows steadily over time as more data is accumulated.
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I fully expect GMail to be enshittified in the future.
"GMail through gmail.com and GMail App: Always Free"
"GMail Pro (IMAP/POP/Forwarding): Only $3.99 / mo"
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This would really be the ultimate fuck you to everyone if they did this. I sort of wish they would so we'd all stop giving them all our personal data.
Oh thank goodness. Ya know I trust Google, when Google speaks it's always true. They're very not evil. And this definitely isn't a fun way to lessen the blow of an announcement that would be so.. displeasing to the masses.
/$
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Why do I feel like them saying this makes it MORE likely theyre going to shut it down?
RIP Inbox.
see if they were even remotely trustworthy or even rational no one would ever even entertain the possibility of Gmail being discontinued. for any other party this would be laughable. with Google it's plausible.
What about my "Gmail is here to stay" tshirt is making you think Gmail isnt here to stay?
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