[prox]

And its one of the reasons people should stop using google products, or it will get worse.

I am 99% on DuckDuckGo and other search engines, Firefox (which is great), Lots of mail providers these days which excel on every front, lots devtools that don’t need any Google infrastructure,

I really hope one of these days we get a message from Google (btw Google is really the most faceless organization out there, I really need to think hard to give you any names) that they will change their tune, but until that time, its best to leave.

[stanislavb]

Yup, DuckDuckGo's been my default browser search engine for quite some time now. I'm quite happy with the results. I'm reaching out to google.com less and less every day.

The last straw will be abandoning Gmail :)

[danShumway]

I don't if this will help you make that decision, but Fastmail's alias system is a godsend for me when it comes to filtering incoming emails and protecting myself from spam.

With every account you get a finite number of aliases you can create, but in practice that number is high enough that I just use a new alias for every site I visit.

Unlike in Gmail, these aliases don't contain any references to your original address. So if you're signing up for a dogwalking service, you can create an alias for `[e-mail]`, and then if you start getting spam to that address, you know where it came from, you know that there's no chance your real address will be reverse-engineered from your alias, and you can auto-reject or sort everything to that address into a separate folder without affecting any of your other emails.

I have separate email aliases I distribute to friends and family members so that if I ever run into a doxing situation or for some reason need to go nuclear on my email, I can turn everything off except for them. I also have my email linked to my own domain of course, but when I sign up for most commercial services, I use @fastmail.com aliases. That way I know that there's no way for those services to track me across accounts/websites via my personal domain name.

And everything gets organized in the same inbox, same account. I consider it to be a killer feature.

[omnimus]

I don't want to spoil any joy of yours but this is in my experience pretty standard with most email providers.

With some you can do the + trick (which gmail probably still does) but i just have my domain as catchall and it works pretty great with blacklisting.

[danShumway]

The reason Fastmail's feature matters is specifically because it's not using the + trick or a catch-all domain. They're 'real' aliases, not just Regex filters or wildcards.

If you're using the + trick, you haven't gained any privacy, because I can strip the + and get your original address.

If you're using a catch-all domain, you haven't gained any privacy, because the domain remains a unique identifier for your all of your accounts. It's good for organizing, but not for privacy, because you're still publicly attaching your identity to every email you send.

With fastmail, I don't need to do [e-mail] or [e-mail]. I can just do [e-mail]. That's a really large privacy win, since it gets rid of one of the biggest and least regulated unique identifiers that services can share with each other.

I don't know if other providers like Outlook are also offering 'real' aliases. I'm happy if they are, I think this should be an industry standard feature. Either way, switching to any provider does will be a pretty significant feature upgrade over Gmail, even if you're currently using a paid Gmail account with your own domain.

[omnimus]

I see so the only difference is that they provide 600 aliases on their domain compared to lets say 25 of other providers. I wonder how they deal with poluted namespace.

So It so different from random domain catchall?

The reason why i would be worried about Fastmail is that they have are Australian company with servers in US. Both of those mean that Law enforcement can simply ask for users emails.

Now i am for sure not target of Law enforcement or goverment so i dont care but i am not sure why i wouldnt use service thats in better juristiction and is privacy focused.

[CodeWriter23]

And a fairly common trick used by those who want to mask how they got your email address is to strip everything between + and @ in the email address you gave them.

[retpirato]

I believe outlook & yahoo mail also have real aliases.

[adamcharnock]

I’ve been looking at Office 365 this weekend as an alternative to my (single person) GSuite account. I’m actually pretty impressed. It feels much more polished than than Google’s software (to me, anyway). Teams also looks like a good slack alternative, I’ve already got good use out of OneNote, and all the Mac desktop software launches very quickly (definitely not the MS Office I remember!).

I think I may actually migrate all my email over today. The idea of having a different interface to GMail is pretty exciting. I’ve been staring at that (increasingly slow) interface for too long.

20 years ago I certainly wouldn’t have imagined myself doing this, but it actually seems like decent software now. Sure I need to jump into bed with MS, but that doesn’t bother me nearly as much as Google.

[jamaicahest]

I agree, Google is not forcing anyone to use their browser, yet people are complaining that Google is evil and immediately after continue to use their products/services. I don't understand the human psychology behind this..