[Night_Thastus]

People complain a lot about Gmail, but honestly I kind of understand Google's plight here.

They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free. If they ever shut it down the whole world would end up rioting because it's so widely used.

But it's expensive, complicated and time-consuming to maintain - and both a source of and recipient of endless waves of spam and scams. It's an endless pile of data to hold onto, FOREVER, as well.

I enjoy hating on Google when appropriate. But when it comes to Gmail, I understand what they're dealing with.

It's honestly why I believe the idea of free e-mail is just bad, fundamentally. You can't expect a free e-mail service to be good or have any kind of support. The fact that it still exists is more out of shear fear of the repercussions than any good will on the owner's part.

Just get a paid e-mail service. They're better, and offer a lot more peace of mind.

[redserk]

> They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free.

I’ll stop you here. Google offered it for free and, at the time, offered such an high amount of mail storage for free it sounded insane. At the time, my ISP gave me a 25MB or 50MB inbox and that was considered pretty decent, when Google was trying to get people in with 1-2GB.

They absolutely have a right to take ant steps they deem necessary to prevent malicious use of their product, and certainly aren’t obligated to provide it for free, but Google wasn’t forced to provide a free email service, much less one that went so far above and beyond their competition.

[bachmeier]

> and certainly aren’t obligated to provide it for free

And I'll stop you here. It's less than obvious that there's no obligation. If you provide a critical service that folks rely on at a price less than your cost, you drive out competition, and it's a critical part of your own business model, dropping the service without warning is IMO on the border of what Google should be allowed to do.

[p-e-w]

I’d say that if Google suddenly stopped providing Gmail for free, destroying the primary means of communication for billions of people, governments would be justified in immediately nationalizing Google with no compensation.

Corporations aren’t magical entities that somehow exist outside of social obligations and can do whatever they want as long as their own terms of service permit it.

[BenjiWiebe]

Maybe they could announce a pricing increase for a somewhat distant future date.

Maybe $1/month starting in 2 years, then increasing to $2/month for the next year, $3/month for the next, on until they feel they're covering costs.

That way it gives people time to look for alternative free providers, or time to get used to the idea of paying for email.

[otterley]

> Corporations aren’t magical entities that somehow exist outside of social obligations and can do whatever they want as long as their own terms of service permit it.

Where's your support for this statement in the law?

[account42]

The support is there by no constitution guaranteeing human-like rights for corporations, allowing lawmakers to restrict them however they see fit.

[extraduder_ire]

The rights of google's owners still apply though.

[p-e-w]

When push comes to shove, the law stops mattering, every time. That’s true for individual rights and it’s true for corporate entities too. The era where things like that don’t happen is a very small slice of human history that is currently coming to an end in real time all around the world. Not long ago, a government simply taking over a company was something that occurred quite regularly.

[gpm]

The existence of law itself is the only necessary support... Law is merely encoded social obligations that the government will enforce. That a single law constrains corporations in any way (and that is clearly the case) proves the statement.

In the broader context GP is clearly advocating for what the law should be, or should be changed to should certain events come to pass. Demanding support in existing law for a proposed change in law is nonsense if that's what you meant to do instead of narrowly discussing the nearly vaccuously true quote you pulled out.

[kelipso]

People can actually make new laws. Happens all the time.

[motbus3]

Yeah! I can't believe people know basics about cartels, trusts and dumping.

[idle_zealot]

It does feel like a lot of very intelligent people here basically start at a first principles belief in property rights, and discover or dispute all of the rights and protections put in place over centuries to patch up the issues that occur when that philosophy meets reality. It reflects poorly on our education systems that these apparently weren't covered or were unconvincing when presented. Or maybe it's just a reflection of the era? In practice organizations seem to be repealing these protections through limited interpretations or loopholes, so maybe that skews people's expectations?

[vkou]

It's not a poor reflection of our education system, it's all just motivated reasoning. Smart people will move heaven and Earth to argue themselves into a belief that their self-serving position is actually borne of some global altruism.

[wolpoli]

There is a lot of information, in various forms, on the internet that are specifically designed to misinform those who hadn’t taken a course on that particular topic, but leaves the reader feeling they learnt something. Right now LLM’s are good at picking those apart for the reader if they decide to dig deeper, however, I fear this era might not last.

[idle_zealot]

> LLM’s are good at picking those apart for the reader if they decide to dig deeper. I fear this era might not last.

Yeah, I'm not sure that pinning one's hopes for a better-educated populace on LLMs is going to pan out well. Education requires trust and active defense against malign actors.

[dosncienxjwnxj]

> Right now LLM’s are good at picking those apart for the reader if they decide to dig deeper

They are not.

[WalterBright]

Except gmail is hardly a cartel, etc. I've never had a gmail account.

[s1mplicissimus]

I'd assume that you also never tried running your own email server and have the email actually delivered to a gmail address, then.

[vel0city]

I've self-hosted email systems for businesses for nearly 20 years. I've actually had far easier times delivering to Gmail/Workspace clients than Outlook. Outlook constantly breaks strict DKIM with some of their protection scanning nonsense for emails that seem to get good deliverability almost everywhere else.

[WalterBright]

That did work for decades up until recently. It took me a bit to realize that google email recipients had stopped receiving my emails.

[mapt]

We needed a stamp.

Regulated "Emails cost 1 penny" would have worked fine. All you need to do to meaningfully fight spam is have a cost that isn't completely negligible; Spammers started out at a rate where they spend less than a day's wages to message literally every human being on the planet; At those costs even finding a single person you can convince of your Nigerian prince account nets you a profit.

We controlled the pipes and the formats in the 90's and 00's almost unilaterally. We should have made a stamp.

[account42]

YMMV but I never had issues with Gmail accepting mail from my personal server. And I didn't even do anything Gmail-specific, just standard SPF+DKIM and making sure my server is not an open relay etc.

Microsoft on the other hand...

[drnick1]

I self-host an email server and can definitely send email to Gmail addresses.

[ranger_danger]

Been doing it for over 20 years without issue, for myself and many other customers.

[redserk]

I should have been more clear that I feel bad for the users.

I don’t have much empathy for Google.

[kevin_thibedeau]

There were plenty of free email services before gmail. Google isn't at fault here because they provided a better experience.

[denkmoon]

There are plenty of free email services _after_ Gmail too. If Google want to destroy their product, have at it.

[account42]

There aren't any alternatives that let you keep you @gmail.com address.

[vel0city]

I'm not able to continue to receive mail at the apartment I lived at a decade ago. It turns out after I stopped paying for the apartment I lost the ability to control that mailbox.

This is a normal thing to happen in the physical world. We really shouldn't have such strict connections between email being a primary identifier for a user, requiring only a single one on an account, and not letting users change what they consider their primary email address. Email addresses can and should change over time. If someone really wants to ensure you have a piece of digital real estate one should get into the "ownership" game and get your own domain. People somehow end up buying and selling houses all the time which is far more complicated paperwork-wise, and yet we act like registering a domain name and configuring it for an email provider is just nearly impossible for normal people to handle.

[bmitc]

I think people have forgotten the various historic monopolies and abuse they've perpetuated just because the new ones do it digitally.

[MichaelRo]

> They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free.

This argument would have flown 30 years ago with Yahoo.

Since then we had Uber pumping so much money into a losing business until it drew the competition bankrupt.

And now we have AI pumping so much money into a losing business until they hopefully replicate Uber, only won't work and signs are all over the wall that they just burned a trillion dollars.

Which opens great prospectives for incumbents WHO LEARN FROM THE MISTAKES of the powers be at the time.

About time to start a "Don't be evil. FOR REAL." This time.

If in 30 years it's necessary to start "Don't be evil. REALLY, REALLY, REALLY this time" then so be it.

I'm starting the 2.0 version. Fuck AI. Fuck incumbents. Long live long life and freedom of choice!

[alex1138]

(Please understand I'm being sarcastic. You should interpret this post as a joke)

Hi. I'm a VC bigwig and I'm very interested in purchasing your company. I, too, believe in Not Being Evil

[hn_acc1]

I find your views interesting and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

No really - got more ideas about "Don't be evil. FOR REAL"?

[MichaelRo]

Don't have an online presence yet, will let you know when I add that.

[benoliver999]

I remember in the early days you could watch your storage quota go up in real time.

[jjordan]

Back when Google was still fun and innovating. Enshittification consumes all.

[scottyah]

also, people changed. Seems like nobody wants to see cute fun stuff anymore. I bet they'd get lawsuits of people claiming false advertising since the numbers aren't strictly true.

[bmitc]

Google's annual revenue is $350 billion. I can't believe someone would feel bad for such a company, because as you pointed out, this entire Gmail thing is part of the reason they have that revenue.

Google has done nothing but be a wolf in sheep's clothing. I'm not going to shed a tear because they have to maintain an email service.

[anjel]

Try signing up for a Google Gemini Paid account with a third party email... Better still, try signing up for a Gemini Paid account with a registered android phone that isn't triangulated to a desktop. If they can't own you, they don't want you at all.

[gerdesj]

"when Google was trying to get people in with 1-2GB."

The G in Gmail was for a gigabyte and that was what I got in the noughties for "free", when as you say my ISP offered something like 5MB on the end of a POP connection.

To be fair you can cram a lot of ASCII into 5MB. However you can email piccies to a mailbox with a 1GB limit if your modem doesn't melt first.

Obviously, this was during the "don't be evil" days.

[autoexec]

Even then the reason they were giving people so much storage space was because they wanted people to get in the habit of keeping their private data on Google's servers so that Google could mine it whenever they felt like it. Giving users effectively unlimited space was a selfish move on Google's part, not a gift.

[ccppurcell]

Also they make it really difficult to mass delete stuff. I'm basically stuck paying for their storage because I don't really have the skills to self host (but I'm working on it!)

[bigfatkitten]

They make it impossible to delete stuff if you stop paying!

I was on Google Workspace for about 10 years. I moved off their service because the mandatory Gemini price hikes meant that it no longer represented value for money.

I get excessive storage utilisation warnings for some shared drives I used to have but because I no longer have a paid up license, I can’t manage shared drives anymore. So I can’t delete them.

Google’s “support” team in India told me all sorts of lies about how to resolve the issue, but they’ve finally settled on a position that I would need to reinstate my Workspace account, at my own expense in order to delete the data to stop the emails and save Google money.

They refuse to acknowledge the patent absurdity of this situation and escalate it to someone who can actually fix it.

[ValentineC]

> I get excessive storage utilisation warnings for some shared drives I used to have but because I no longer have a paid up license, I can’t manage shared drives anymore. So I can’t delete them.

I had the same problem, and when my account was suspended, it was practically impossible to resubscribe because no Workspace plan could accommodate the amount of storage I used.

I'd thankfully managed to transfer out most of my important data elsewhere, so I made my peace with the less important Linux ISOs getting deleted.

[eks391]

Google has support?? How did you find it, and what other services besides gmail does it cover?

[vel0city]

Note they said "workspace". This has some level of support baked in, as this is the paid enterprise product.

https://knowledge.workspace.google.com/admin/support/contact...

[bigfatkitten]

They call it support, but that’s not the term I would use.

[axegon_]

Not only that. I was probably not even a teenager or barely a teenager when registering a gmail was not as simple as clicking "sign up". You needed someone to refer you and upon registration you got 25 referrals in return. Needless to say, entirely ditched gmail forever ago and use it as a spam mail. They can have all the fun they want training slop on that.

[motbus3]

> They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free

What you mean for free? First, they have all the data they get from you. They now track you even when you are not using your phone. They can/could know if you are doing your number 2 regularly or not only.

They control how the internet moves. Https? Sure can enforce. Trackers, etags ? Why not.

They sell every single bit of information on you for a good price. And now they are even more friends with a very good orange buyer. They have a TOS on you that they can chop and sell you whenever they want and you can't complain.

What you mean for free? Maybe for you it seems free, but people are paying them premium for lots of stuff.

Google used to be admired by the innovation and good ideas that shaped the world to a better world. Now they are still shaping the world, but not for everyone

[munk-a]

You're correct that it absolutely isn't free but the gall of Google to, once they have all the data, to turn around and demand additional payment for continuing to store all the data they sought out and that they've resold many times over - it's shameless greed at this point.

And it's isn't even like they're struggling with profitability, either. It'll be hilarious if this forces common folks to switch back to IMAP since once a user has been burned into spending the trivial cost to set up a local mailbox sync they're unlikely to go back into Google's arms (especially given how cheap (in money and time) disk space and cloud backups are these days).

[WalterBright]

Google just sent me an email saying my google account was deleted due to lack of use for 2 years.

[nzeid]

> They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free. If they ever shut it down the whole world would end up rioting because it's so widely used.

Not even remotely true. They regularly shut down products and services with impunity. If Gmail cost more than the data they directly or indirectly mine and sell from their users, Gmail wouldn't exist either.

[traderj0e]

The stuff they've shut down has been nowhere near as important as Gmail.

[duskwuff]

Shutting down GMail would practically amount to shutting down email. It's by far the largest email provider in the US (and probably in the world but I don't have that data). There's no other provider who could take up the slack; if it were to abruptly shut down, a lot of users would simply lose access to email altogether.

[elmomle]

They'd generate a huge amount of ill will by shutting it down, and that in turn would likely lead to a nontrivial share of people moving away from Google core products (like search) out of pure spite.

[loloquwowndueo]

Wait, Google does search these days?

[KennyBlanken]

To what? Google Search sucks thanks to the idiot who ran Yahoo into the ground, but everyone else sucks more. Every time I try to use non-google search the results are virtually useless.

Google has firmly been in the "we're so big we can suck at everything, but you'll still use our stuff because you have no other choice" phase that Microsoft was (is?) in.

They've dominated email so much that their spam filter makes it a very risky proposition to run your own domain; chances are very good it'll just start dropping your messages. Even if chances aren't great, can you take the risk of an important email getting zapped?

To this day I still routinely have to fish out my gmail spam folder dozens of emails from various open source mailing lists that have been around for a decade or two, some hosted on kernel.org, because the spam filter is convinced they're spam. Google is too fucking stupid or lazy to whitelist sites like kernel.org.

FFS even google groups I'm in that are technical get obviously-not-spam messages tagged as spam!

[throwaway173738]

kagi has been pretty good. Not great but way better for searches for information that happen to have a lot of people selling you something.

[bigstrat2003]

No, that wouldn't happen. Lots of people don't have email through Google, for one. Those people will still use email just fine. Moreover, the people who do use Gmail will simply sign up with another provider. It won't be a big deal.

[duskwuff]

> No, that wouldn't happen. Lots of people don't have email through Google, for one.

Based on some data I collected around five years ago, roughly 80% of US customers used GMail for personal email. It was overwhelmingly the most common choice. I suspect that number has only drifted upwards since.

(What about the rest? 15% were using Yahoo; the rest were spread thinly across AOL, Microsoft, ISPs, and colleges.)

[autoexec]

At one point AOL was the largest ISP and email provider on Earth too. If gmail died off people would just move to something else. It'd be annoying, but it wouldn't be the end of email

[a2128]

Google could actually do everyone a solid by killing gmail. They have enough influence in the industry that they could create a standard for email address portability, and then slowly force everybody to move off. By the end, one of the biggest problems with email would be solved and people would be able to switch email providers like how we can switch phone providers without needing to change our phone numbers. And Google would get to save a lot of money by no longer needing to provide everyone's emails

[Sohcahtoa82]

In the days when AOL was the largest AOL, the only people on the internet were middle class and above and the uber-nerds. The landscape has changed.

[traderj0e]

When AOL was the largest email provider, there weren't as many people using email, at least not for important things

[omcnoe]

I’d honestly expect to see regulatory intervention if they tried this.

[idle_zealot]

In a better time I would expect the government to step in a acquire this fundamental service and fund it with tax money. Right now? The only intervention I would expect is a massive subsidy to pay Google to keep providing it, while also letting them continue to spy on everyone's mail (which is a crime, but not if the mail is on a computer, I guess).

[icase]

oh yes, government-run email.

what could possibly go wrong

[traderj0e]

Government-operated Gmail would become such a massive cesspool of spam and hijacked accounts. It'd be spectacular.

[WalterBright]

Do you believe that if the government provided email, that the government wouldn't keep track of everything you did on it?

[icase]

oh no. what a shame that would be.

[redeeman]

bullshit, email exists outside of gmail, and email would continue to exist without it. many would have to get a new account somewhere, but that would be not a problem. there are shitloads of providers that would be quite happy

[lukan]

Yeah, but they still don't run a charity. They sell ads and information - and gmail provides them with lots of valuable information.

If that ceases to be true, goodbye (free) gmail.

[LightBug1]

Shutting down GReader ruined my life.

[traderj0e]

Has nobody made a better RSS reader since then? Or is the issue that GReader was so popular that shutting it down made everyone stop using RSS?

[negura]

it's insane to frame anything a company like Google does as some kind of goodwill. rather than an amoral profit optimization. contrary to OP, what people often overlook about GMail is not their "plight". but the powerful brand awareness it creates

[eatsyourtacos]

Yes it is remotely true. Name one thing they have shut off that a large number of people actually used and it was important. We all joke about Google dropping things and yes they have, but saying they can just drop Gmail is.. well, insane.

[negura]

they essentially shut down the old (useful) google search when they prioritized ad-heavy websites in the ranking

[nzeid]

This fixation on "importance" is laughable. It is "insane" to drop Gmail because it makes them a shitload of money. That is how corporations work.

[traderj0e]

The reason people mention importance is because corps like Google don't just care about per-product profitability, they assess how one product affects the rest of their business.

[Bender]

Gmail is not now nor has it ever been free. Everyone pays for it. To your point many people use it and for businesses to contact their customers they have to pay into whitelists for high volume delivery. The costs are passed onto the customers, including those that have never used Gmail. Companies that do not pay into such lists and that have many customers using gmail have to set up careful rate limits which means the emails will not be delivered the same day.

Email marketing and campaign companies pay into these lists and they pass that cost onto their customers as well.

There has never been a email provider that accepts mass email delivery to millions of recipients for free.

[sebmellen]

Is this really true? Where are these lists? I’ve never heard of this so I’m quite intrigued.

[Pay08]

It's an accusation that has been going around for a while, but I've never seen it substantiated.

[Bender]

It's a negotiated price signed under NDA, is why most people have not seen details. If you are friends with your CFO and you email millions of gmail users directly likely because you are B2B ask them for the line item. If using a email campaign provider they will not disclose how much they negotiated to pay. Most B2B companies end up going with email marketing and campaign providers as it is far more cost effective than doing it in house even if you have highly experience email postmasters which my team had it just was not our core business model and I could not justify the FTE's.

As just one example, sending high volume emails from Amazon requires using Amazon SES [1]. Some people here are familiar with sending from SES vs. trying to send high volumes directly from EC2 instances.

[1] - https://aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing/

[benoau]

Their ecosystem netted them over $130 billion profit last year, I don't feel sorry for them at all...

[0x262d]

right, that comment reads as if they're victims for intentionally putting themselves in the position of holding and reading the maximum amount of information about everyone they can. bizarre

[Gigachad]

There’s also no indication Google wants to wind down Gmail. This change just looks like an aggressive method to stop bots and spammers.

[soraminazuki]

It also happens to be convenient for data mining, which happens to be the case for every single security measure that Google takes. It's almost as if Google is doing everything it can to undermine people's privacy, and the occasional security benefits are just side effects of that.

[raizer88]

Do you have any idea of how much they can datamine from an email service? Just making a special parser for amazon emails can give google a realtime insight on the ecommerce space.

[tredre3]

For a while Amazon stopped giving detail about the purchased items in their emails, to prevent Google from doing exactly that.

A year or two ago they returned to full detail. I've always wondered if it was customer pressure or a backroom deal with Amazon was reached.

I kind of doubt that Google would cave to the former, right?

[trhway]

i wonder how AMZN hasn't started its own mail yet.

[chtitux]

With the (future) shutdown of WorkMail, AWS almost did the full circle.

[b00ty4breakfast]

This is their entire MO though; they offer a free product to build a customer base then they figure out how to get to know them biblically in an attempt to extract a profit and it doesn't matter how underhanded or unsavory it is.

Maybe at some point in the mists of time, someone just wanted to offer people a good email service but at this point it's a pattern of behavior across every Google consumer product so I can't give them the benefit of the doubt.

[soraminazuki]

Yeah, this often repeated narrative about poor Google being a charity losing tons of money is bonkers. They're a trillion dollar company for heaven's sake and no private entity amasses that much wealth by asking nicely. I can't roll my eyes any harder.

[pmontra]

> They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free.

No way they are doing it for free.

Basically they tied Gmail 1:1 to Android accounts. I have a Gmail mailbox for a few reasons: 1) self-squatting my usual handle, because they are a large email provider 2) it's my Android account and it's where I get documents shared on Drive 3) maybe it's the way I login to Google cloud but I don't remember. I used to have a customer with servers in there but it's long gone.

Anyway, gmail is their way to manage a part of the Android infrastructure and it seems they like running Android.

[cube00]

>Basically they tied Gmail 1:1 to Android accounts.

>Anyway, gmail is their way to manage a part of the Android infrastructure and it seems they like running Android.

I've deleted my Gmail mailbox and Android works fine, any document share notifications go to the email address on the Google account.

If anything it's better without a Gmail mailbox because those notifications used to only go to my Gmail no matter what alternative email addresses I set, now they all go to my actual email address.

Only problem is I can never reopen the mailbox because the "Add Gmail to your Google account" screen has decided I've already used my mobile number before.

[tyre]

I don’t think it’s for free. There are ads in (free) Gmail, they harvest your data, and then the paid accounts are, well, paid.

[trhway]

>They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free.

Not for free. Being monopoly is a huge reward. It isn't possible today to have a small email provider. While probably not having that intention from the start, Gmail played a huge role here as its existence allowed everybody to just ignore/block small providers.

[traderj0e]

I get the difficulty of fighting spam, just wanted to say that Gmail is probably making them money too. It's still free to make an account, which means they have to be careful who they give it to.

[quaintdev]

> But it's expensive, complicated and time-consuming to maintain - and both a source of and recipient of endless waves of spam and scams. It's an endless pile of data to hold onto, FOREVER, as well.

They should let others do email. The more email service providers we have the better it is for everyone

[ninalanyon]

No one is stopping anyone offering an email service, surely every IS does that?

[jen20]

The pain in the ass around deliverability to gmail is the reason I don't run my own anymore.

[tardedmeme]

I haven't had any significant issues, but I think it depends on the luck the draw of your IP address.

[tomjen3]

I am not sure the backslash would be big if Gmail said that a year from now you would have to pay $9.99 per month to use your Gmail ($12.99 ad-free). I mean people would complain, but would that actually give a backslash? Especially if they made it easy for people to move their account elsewhere? People are used to paying a lot more for things outside of tech.

I suspect what is really holding them back is the loss of data, and the loss of the assumption that ~everyone has a Google account that they are logged into, which means they can be traced around the web. Google also benefits from this, since its anti-bot tool will be more accurate and less fustrating to users.

[rootusrootus]

> I am not sure the backslash would be big if Gmail said that a year from now you would have to pay $9.99 per month

I think approximately 95% of all Gmail users would leave. Regular people are accustomed to paying nothing for things like email. And if I have to pay for email, I am not paying Google for it, especially not twice the cost of Fastmail.

[Dylan16807]

Their existing premium plans start at $17 per year. Even pushing people to that level would be a serious upset. $10-13 per month would make everyone hate them.

> Especially if they made it easy for people to move their account elsewhere?

Sounds mostly impossible.

> People are used to paying a lot more for things outside of tech.

They're not used to paying for an email account.

[walrus01]

> They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free. If they ever shut it down the whole world would end up rioting because it's so widely used.

You have a point, but if you've ever seen how a gmail account behaves for the ordinary person once it reaches 80-90% storage capacity used (15GB free, some cumulative total of all emails and google drive content, google photos content), all of these free services exist to sell a perpetual monthly recurring subscription to users. And many people do pay. The default gmail web interface starts to have a big banner across the top warning about storage reaching maximum capacity with a link to the payment page.

Look at the workflow for a standard out of box android phone now that defaults to backing up all your photos to 'the cloud', which will almost immediately fill the 15GB free. Once your 15GB is full, then you're run through the payment/checkout workflow to enter your card and set up monthly recurring billing for some premium google service.

In general having a gmail account is the initial stage in the pipeline of getting someone to be a monthly-paid google customer for life. Whether it's just for more storage to hold all their google drive and photo content, or google workspace individual, etc.

Additionally, tying a gmail account to the primary-user android on-device account on any android 4.x+ device means revenue from google play store paid app sales. And then all those 'free' apps that the user installs where the app developer has implemented embedded small ad banners for google's ad network? More venue.

[hashmap]

the googles of the world are real-life analogs of lovecraftian gods, spending sympathy or defense on them is a category error. they do not know about you nor care about you, and would be just as happy dissolving you in their path as not.

[ntoskrnl_exe]

While I get your point, I can't think of a free email service that wouldn't also be a gate to other products. Whether it's Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo mail etc. you always get an "account" as well, something that connects other services from the provider in an easily accessible place where the user actually gets monetized. The email is there just to make sure the user comes back.

[gloosx]

This comment somohow makes it look like google is a non-profit charity organisation.

Isn't it the corporation which makes super-profits and gmail is just part of the equation?

I highly doubt that anyone would ever riot over loss of access to email, nor that it's some critical piece of infrastructure, there are dozens of other communication methods online today.

[GreenVulpine]

Google syphons all your email data and uses it for their very profitable ad targeting business. The cost of providing email service is miniscule, especially nowadays. Ad profits are at record highs. They've done their math for sure. Saying that they somehow got roped into subsidizing a public service is not even close to reality.

[raz32dust]

Google isn't doing this out of kindness. Sure charging for mail would give some bad press but Google can handle it in many different ways and they have in the past. They provide the service because it's valuable to the business. They know that the void will be filled by another service. And that's bad for Google.

[lucb1e]

You can't legitimately believe Google is a charity and maintains 'huge chunks of the internet' with nothing to show for it. Is it for free if they get non-monetary benefits? Like, my employer doesn't give me "free" money either; they get something out of the arrangement

[intended]

I have no issue with firms making money, and I am sympathetic to the people who work on these problems.

Not for one second, am I sympathetic to the firm, because it is simply a business acting on its incentives to minimize costs and maximize profits.

Google keeps it running because they make money off of it. Tech firms have profit margins unlike any prior industry; maybe feudal kings come close.

They make money off of it because they (like all tech) avoid investing in human heavy services like customer support / trust and safety. I have had google safety members vent about how they can’t get engineer attention. That when they do get it, engineers don’t want to help the moderators or the moderation software. Their incentives drive them to find a way to obviate the moderation process entirely.

People working to fix things and make it better for users are great. The firm? Heck no.

[basisword]

>> They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free

They CHOSE to offer it for free so they could monopolise the market. They got roped into absolutely nothing.

[hulitu]

> They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free

My tears started flowing when I saw this. Shouldn't we pay Google for using _our_ data that it shameless steals ? And I also think that 3 letter agencies do not get the data for free.

[toasty228]

> They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free.

yeah ok, google maps is free, youtube also...

And you know why? Because every single one of their product is either a data harvesting tool or an ad delivery mechanism, sometimes both. Let's not pretend they do it for free, it's their entire business model lmao

[applfanboysbgon]

The highest comment in the thread is somebody defending Google, a trillion dollar company that profits hundreds of billions of dollars per year, with a wide-ranging monopoly on tech services, as being a victim providing a free service for the public good. While stating that holding onto data is a liability. As though the data was not the point. As though the data was not the payment.

I need to get off of this fucking website.

[Night_Thastus]

I hate Google when they pull anti-consumer crap. I believe they're too big, too unaccountable, and something needs to be done about them. Their power rivals that of a country and that shouldn't be considered acceptable.

But man, I would hate to be the one dealing with Gmail. It's a nightmare for the reasons I listed above.

Someone can in fact hold both of those opinions.

I was also actively telling people to de-Google and go elsewhere for a mail service.

Does everything need to be black and white?

[applfanboysbgon]

Gmail is a nightmare for everyone else to deal with. Gmail is anti-consumer crap, through and through. A big part of why everyone uses Gmail is because using Gmail is the way you get your e-mails delivered to people who use Gmail. Google arbitrarily blocks e-mails from people using other domains, so together with Microsoft they've created a monopoly on e-mail that forces people into using big tech e-mail domains if they don't want their e-mails to get eaten. And the reason they do this is even more anti-consumer -- because they are farming a massive trove of data from your e-mails.

It's bizarre how you make up a sob story about how Gmail is just so hard for Google to deal with. They aren't maintaining it for charity. I'm sure, if I had no ethics, I could manage the burden of dealing with a software system that harvests the data of >1 billion people as part of my corporation's business plan that nets hundreds of billions of dollars a year. The reasons you listed for why it would suck to be Google -- it's "free" for users, expensive for Google, and oh god, you have to hold on to the data... are not reasons at all, because Google profits from it and Google wants the data. The data is the point. You belabour how Google has the burden of controlling a huge chunk of the internet's infrastructure, as if gaining control of a huge chunk of the internet's infrastructure is not literally their anti-consumer goal.

[saghm]

The comment is defending them on the basis that they got "roped into" it, which is nonsense. They intentionally went out of their way to make it enticing and got an absurdly large market share because of it. Doing something successfully isn't getting "roped into" it even if you change your mind later.

[watwut]

> They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free. If they ever shut it down the whole world would end up rioting because it's so widely used.

Google did it intentionally and pushed to make it happen. It killed whole lot of businesses who were selling email hosting in the process.

[PieTime]

Free? They serve ads on their clients. The best solution that solved this terrible issue was Inbox, which they purchased and then destroyed. Google also makes monthly cloud storage fees for anyone who has large files or photos. Also, it keeps people in Googles ecosystem. It’s a beneficial monopoly for Google.

[pishpash]

You assume there will be no takers to replace Gmail, whereas there probably will be hundreds waiting to do it.

[Night_Thastus]

There are plenty of e-mail providers out there. None of them have even come close to toppling gmail. Gmail is free and good enough for most people. Gmail is to e-mail what kleenex is to tissue. It's almost synonymous.

[drnick1]

> They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free.

In exchange, Google gets to surveil half of the world's population, extract personal information from their email, and resell that information to governments and ad companies.

[eviks]

> But it's expensive, complicated and time-consuming to maintain

But it's also a valuable pot of data honey you can boost your wonder AI with, so where is the plight?

> For free

And without revenue sharing

> have any kind of support.

Check, not having support is what Google is famous for

[d3vmax]

They charge for google workspace and many companies use workspace and expand on the services they use provided by workspace. The trojon was gmail and gmail interface / app on android and iphone.

[r0fl]

Gmail makes 10s of billions annually based on best estimates

They aren’t doing this for free

[lofaszvanitt]

Just watch when they squeezed everything out of the users they are going to slap a fee on them and tell them to fuck off otherwise. It's the same pattern repeated over and over with big tech.

[Xelbair]

>They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free

Just because they don't charge you directly, doesn’t matter it's not profitable for them.

[giancarlostoro]

They could always just pause all new registrations for non-paying users. They set themselves up for this failure by merging YouTube into everything gmail and Google.

[huijzer]

> They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free.

And now they have a treasure trove of AI training data, for free.

[ekianjo]

> huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free

for free? I guess tracking you to death and shoving ads down your throat does not count as monetizing anymore then?

[miohtama]

Google Ad's revenue per user is ~$50/year

[rc_kas]

I use proton, but it is not better than gmail. The user interface is explicitly inferior, and that is the main thing I care about.

[platevoltage]

I would totally use it if they didn't charge for IMAP.

[nashadelic]

I pay upwards of 200/yr for storage, the free Gmail is a funnel to revenue for them and I reckon it’s very profitable

[wunderlotus]

Plight? Free? They have gotten billions (trillions?) worth of monetizable data. It's hardly a plight.

[sdevonoes]

But gmail is not free. Google benefits from our email data, way more than charging a mere 9.99$/month

[protocolture]

>They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free. If they ever shut it down the whole world would end up rioting because it's so widely used.

Google used to literally have a counter inside Gmail showing how your account had a super huge and always increasing amount of storage. The courted their current market position. This isnt "Oh how did we get here with our big bleeding hearts" its just enshittification.

[Pooge]

> They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free.

Lol, what? One of the biggest company on Earth is being pictured as a victim for creating services that siphon data out of half the planet's people? Don't take it personally but I can't fathom how you think this is FREE. It's literally the most lucrative business there is and it's only going to get worse—and not for them.

[ulfw]

They have gotten ROPED INTO? seriously?

The company that wilfully monopolised email somehow got involuntarily roped into running said email?

Do people love revising history like this?

[zx8080]

> They've essentially gotten roped into maintaining a huge chunk of internet infrastructure, for free.

Don't bullshit to us here, please.

Google scan billions people's emails (including very sensitive ones like medical record letters) to then show relevant ads AND sell the data to some partners (hundreds of them).

It's not called "public infra for free". It's the serious for-profit business. The surveillance capitalism on the march.

[swat535]

Why do people keep saying google is free ?

People pay for it dearly with their data for advertisement.

In fact, even when you _do_ pay, you still get ads!

[ekjhgkejhgk]

You think goole is the victim here? Poor google, owning gmail.

You know, if it's such a bad deal they can stop owning it any time they want. They already lied about it - I was told I would never have to delete email, and turns out I had to.

I don't care either way, I moved to tuta last year.

[zeptonix]

What a lame first comment. They're making tons of money. Sounds hard. Let's give up all our freedom.

[siren2026]

A lot of people here work for Google. Tough to understand something when your salary depends on it.

[dosncienxjwnxj]

Fuck Google. I wish they pissed off users by completely paywalling or, better yet, EOSing Gmail. The more people leaving Google, the better.