[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

[idle_zealot]

Why is this inconceivable? I don't know where you live, but the Post Office is extremely cheap and reliable around here. What drives you to pretend that states can't provide services to their people?

[traderj0e]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HealthCare.gov was not a hard problem and they struggled. Gmail tackles a hard problem that even other large tech companies struggle with.

[idle_zealot]

An excellent example of how not to do a government program!

> On October 1, 2013, HealthCare.gov was rolled out as planned, despite the concurrent partial government shutdown. The launch was marred by serious technological problems, making it difficult for the public to sign up for health insurance.[4] The deadline to sign up for coverage that would begin January 1, 2014, was December 23, 2013, by which time the problems had largely been fixed. The open enrollment period for 2016 coverage ran from November 1, 2015, to January 31, 2016.[5] State exchanges also have had the same deadlines; their performance has been varied.[6][7][8]

> The design of the website was overseen by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and built by a number of federal contractors, most prominently CGI Inc. of Canada. The original budget for CGI was $93.7 million, but this grew to $292 million prior to launch of the website. While estimates that the overall cost for building the website had reached over $500 million prior to launch[1][9][10][11][12] and in early 2014 HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said there would be "approximately $834 million on Marketplace-related IT contracts and interagency agreements,"[13] the Office of Inspector General released a report in August 2014 finding that the total cost of the HealthCare.gov website had reached $1.7 billion[14] and a month later, including costs beyond "computer systems," Bloomberg News estimated it at $2.1 billion.[15]

Got it. So if you're fighting an obstinate faction that would rather the government not exist than provide services then that can cause issues. Further, contractors will fleece you for everything you're worth. Compare to a successful project like the Post Office that gets pushed through with overwhelming political will and is run directly by a government agency (oddly structured as a government-owned corporation) and then even despite attempts to destroy it it continues to provide good service.

It's not easy; you need someone competent heading it up and setting it up for success. If the Democrats were to propose it in 2028 under president Gavin I would expect it to be a boondoggle. That doesn't change the fact that I want it to be done and done well.

[account42]

It's already called G-mail. Perfect fit.

[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?

[idle_zealot]

Depends on the health of our institutions. In the US at least they're legally obligated not to by the highest law in the land. It gets ignored now, but it's a more promising path to privacy-preserving digital infrastructure than letting the private market handle it.

[WalterBright]

Oh, I think it's been ignored for a long time. Remember Snowden?

> but it's a more promising path to privacy-preserving digital infrastructure than letting the private market handle it.

The history of governments suggests otherwise.

[bigstrat2003]

Unfortunately, the Constitution has been flagrantly ignored by the federal government for close to 100 years now, if not longer. Everything that FDR did was blatantly unconstitutional, but nobody stopped him, nor did they roll it back when he was gone. The Constitution has no real practical power to restrain the government if the people don't exercise their rights as voters to hold it accountable, and it is abundantly clear that the unconstitutional stuff the government gets up to is (largely) actually pretty popular.

[s1mplicissimus]

Do you believe the government doesn't keep track of your email, just because it's hosted on googles servers?

[WalterBright]

I used a private mail server for years, and the government didn't keep track of it. Of course, what happened at the email's destination, who knows?

[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