[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?