| The point is that the 'influencers' will be aware of alternatives and are vocal about it. If you use a service of google's because there is another service of gooogle's that you use a lot - the tie is a lot looser, and when people are suggested alternatives it becomes a lot easier for them to move away. While looking for a google reader alternative I ended up finding out about owncloud and now I use that to manage and sync my calendars and contacts across my devices, I also moved my domain email to zoho and infact the only service I am tied into of googles now is the android play store. I used google apps for ages and had a free account before it got paid only (except that way of getting a 1 user apps account through some other google service) and I did that because it was so easy, and i reccomended it to anyone getting a domain. That probably won't be the case any more. So, I was in search of a new rss reader, and I had no intention of completely moving out of the google ecosystem, but I ended up finding a system that works better for me, and when people come to me (who come to me because 'i know tech' or whatever), and ask me what they should set up there new domain with, they will get a completely new answer. This is just a personal story and i'm sure its not relevant to everyone but my point is that this move, and others, is damaging their brand and when you introduce people to RSS who have no idea what it is, and then you show them google reader and they love the fact they dont even need to make an account because they already have gmail, they love it. That is gone Maybe my point is better illustrated by this post https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5383495 |
I won't ditch gmail for what it handles for now, but who knows what things will look like five years from now. Outlook's aliases are much easier to manage than a bunch of account+word@gmail pairs.