I clicked the link expecting to see security/privacy arguments (perhaps a HN bias?). Instead, I saw arguments against Gmail's best-in-class web-interface. The combination of keyboard shortcuts, labels, and filters make it the best. Having used Fastmail, it does rival Gmail, but only if you are an advanced user willing to put the effort into making it fit your use case. The reason I am slowly switching away from Gmail is founded in security and privacy considerations, somewhat better control over my own domain, and I think that Gmail's move to a the tabbed inbox was failure in large part, and mixes junk with legitimate mail in my inbox.
FWIW, I've used Gmail for 6 or 7 years and Fastmail for 1 year.
I've been a Gmail user since its invite-only inception. I would agree with you about the UI a year ago. But the new SMS-sized compose window and the UI changes that put all non-basic functionality 2 or 3 clicks away are really annoying.
I would leave Gmail due to the UI changes, although I must confess I hadn't at the moment because it's too much bother to tell people about a new address, set up redirection, find out how to save all the old messages and have them at hand, etc.
I would imagine Google is a/b testing and keeping a very close eye on the analytics of usage/retention with the new interface. We (power users/technical people) may lose out, but they must be seeing the numbers and improvement over the previous interface.
I can second this opinion. Not only that, but personally I like the new interface, even the classification that they are doing because you can customize it - I just got rid of the "Updates" tab, given that emails classified as such are usually important and everything is fine for me.
What I don't like about GMail is the complete disregard for digital signing and encryption with S/MIME and/or OpenPGP.
Therefore, on my Android right now I'm using K-9 and on the desktop I use Thunderbird. Thunderbird is actually pretty cool once you customize it a little (it even works with Google's Calendar and Tasks). There's even a cool Chrome/Firefox extension called Mailvelope, for making PGP work in webmail interfaces [1] and so it works straight in GMail, though in Firefox, due to a current limitation that probably won't get fixed until 27, it's very slow and also the extension currently doesn't support PGP/Mime and can't sync with key servers, although the author told me these features are planed for the next versions. And since I'm a Firefox user, I'll just have to wait for now.
Note - I'm a Google Apps user, which means I have my own domain. I can always switch without losing my email address. If you're using a @gmail.com email address, then you should really stop doing that.
"Thunderbird is actually pretty cool once you customize it a little (it even works with Google's Calendar and Tasks)."
I used Thunderbird for many years, but switched to Evolution this year. I remember trying Evolution a few years ago and being unimpressed. It has come a long way since then.
Evolution also supports Googles calendar/tasks and also supports PGP. These things are built in to the main app though, rather than being included as addons. Evolutions LDAP support includes write support too (unlike Thunderbird) if that's useful to you. I've also found the UI to be faster and more responsive than Thunderbirds.
Also Thunderbird development has been pretty much abandoned by Mozilla, yet Evolution is under heavy development. Just take a look at their git log:
Thanks for the heads-up on Evo. I was a longtime user until switching to T-bird in the mid-00s because it was a lot more visually attractive to me and more configurable/extensible. I see what you mean, Evo seems to have made big strides since then, definitely worth a test-drive for a while.
I'm a Google Apps user, which means I have my own domain. I can always switch without losing my email address. If you're using a @gmail.com email address, then you should really stop doing that.
I'm thinking of switching to an Apps account but I'm worried about the complexity of the transition for all my data.. Do you have any advice for that? Also do you miss anything with an Apps account compared with a regular one?
(1) you can import your email from any account (that supports POP3) in a new GMail account. Just go to Settings -> Accounts in your new GMail account and configure it (note that the old GMail account also has to have POP3 activated). Actually from a new GMail account you can also send email using an older email account by SMTP. So basically, with a new GMail account, you can keep using an old email account from within the same interface, if that's what you want (heck, you could use a Fastmail.fm account from within a GMail interface, if you don't mind the slight latency).
Make sure that you label these emails with a special label, such that you can filter them later more easily.
(2) on your old email account, you can set a "Vacation Responder" that informs people of your new email address automatically.
So yeah, if you like GMail, then don't wait and do migrate to your own Google Apps domain. You won't get ads anymore in GMail, you'll have the option to migrate without losing your email address and you'll be treated like a customer (in my experience that doesn't necessarily match other people, their support has been very responsive).
And $5/month is not very cheap, but on the other hand it's the price for 1-2 coffees and I value my email. I do prefer the "Flexible" plan and not the "Annual" plan, because the later imposes a termination tax. So do it, don't wait.
I use Apps for a personal account -- but there are often odd quirks when Google releases new products that make it slightly inconvenient. In retrospect, I think a better alternative would have been just setting up my domain's email as redirects to my gmail, and then setting up the Gmail "Send As". I use this procedure for secondary domains I also use for email (with my Apps acct).
It's not hard to switch your email, it's just hard to train other people to send you email on your new address. I have switched to my own domain three years ago, sent notification to everyone in my address book about the email changes, enabled automatic response on my old gmail account that informs the sender about email change every time it receives any mail, and I still receive ~25% of all personal emails through that old email account.
It's the same as when changing the phone number, people will just keep calling you on your old number that doesn't exist anymore and that complain to you that you didn't call back.
As a side note, the lack of support for legacy emails in Gmail and Contacts is really bothering me. I would like to be able to mark someone's mail as inactive, so that i can see these mails when I look for old conversations with the person, but not to show up in autocomplete when I try to actually write an email.
Just forward your email and only send mail from your apps email, that't what I did. But I also liked to start mostly clean slate since most of my stuff Google stuff was a mess.
I exported some email filters and all of my calendar events. It's also possible to export/import your email as well. For your google drive you can just share everything or save it on your pc and put it in the new Google drive folder.
The things I miss are really small. You might have a bit later or no access to beta's and new features are not turned on automatically (recently this was the case for webhistory, you had to push a switch in your Apps control panel).
Furthermore you should probably try using a catchall. I like it a lot, you can filter on specific sent to emails from different services. And you always know who sells your data. I use the format company-type@domain.com. This way you con filter on sent to emails that contain shop for all your online orders.
I'm not sure. Gmail's web interface certainly had been the best. But with the last overhaul, I ended up with big chucks of useless area on the top of my 1366*768 screen. Then there's the new Outlook. If we're stricktly talking about web interface, it's hard, at least for me, to say which one wins out.
>The combination of keyboard shortcuts, labels, and filters make it the best.
I find the web interface routinely bloats up the browsers mem usage (A freaking gigabyte to display a UI??!). The spam filter is average - on both false positives and false negatives. My inbox is only ~5GB and many searches are really slow.
There is a strong trend of anti-Google stories, not just on HN, but all over the web.
Why? Is it just trendy to dislike Google? What are the alternatives to Google services? I am curious, I am not ready to dump Google, but I have been diversifying the services I use. Started using Outlook and Skydrive.
I think it's somewhat of a disillusionment, like a boss you thought was a friend turning out to be just a normal boss. Google had such a great reputation. Don't Be Evil. 'Unintrusive text links'. Effective advertising for small businesses. Free stuff. Empowering with information. Free webapps. 20% time. Nice to employees etc. etc.
Over time several things have happened. We got used to some of the good things about Google and made them our baseline expectation. They got used to all that income and growth. To keep up growth they had to "optimize" and in many cases put profit before aesthetics/ethics. The "unintrusive text links" for high value searches got bigger and more intrusive. 'Contextual links' in Gmail became contextual to your digital life (eg scanning your emails and analyzing your browsing).
You need a lot of goodwill believe 'Don't be evil.' From an average company it sounds phony. A lot if stuff has a tipping point. So when a free service gets shut down or rolled into another service its seen as putting profit first, herding users into profitable products or just generally sucking. Before it might have been seen as failing fast. When they ask users for a phone number now, they react with cynicism.
Google started with a lot of goodwill. Perhaps too high. People react emotionally when you don't live up to perceived promises.
Maybe there is a lesson here about over promising.
I think they started off with that goodwill because they actually delivered on their promises. Lots of contributions to Open Source, Summer of Code etc. So there was this hope that this would be the Good Engineering Company that would make the Right Decisions. Maybe the best example was how they shut down their China operation instead of caving to pressure like many others did.
In a way, I feel that Google has lost what they "were about". If Google overpromised anything, it was that they were the "open internet company". In many ways, that and "don't be evil" was what defined them.
> Lots of contributions to Open Source, Summer of Code etc.
Which is funny because these things were a smoke screen from day 1. Google is a past master at doing things for themselves, but throwing in a token benefit for everybody else so they look like the good guys.
Summer of Code was primarily a recruiting tool for Google, not a contribution to open source. They spent 0.06% of profit on Summer of Code, and in exchange got access to some great developers and got a mostly-unpaid trial period to evaluate them. That's a HR recruiting gold mine.
Despite their entire operation running on Linux, most years they contributed so little back to the kernel that they didn't even show up on most rankings -- and adjusted for corp size they were barely a footnote. It's only recently that they have started to contribute anything substantial to Linux. One of their largest contribution to Linux is cloning all the GPL code into BSD code so it can be sold for profit.
Sure Google has done a few good things for Open Source, but far far less than one should expect.
I see this through the eyes of every other big company; Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Adobe. In those glasses Google is still the saint. Give an example of WHAT company you going to go to?
I hear this from so many people BUT explain to me a different scenario on how the largest Internet company can run things? I see the push back against the NSA, Open Sourced Android (Closed Google Apps), almost everything that came out better for the customers (Gmail 1GB storage, G+ (you decided in detail who can read your post) APIs that are extremely usable) Google Voice was/is amazing. My beloved Open Source products get millions of investment from Google.
The BAD in my eyes: Killing off of many products (I don't use new Google products normally)
IBM has always been one of the biggest contributors to Linux. But I think a major difference is that these companies haven't sold themselves as the open source, pro-internet "don't be evil" company. Google has.
Outlook interface is the worst. I have been using it because my school is using it. Every two months or so I see new frontend changes. The style/font/color jesus christ. No. Just no. As much as I dislike some of the recent changes in the gmail interface, overall Gmail is still quite usable.
And if one doesn't trust Gmail then why would one trust Outlook or Yahoo Mail?
The one thing I complain the most about GDrive is only one account is allowed to log in and use google drive. I just don't understand why Google engineers haven't fix this issue.
I haven't had an issue with it, and I've been using Outlook.com pretty much since it came out. Before then I was using the Windows Live Mail desktop client and before then I was using Gmail.
It's all subjective, frontend stuff. But it's ugly. Really ugly. The font, the color scheme, default all effing ugly.
A bug I encounter is when I click on an unread email, and if I then refresh the page the email is still mark unread, unless I read that email and hover to another email. Th
The thing that made my day when I saw someone using it was him actually editing the placeholder in the search bar (by bug). It didn't use the placeholder attribute, just some autoselect. This is something that reeks of bad design overall.
disclaimer I have not used outlook and my opinion is based on this one thing and some other quick looks over the shoulder.
There are likely many motives, with some being opportunistic. My read is that a lion share of the discourse is rooted in Google attempting to redefine its relationship with users (unified id), when users are happy with the status quo. YouTube is what brought it out of the shadows.
Google can justify the move as being good for users, but I strongly suspect that, in most cases, this agenda is not supportive of the value proposition that the individual properties offer its users. I suspect that Google knows this, but their goals are not consistent with that of most of these users.
In other words, Google is willing to take a hit from angry users in exchange for building a unified user network.
I don't want to support the biggest advertiser on the web anymore. Google has become too big for me to be comfortable with them. An open and diverse web flourishes with competition and anonymity.
Right now you can search for a video with Google search, watch it on Google YouTube, watch some Google ads preroll, all on your Google Nexus, powered by Google Android, connected to Google Fiber.
No, it's not just "trendy", there are some legitimate reasons to dislike them. Just like many people have reasons to dislike Apple or Microsoft even though they also make some great stuff.
Google has done a lot to shoot itself in the foot regarding goodwill in the developer community, even though they still contribute a lot to open source.
They killed off Reader and a lot of other products, has closed down many open APIs, so instead of enthusiasm when they launch a new product, now they get "oh yeah, how long is this product going to live?"
They are now forcing every service and pushing their users into Google+ whether they want to or not.
It seems like Social is something Google is obsessed with winning, and they are happy to alienate some users in order to do that.
Its the same case as was with Microsoft. Microsoft forced its users to lock into its ecosystem - by artificially making "Microsoft Product X works only with Microsoft Product Y". And they also had this practice of bundling some software for free, destroying all competition, and then pricing for it.
Now, Google isn't that bad yet, but they're slowly on their path. Recent "YouTube comments requires G+", "Hangouts in GMail requires G+" are examples of those. And as with the past against Microsoft, the same sentiments are now being replayed.
I am changing from gmail mainly because of privacy considerations. Other people arguments also include g+ profile enforcement and negative UI changes, which I both agree with, but it were not the reasons I am changing. Also many are generally against companies growing too big.
Google services remain hugely strong, sometimes it all reeks of the desire to make a story out of nothing, like how a national press will play up some pointless political intrigue.
If I heard convincing stories of a good client, I'd use that. But I've used Gmail's web interface for years, with reasonable happiness. And yeah, the anti-spam rocks.
the "j" down key behavior seems to have changed last month. It used to switch between pages (on message 25, j would take you to #1 on page 2, or, message 26). It doesn't seem to trigger pagination now. :(
Pretty much everything in FastMail can be done with a keyboard shortcut as well: http://fastmail.wikia.com/wiki/KeyboardShortcuts. It's "m" instead of "v" for move, but other than that, most shortcuts are the same as for GMail.
I really like the Outlook.com interface however the setting pages are god awful. They need to make them more dynamic so I don't have to load a whole new page for one little option.
Fastmail's not an alternative. I use it and it's great, but with Gmail you're talking 15GB+ free, and the ticker and 2GB was what set Gmail apart in the first place when it was invite-only. I pay Fastmail $30 a year (not much, granted) for only 500MB (!). I don't see who's going to realistically take on Gmail in the free space.
Honestly, we're not interested in people who aren't willing to pay for service. We're not selling ads, we don't have a second revenue stream. Servers cost money, multiple replica redundancy plus backups cost money.
Shiny new SSDs allowing us to serve the entire last week's email of every user from SSD so that first page view is always lightning fast cost money.
We think that's worth 11 cents per day (Enhanced account).
Ah, a long time since I first signed up, maybe the prices have changed, maybe not, but either way you're getting a lot more storage with Gmail for the price.
But you're evaluating that in a vacuum. When J. Random User is evaluating a solution for his/her email, cost-per-storage-unit isn't usually the highest thing on list (or at least not the only thing).
If I'm going to switch from Gmail, and bother with the switch, I'm going to make sure it's for one that's damn secure. I do want to move away from Gmail, too, but only because I know Google will never offer end-to-end security to Gmail. Most, if not all of the ones you mentioned won't either.
So I'll just wait a little longer, until something like Mailpile or some other usable e-mail service using DarkMail protocol or something better comes along, before I switch.
Do I think Gmail's UI could use a major overhaul? Sure. But I'm not going to switch because of that, after using it for years. But as I said, I would switch for something more secure.
Outlook would be the last e-mail service I'd ever switch to. They even gave NSA pre-encryption Outlook data [1], according to Snowden's leaks. That's beyond unacceptable, especially when they promise their users "security and privacy". Security and privacy are obviously just a joke to Microsoft, that's only useful to them in TV ads.
> Outlook.com encryption unlocked even before official launch
> Microsoft helped the NSA to circumvent its encryption to address concerns that the agency would be unable to intercept web chats on the new Outlook.com portal
> The agency already had pre-encryption stage access to email on Outlook.com, including Hotmail;
> Microsoft also worked with the FBI's Data Intercept Unit to "understand" potential issues with a feature in Outlook.com that allows users to create email aliases
> Within five months, the documents explain, Microsoft and the FBI had come up with a solution that allowed the NSA to circumvent encryption on Outlook.com chats
"End to end" security doesn't exist so long as you're using webmail.
You want end to end security, use GPG. Otherwise accept that your email just isn't that interesting in the first place (or that you expect rule of law to prevent it's disclosure).
> Outlook.com encryption unlocked even before official launch [...]
Just like everyone else - the only reason we know about Microsoft is because that information was leaked. The only way to break from that is to run your own SMTP server and have all your friends run their own SMTP server.
Thinking that those argument can be used as a deciding point between different webmail/email providers is either insane or ignorant (unless said provider resides somewhere like Russia, on an oil rig or in space). Snowden already leaked documents indicating the NSA completely compromised the Google network[1].
The only way to securely communicate over the internet is with something such as IM with a technology like OTR Messaging[2]. You are lying to yourself if you think anyone else has the remote semblance of secure.
I have my mail server on a ISP for private email, but other ones email accounts for other purposes as well.
Yes you are right about your remark, but as I said, I am lazy and rather have Google servers do spam filtering and email aggregation than doing it myself with SpamAssassin.
I got to a point where I rather spend evenings with family and friends than coding.
There's MyKolab, hosted in Switzerland, that costs about 11 usd per month for 1 GB storage with mail, calendar, contacts, etc. Mail only costs about half.
I have not made the jump yet, but it does seem promising.
I tried MyKolab last week and it went terribly. I so wanted things to work out but I feel the service isn't ready and in the end I had to give up.
Documentation is very sparse and in some cases out of date. Even sign-up was problematic for me, since it looks like you are forced to have a PayPal account (you don't, and can use PayPal as the payment processor only).
I had to contact support to ask for help signing up, and the steps they gave me were not possible to follow. Options for a bank transfer payment simply did not appear until many hours later. Imagine you added an item to your cart in Amazon and when you went to check out it was empty. Delete & re-add, still empty. Wait 8 hours, come back, still empty and no way to complete the purchase. Randomly, the item finally shows up the next day.
I got through it finally and switched MX records. I logged in to the webmail interface 2 hours later and had errors 'Server Error: SELECT: Mailbox does not exist' then later 'An error occured(sic). An error occurred while saving'. Another support ticket, emails inbound bouncing, and no reply for three hours and I was all done with MyKolab.
I still want a service like this and am actively looking but a big part of it is the product has to look totally professional and the company must have their shit together. Let's face it, if your goal is privacy and the adversaries are Google and random three-letter agencies you have got to inspire confidence and this company is a long, long way off.
His arguments are amazingly unconvincing, and he attempts to sweep by far the most important point for most people—whether or not Gmail is a good mail client or not—away with random hand-waving: "Meanwhile, its interface is as stale and frustrating as ever". Er, no, David, it's not (and never was).
Where does ZDNET find these bozos?
As far as I can tell, this is ZDNET hastily attempting to get some clicks by pandering to the youtube rage-quitting brigade.
Business as usual for them I suppose, but why do people post this crap to HN?
I've been downmodded heavily elsewhere onsite for suggesting that HNers love to hate google because of hipster mentality, so that clearly can't be it...
I'd say I'm a hipster, but I still like Google. I think you would have been down-voted for shitcanning hipsters (the implication is that rage-quitting Google's services it's fashionable and they're sheep) rather than you being correct that it's due to hipster mentality. In a way, shitcanning hipsters is fashionable, so we're all treading the same ground. Let's all have a beer together and chill out, just mind the beards.
Whats wrong with not liking Google? I don't like them. Then again I don't like most corporations. Unfortunately Google also being an advertising company gets double my hate.
>I've been downmodded heavily elsewhere onsite for suggesting that HNers love to hate google because of hipster mentality
Because it's a stupid reason. You would get the same response if you suggested that the reason was that HNers love to hate google because they hate logos with color in them.
Can anyone recommend a spam filtering solution (doesn't matter if free or paid) that can match Google's? Spam filtering is the main reason I'm staying with gmail and from my limited experience, SpamAssassin can't even come close to it.
Is it just me or has gmail got REALLY slow for anyone else in the last 3 months as well? As in sometimes it might take like a minute to open an email. I was hoping that it was some temporary issue but it does not seem to be going away.
I use (hourly) both regular GMail and apps for domains, and I haven't noticed anything like that. A minute to open an email seems like it would be really noticeable, too.
my Gmail tab in Chrome often gets into a state where it's using 100% CPU and is sluggish to respond to UI interactions. Is that what you mean, or something else?
I know Fastmail read HN, so I'm just going to use this as an opportunity (again) to say: please support push notifications on iOS! I know it's Apple's fault, and they should support IDLE, but that's not the point. The point is that thanks to Gmail no longer supporting push for non-business email accounts on iOS, there's now a gap in the market, and I really really want to be able to use Fastmail to fill that gap. But I won't be renewing my subscription if they can't support push...
I've been using it for several months now. I really like it. It's fast, and reliable. I made the move, and haven't (really) looked back.
The spam filtering isn't as good though. I've had a few false positives and false negatives. I don't get much spam, so it's not hard to have a quick look in the spam folder. Wish I didn't have to do this though.
I like paying for the product. It's nice to know my emails aren't being scanned to build up a profile on me. It's nice to know that I am a customer (of the traditional kind). I haven't had to use support yet, but it's there. Unlike Gmail.
I originally moved because I grew uneasy with the amount of information I had with Google. Now, I have none. A small win for me, but Google doesn't care. Ultimately, make the decision on the whole "best tool for the job" argument.
I've been using it for months. It seems like a serviceable IMAP backend. The spam filtering lets me down but anything is better than getting sucked back into Google again.
I would hope it's servicable! I put a lot of work into making it robust. It helps that we talk IMAP to the backend servers as well rather than some custom protocol (OK, so there are some IMAP extensions we use in house as well - but they're very much in the spirit of regular IMAP)
Gmail is IMHO still the best mail provider – and in combination with Google App for Business, the best groupware provider.
I have tested many alternatives but I still mostly use Gmail. The reasons are mostly the feature set, the pricing, the security and the storage capacity.
There are only two major annoyances in my daily use: More and more Google+ integration, lacking IMAP support. The latter lead me to use Google's own apps or Google-specific browsers like Mailplane.
For heavy mail (and groupware) users, they only other alternatives is Exchange. Outlook.com/Office 365 is OK but very 'Microsofty', Hosted Exchange is a complete disaster.
Better yet, a worthwhile reinvention of the concept. I am hopeful with DarkMail, even though the name isn't very catchy. SecMail would sound much better.
Abandon Gmail for Outlook.com? After suffering through the mega-fail Games for Windows Live, real suffering: constant restarting and sign-in needed, really slow, really annoying update cycles, terrible support procedures; kinda worked when you went through hell... sorta thing.
After that torture, I'm reluctant to trust MS web email. I'm sure a different mob did the email application from the GFWL mess, but I won't rush over. I'd use Yahoo above Outlook. Yahoo email seems reliable enough, not too painful.
Would anyone use peer-to-peer email service, that could send/receive to/from any other email provider and could be accessed also via web page, if there would be one?
FWIW, I've used Gmail for 6 or 7 years and Fastmail for 1 year.
Edit: clarification