
Let us pay for this service so it won't go down - harscoat
http://www.marco.org/4372312713
======
TillE
> Gmail does have IMAP, but it’s extremely unreliable and buggy.

That's never been my experience at all. I've used Gmail via Thunderbird
(mostly for Enigmail) for years with very very few problems. It occasionally
chokes when sending large attachments, but it always works on the second try.

~~~
makeramen
I second this. I've used it through Thunderbird to Mail.app and now with
Sparrow and haven't had any problems. Even during the web outage a year (or
two?) ago, IMAP was still up while the web version was down.

I've also been using gmail since it was invite-only beta and haven't
experienced any major problems through the 7 years I've used it, not sure what
everyone is complaining about.

Worth noting: I think the original complaint/idea (I think from Gruber or
someone similar, I don't remember exactly) was more along the lines of having
Twitter offer premium accounts that would never failwhale, and similar
equivalents for other web services these days that seem to be falling apart
under load. That idea I could understand, just not with Gmail.

~~~
adam_albrecht
Same here - no problems at all. And ever since Sparrow came out, I barely ever
open the Gmail web interface.

------
runjake
You can already get this with Google Apps for Business, for $50 a user (which
would meet the guy's criteria):

<http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html>

With a 99.9% uptime SLA:

<http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/terms/premier_terms.html>

and

<http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/terms/sla.html>

~~~
loire280
Any technically inclined Gmail user should at least consider switching his
email address to a domain he owns plus free Google Apps. It works just like
regular Gmail, but you can change providers whenever you'd like. It may take
many years, but someday Google is going to be technologically behind or an
untenable steward of your data.

Changing email addresses is a pain -- better to do it now, while you can
slowly transition with email forwarding. Use filters to auto-label mail that
is sent to the old address, ask senders to change your address, and switch
over any mailing lists and accounts as automatic emails come in.

~~~
mise
In practical terms for those interested: in cPanel, for instance you can set
forwarding for info@example.com to example.com@gmail.com. Then, when you want
to switch providers, change the forwarding rule in cPanel.

This would still leave you with the problem of your history of emails being
stuck within Gmail.

~~~
JoachimSchipper
That's one way, but it's better to set up Google for domains and direct all
mail there directly (set the MX record).

~~~
mise
Didn't know that. What's better about that way?

~~~
JoachimSchipper
An MX-based setup does not use the cPanel provider's mail server, so it should
be more reliable/secure/convenient in a dispute/etc. If you also use your
@gmail.com account to send mail, it has the added benefit of allowing you to
migrate off GMail easily, should it ever start to suck (just set up an account
elsewhere and change the MX record - people should already have you@yourdomain
in their address book).

Additionally, most spam filters take the sending host into account ("this host
is known to have sent a million spam messages today - let's not bother talking
to it"), but this information is lost (untrustworthy) if you forward via
another mail server; it's likely that GMail has a better spam filter than your
cPanel provider, so try to give it all the information you can.

There are some minor other issues - faster delivery, less wasted disk space on
the cPanel provider's end, message sizes are limited only by GMail - but the
above are the main ones.

Do note that you need GMail "for domains" instead of just a @gmail.com
address. The "for domains" version is free, though (perhaps up to some upper
limit - 50 mailboxes?).

------
jsankey
_You must own any data that’s irreplaceable to you._

An interesting additional point given the ongoing trend towards web apps and
storing data "in the cloud". Note that "own" in this sense means you need to
be able to export it in a standard way (e.g. access via IMAP). I don't see a
lot of enthusiasm for this from the big sites out there. I can only hope that
users start to realise the value in this and begin demanding more control of
the data they are creating.

~~~
focusaurus
Check out this nascent effort: <http://unhosted.org/>

~~~
JoachimSchipper
I would be _extremely_ careful with that project: it relies on Javascript
crypto extensively to project users from storage nodes. Javascript crypto is
nearly always completely broken (crypto _needs_ to take input-independent time
for all operations, for instance), and their implementation hasn't been
audited at all. (It has been lifted from some Stanford crypto group, IIRC, but
that's hardly enough checking.)

------
ndaiger
An interesting example from the past is the LiveJournal "Express Lane":

<http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=74>

I wasn't a LiveJournal user, but saw one of Brad Fitzpatrick's excellent
scalability talks years ago. I think he had a special flag that could be set
for paid requests that would give them priority in perlbal, the load balancer
he wrote.

Obviously it doesn't do much when something big is broken, but Brad did have a
way to make sure paying customers' requests were processed first, and had
realtime stats on average request latency for paid vs. free accounts.

------
apress
All online services have downtime, lose data, don't serve every user perfectly
at every second -- paid or free. This post makes no sense. Not to mention
Google makes a ton of money from serving ads and Gmail already runs at a
99.99% uptime rate ([http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/google-aiming-
for-9999-percent...](http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/google-aiming-
for-9999-percent-uptime-with-business-gmail/25573))

And how did paying for service work out for Jott users who tied the whole
thing into their voicemail and now have to untie it pretty quick?

------
mhiceoin
What is wrong with Google Apps? $50 per user per year with SLA

<http://www.google.com/apps/>

~~~
jemka
>What is wrong with Google Apps? $50 per user per year with SLA

The article isn't a plea to pay for gmail, which you probably inferred from
reading the title or first paragraph.

~~~
mhiceoin
No, I certainly read the whole thing. With Google Apps you get all the support
(SLA, uptime, phone contact) along with data ownership (by using an offline
mail client for example).

~~~
scott_s
Data ownership was only one point. Address ownership was the other.

~~~
blasdel
…which you also get with Google Apps.

There's no way to set it up without owning a domain!

------
dpcan
I really like this post. A lot. The idea that just throwing money at something
will in some way keep it alive is kind-of silly.

The closest you'll come to this if you have ONLY a paid option, which would
eliminate the free users, and make the system far smaller and more manageable,
in which case there WOULD be more up-time because people were paying.

But I agree, to to think a small subset of paying users will have any affect
on the up-time of a major site is just a pipe dream.

~~~
bxr
>to think a small subset of paying users will have any affect on the up-time
of a major site is just a pipe dream

You seem to rely on the assumption that every major site's budget is so lush
that a small portion of the userbase paying would be unable to solve any of
their technical or employee needs.

Look at reddit, their recent donation effort has gotten them servers and
staff: <http://blog.reddit.com/2010/11/help-us-help-you-help-us.html>

You'd be crazy to say that those additional resources will have no affect at
all on their uptime.

~~~
dpcan
Actually, Reddit is the exact site I was thinking of when I made this post.
They opened up the Reddit Gold, it helped a little, but lately the site seems
to go down daily, or even more often. It's almost like it's getting worse.

------
ElbertF
_Since 2007, I’ve used FastMail [..]. FastMail’s uptime has been incredibly
good [..]._

Funny, I clicked the link and saw this:

 _MessagingEngine.com Server Outage

[..] I'm sorry, the server your email is on is currently down. We apologise
for the inconvenience; any email sent to you during this time is being queued
by another server and will be delivered as soon as the server is working
again._

~~~
Groxx
While I had a FastMail account, I distinctly recall at least a dozen instances
of it going offline. Though this was early 2000 or so for only a couple years.

~~~
keturn
They're very good at posting their outages: <http://status.fastmail.fm/>

------
bobx11
This blog post has a commission link to the service he subscribes to (or is
advertising). I've had less downtime with google apps than I had with any
other solution and I don't have to spend time managing it. Google spam filters
are effective enough that the service can be down for an hour a day and it
would still be a good service for me because it saves me so much time.

------
MichaelApproved
The page isn't coming up for me. Here's the Bing cached version.

[http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=http%3a%2f%2fwww.marco.org%...](http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=http%3a%2f%2fwww.marco.org%2f4372312713&d=687777910246&mkt=en-
US&setlang=en-US&w=ede88957,cfbe52e7)

~~~
gnufs
Here's the Google's cache:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:EJyOXHS...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:EJyOXHSx3qwJ:www.marco.org/+marco.org)

------
falcolas
I think that this is a fair assessment. It would be nice to be able to set up
SLAs for a premium, but I honestly can't see any major ad-based providers
offering this (breaking the SLA would be too costly).

I also appreciate the restatement of "You must own any data that’s
irreplaceable to you." It's suprising how lost that simple fact is today.

~~~
eli
I don't quite understand the marketing magic that the term "SLA" has over
people. Are there SLAs that cover my _actual losses_ due to downtime? Perhaps
they exist, but I've never seen them

If my customers can't email me for a week, I assure you that a partial refund
on the fee from my email provider is not going to make things right.

~~~
JoachimSchipper
A _good_ SLA makes downtime painful enough for the provider that they'll want
to fix things. Most SLA's have no teeth though - marketing only. (Any "100%"
SLA falls in this category.)

------
pstack
Google already gets paid for Gmail. It uses Gmail as a platform on which to
serve very targeted advertisements on every page. Likely a greater overall
value with their number of users than if they did away with the ads and
charged for the service, instead.

~~~
zheng
Not to attack your post, but I feel as though the HN community is aware of
Google's business model by now. I feel as though any time a story appears
about Google (or any company that utilizes their model), there are at least a
few comments about how ads are what is driving them. It just seems to be
restating common knowledge, at this point. You aren't the only one to be doing
it either, I just happened to reply to this post.

~~~
pstack
I don't see how it's any less relevant to the discussion of "they should
charge so the service is smoother". If we're going to have that conversation,
then it's important to acknowledge that they already have a business model
that addresses this. Google isn't hurting for money nor are their projects and
when something like gmail encounters a hitch, it has nothing to do with
funding. Giving gmail more funding or funding it by direct service fees over
their existing model isn't going to make it any more reliable, since it is
still susceptible to "things just going bad" from time to time. Really, if my
comment is inane, then so is the whole submission (which I would kind of agree
with - no slight intended to the submitter).

------
philfreo
It seems like there should be more startups out there trying to do a better
job than Google is at email management. I hate to think that there's no more
room for innovation or competition in such an important area.

~~~
cageface
Maybe but it's an expensive service to run. Google can make it work because
they have the supporting infrastructure to harvest enough data to drive their
ad business. It would be costly for a startup to spin this up on its own.

~~~
philfreo
Eh, I don't buy it. Sure, searching on an storing a lot of mail is a tough
problem, but there are plenty of startups working on what I'd consider to be
much harder. With open source tools, AWS, etc. this isn't an impossible
problem. Plus, you don't have to scale to millions of users right away.

~~~
cageface
I think people are staying away from this area for a reason. Email is of
declining importance anyway. I know more and more people that, for better or
worse, communicate mainly through Facebook.

Also, don't underestimate how much work it is to filer spam effectively.

~~~
dot
more and more people using facebook sounds like a reason and an opportunity to
fix email. why is it easier to send messages via facebook?

email has a few huge disadvantages: you need to keep your address book up to
date and your inbox is full of email from machines - notifications and bulk.

make an email provider that has a twist - maybe automatically sync it with
your facebook friends as the address book and limit lenght of your replies.

------
demetris
I don’t completely get what Marco is trying to say. IMAP is not exclusive to
FastMail (which is is a great service). Gmail has it too. And POP3 of course.

Most of the time I use Gmail from its web interface. The few times I had
problems with the webif, I launched my desktop client and used that.

As for using your own domain name, well, life is short. I can’t be bothered
with all the small things.

~~~
rahoulb
He's saying if you use a free service to expect downtime.

If you use a paid service, expect downtime. Maybe less downtime than a free
service, but it will still be there.

He is using IMAP because it makes it easy for him to migrate to another
provider if the inevitable downtime becomes a problem.

------
mbateman
I'd rather be able to pay Google to stop showing me ads and collecting my
personal data.

~~~
orijing
I am not sure how you can pay them for the second part, but I found a plugin
called Rapportive that replaces ads with more useful stuff:
<http://rapportive.com/>

You should try it. It's really useful for business emails.

------
bitskits
How does paying for something ensure no downtime? I'm pretty sure most
services never want to be down, paid or not.

I'm missing the connection here; does it somehow prevent people from making
errors if you pay?

~~~
David
From the article:

"I’ve seen many similar pleas recently whenever any popular, free web service
has problems: “Please, let us pay you so there won’t be any problems!”

But it’s an impossible dream. If a web service is popular enough that you hear
about it when it has downtime or major issues, it’s probably a large, very
complex system. 100% uptime is effectively impossible."

~~~
aasarava
True, but in fairness to bitskits, the author goes on to talk about paying to
use FastMail as an alternative to Gmail. Yet, he doesn't provide any
comparative uptime data to show that FastMail is objectively better.

As for being able to own your data and store local backups, you can do that
with Gmail POP, or with Gmail IMAP and an email client that'll store messages
locally.

(The author's argument that Gmail IMAP is buggy, is one anecdote; I can
provide my own anecdote to the contrary. Again, we'd need some data to prove
that FastMail is better.)

~~~
scott_s
_Yet, he doesn't provide any comparative uptime data to show that FastMail is
objectively better._

This is true, but his solution is not one that _must_ use FastMail. His
address is his own, and he backs up his own email. So if FastMail lost
everything of his, he would be able to switch over to something else. That he
owns his own email address is the important factor, not that he happens to use
FastMail.

For the record, I use Gmail for all of my personal email, and I don't bother
keeping backups.

------
pbreit
You ready to pay $10k? $50k? $100k? Because it would cost at least that much
to serve the handful of people who want to pay for that feature.

------
Incubus
Reddit tried this (you can buy a reddit gold account with extra features). It
hasn't worked.

