

Email Intervention - iansinke
http://www.emailintervention.com/

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Vivtek
Oh, hey, yeah, I'm going to "stage an intervention" to get people to switch to
the company that's going to yank their email with no human to complain to,
whenever they feel like it.

This is ham-handed and frankly not nearly as funny as I'm sure it seemed on
campus.

~~~
dredmorbius
Truth to tell, AOL's customer service is hardly superior.

If you want premium levels of email service, then sign on with a premium email
service provider.

~~~
Vivtek
You know, I don't really care about AOL - but I normally wouldn't find this
little Googlism all that much a hot-button topic either, were it not for this
mess surrounding Google+ right now, including the deletion of a child's Gmail
account when he gave a truthful date of birth when Google invited him to
Google+.

Which is to say, you're not wrong, but maybe not seeing the point I was going
for. Google's drawn my negative attention an awful lot lately in terms of
whether I'd feel comfortable recommending them to somebody who had somehow
remained untouched by Google, and I found the "intervention" conceit to be
going too far in terms of tone-deafness.

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jannes
I have mixed feelings about this. I don't like to tell other people what they
should or should not be doing. It's rude.

Maybe that's just me, but I also have never heard of anyone using the "Invite
to Gmail" feature (at least since registration is open to everyone).

~~~
alexobenauer
That may be the very reason why they made this - to make "Invite to Gmail"
more fun, humorous, etc.?

Interesting nonetheless, not something I'd care to use. Any of my friends /
family not on GMail probably wouldn't understand the email anyway, and would
probably assume it was spam.

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Joeri
Frankly, until google gets some kind of end-user support going, i would be
hard-pressed to recommend any google service.

~~~
jonknee
And the support people get from @yahoo.com, @hotmail.com and @aol.com
addresses is better? Unless you're paying for something, don't expect support.
You can pay for Google Mail if that end-user support thing is important to
you, but I've never had a need for it.

~~~
corin_
Paying for Google services doesn't mean you get good support, FYI.

~~~
jonknee
"Good support" is a pretty vague term, so I'm not sure what you mean. But you
get a SLA and 24/7 access to support. Not sure what more you're looking for.

~~~
corin_
I've never needed support from Google so I can't speak from personal
experience, but I've read _many_ blogs and comments here on HN complaining
that paying for gmail ought to mean good customer support, but in fact it's
just as bad as it is for free users.

I'm in bed on my blackberry and about to drift off, so I can't be bothered to
find examples. Will take a look in the morning.

~~~
jonknee
There's a common confusion between users "paying for Gmail" by buying more
storage and "paying for Google Apps" which is what comes with the SLA and
support. Buying more storage simply gets you more storage. I'm sure there are
horror stories from actual Google Apps customers, but that's surely the case
for any company with tons of customers.

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nollidge
I don't get it. Why would I care what e-mail people are using? I'll tell them
about it if I think it will solve some problem they're having, but otherwise
it doesn't matter to me.

~~~
crikli
You might be someone like me whose Mom can't resist clicking on every effing
through that makes it past Hotmail's sub-optimal spam filter. I've tried to
get her to go GMail for years but she can't grasp the concept that she doesn't
have to tell everyone she has a new email address.

~~~
rjd
hotmail spam filter has improved greatly, more or less caught upto gmails.
You'll probably find switching her to gmail won't fix the problem as shes
probably signing up to things constantly online and causing the issue herself.

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patio11
That's the least Googley Google thing I've ever seen. It's bald-faced bare-
knuckles competitive, focuses 95% on FUD and 5% on features, and seems to
_know_ this and get by by saying "Don't worry, I'm being ironic about it" but
_it isn't_.

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ez77
I, for one, want to become proficient enough in sysadmin to painlessly run my
own mail server and MUA, know how to back up properly and automatically,
filter spam, set up SPF and DKIM. Oh, and host my own name servers too.

No sarcasm. In the meantime, I'll stick to Gmail.

~~~
spudlyo
It's not entirely painless, but I do it anyway because I can. A third party is
never going to have access to my personal email, it's just not going to
happen.

~~~
solarcanine
So, how's running that datacenter been? Any trouble setting up peering
agreements?

Sorry, but using the "no third party blah blah blah" is just a strawman
looking for a match.

~~~
Vivtek
Getting the power plant up and running was the hard part, let me tell you!

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kelnos
I wonder if this is a part of the Google+ push. Once Google opens G+ to the
general public, my assumption is that if you have a GMail account, you'll
essentially automatically have a G+ account. If you're logged in, then you've
become a G+ user just by using GMail or even Google Search.

------
unicornporn
One of the fine thing about email is that (unlike social networking services
like Facebook or Google+) it's based on open and widely used protocols that
works across service providers. Why would I ever care what email service
provider someone else uses? I trust peoples choices. Hotmail/Windows Live Mail
is quite nice these days.

~~~
bittermang
Hotmail's got a lot of small neat features now days.

Like Sweep, I can delete or move all the emails from a certain -- or multiple
-- addresses in a few clicks. I can even check a single dialog box and make
this in to a permanent rule.

If I mark a message as Junk, but they're in my contact book, I get a check box
that says "I think this person was hacked!" ... I have no idea what it does,
but it seems like a neat idea in theory. Plenty of times I've gotten junk
email from someone I know because they were compromised on some level.

And those are just the features I've noticed, because I don't use Hotmail as
my primary email contact.

------
codeup
_"Save your friends from outdated email"_

Google has set up a dedicated website to help push people towards using their
email service.

That's just one side of the medal. The other is that Google wants people to
_stop_ using their current email provider and move to them.

 _"Save your friends from YOUNAMEIT"_

Maybe we'll also see more sites that help you save your friends from
continuing to use Gmail, Facebook, Skype,...

~~~
Estragon
Yes, I hate that many of my friends (even my wife) use gmail, so my personal
email ends up in google's hands for analysis.

------
kalistoga
In fact, more and more I want to encourage my friends to stay away from gmail.
Hell even I'm in the process of moving away from using Google accounts.

I can understand that Google is trying to collect as much user data in as
accurate way as possible, but recently it's been increasingly annoying how
they are trying to fix what's not broken.

I have multiple google accounts for different purposes, and recently Google
started disallowing multi-user access to their sites. This is extremely
inconvenient and annoying for me that I'm even thinking about switching to
another email provider. In fact I have already started using ymail for certain
purposes.

I might be a minority for now, but I see this annoyance will only accelerate
in the future for even ordinary people as Google tries to fight against
Facebook with identity.

What do you all think?

~~~
mirkules
Personally, I still use Gmail because IMAP and POP access is still available.
My machine at home downloads my emails via IMAP while I'm at work. No problem.

But I find it creepy knowing that Google is keeping an eye on everything I do.
Therefore, I started to diversify: use Bing for search, use Bing or Yahoo!
maps, never stay logged into Google services... actually these are the only
Google services I use regularly, so that's pretty much it. I do have to say,
for searching programming stuff Bing is kinda "meh" but livable.

I do have a question: suppose you sign into your Google account, and now your
account is correlated with your IP address, then you sign out. I wonder if
Google keeps track of searches from your IP address while you are signed out
and correlates it with your account (perhaps with a little less weight)?

Edit: Forgot to mention Android. Definitely more than creepy.

Also, even if Microsoft is collecting information, it means MS will have only
some of the info.

~~~
kalistoga
Who knows what they are doing behind.

What I'm annoyed about is that they seem like they are trying to commit
suicide. I can understand they want to "leverage" their existing assets, but
the sacrifice is too much.

As you said, there's no problem if you use IMAP and POP access with your
desktop client, and therein lies the problem. Google is supposed to bring
everything to the cloud. They used to be good at it. But they are now going
backwards and making people become dependent on devices. I already see many
people using the mail client Sparrow just for that reason.

I think they've lost their mind being too obsessed with Facebook and Twitter.

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jsm386
Wonder why the share on fb/twitter links are commented out. Share on G+ -
really just preaching to the choir there...

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bencevans
I like having my privately hosted email services so Google can not start
reading my mail and 'adjust my search accordingly' or anything like that!

~~~
__david__
Agreed. Though I think the more important reason is that no company can cut me
off from my 20 years of email history on a whim, like has been happening
recently with Google.

~~~
jonknee
Why don't you have a local copy?

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sramov
I wanted to make an opposite `gmailintervention.com` site, it appears they
registered it with MarkMonitor Brand Protection™ :)

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zobzu
Save your friends! Make them use all Google products! Make them give their
details to Google, their emails, their browser, their lives, and make sure to
reload those ads while you're at it!

Internet in 2020: Using a Google Laptop to access the Google.com with a Google
browser, using a Google search engine that searches mostly through Google
services (other services died), talking to people via Google talk, phoning
them via Google Voice, checking you Google email, managing your documents on
Google docs, your schedule on Google calendar, share your pictures on Google
picasa, your videos on Google youtube, your life on Google+

Heck, you don't see it coming yet?! What do you need more?

Internet will be Google and world domination is rather near. Yeah I know it
sounds funny but it's not actually just a joke - it looks pretty damn much
near to our actually present already.

~~~
drivebyacct2
Yup, Google should stop making successful products because people like zobzu
like to list them ominously and imply that Google is making you use them. I
don't understand posts like this.

Use a Microsoft Windows laptop to access Bing with IE, use Bing and Hotmail,
talk to people on Windows Messenger, [no GVoice equivalent], checking Hotmail,
managing docs on Live or Office 365, etc, etc. What a bunch of nonsense.

~~~
wtn

        [no GVoice equivalent]
    

Skype :)

------
manish
Sugar coating email invite is lame. There was a time when I almost always saw
google doing awesome things. Now it doesn't look any different from other big
companies like microsoft or IBM. I wonder if it is possible to be a big
company and still do really cool things?

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Pewpewarrows
Oh, so the HN hivemind decided it's shit all over Gmail day in this thread
because a guy with pictures barely indistinguishable from child porn had his
Google account temporarily banned? Good to know.

~~~
bittermang
First they came for the alleged child predators, and I did not speak out
because I support children.

------
bpierre
I thought it was about fixing Gmail.

<http://www.email-standards.org/clients/gmail/>

~~~
Macha
Really, I couldn't care less about my email client supporting CSS. I much
rather emails in plain text than distracting formatting.

------
rjd
One friend? The majority of my friends don't use gmail. Its just not that good
of a service, exchange, and big services like that make it laughable.

Plus I've found it unreliable with certain ISPs, mail just doesn't arrive.
Black holed, never making it to the spam folder, not being bounced back.

So sorry its amatuer mail and I'll let people choose there own life style, but
I will not recomend it for work related stuff.

~~~
rjd
Also a recent update was lampooned pretty hard by my friend. They where
advertising better ads as a new amazing feature... Really? Im pretty no one
uses gmail to view ads on purpose... How about some rules and filtering
options insteads... Priorities are wrong...

Also hotmail has caught up on the spam issue, there isn't a real reason to
switch except for ego.

------
wcameron
Really, really nice design. I'm loving Google's newfound attention to
aesthetics.

What's with the Gotham though? I know H&FJ keep talking about making their
fonts embeddable one day, but it hasn't happened yet:
<http://www.typography.com/ask/faq.php?faqID=126#Faq_126>

~~~
carterdea
I saw a tweet from Jonathan Hoefler sarcastically saying he loves when the
Gmail team uses pirated versions of his font online, or something to that
affect, but it appears he has deleted it: <http://twitter.com/#!/H_FJ>

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siglesias
Definitely seems to be a play at getting them on Google+. After all, they are
your "friends."

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sidwyn
I find this quite poorly programmed.

The service looks for emails that end with @gmail.com, but fail to take into
account companies with email provided by Google Apps.

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DeepakAV
Funny thing is it works for sending mails for change to Gmail accounts too!

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loup-vaillant
Brilliant. I can't wait to use that idea to save my friends from Big Brother.
Hmm… But they would have to trust _me_ instead of Google.

Well, better send them a FreedomBox for Christmas, then.

