The Case Against Gmail

stry_cat writes "Ed Bot makes the case against Gmail: 'Gmail was a breath of fresh air when it debuted. But this onetime alternative is showing signs that it's past its prime, especially if you want to use the service with a third-party client. That's the way Google wants it, which is why I've given up on Gmail after almost a decade.' Personally, I've always thought it odd that no other email provider ever adopted Gmails "search not sort" mentality. I've been a Gmail user since you needed an invitation to get an account. However Gmail has been steadily moving towards a more traditional email experience. Plus there's the iGoogle disaster that got me looking into alternatives to everything Google."

Re:iGoogle Disaster

[mythosaz]

My 70 year old mother lamented iGoogle going away too. Take that for whatever it's worth.

Re:iGoogle Disaster

[Penguinisto]

The iGoogleocolypse?

It's Ed Bott - what else did you expect? I don't even have to RTFA, and I can tell you that he's likely pimping Outlook.com in that same article as hard as he friggin' can. It's not so much a critical review of GMail, as it is a webvertisement for Outlook.com disguised as a critical review.

GMail isn't exactly sliced bread (I use it POP3-style mostly), but it isn't as horrid as he makes it out to be, either. Think about this for a moment: MSFT's lead professional knob-slobberer badmouths a MSFT product's biggest competitor - so why is this even news?

Re:iGoogle Disaster

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out http://www.ighome.com/
I'm not affiliated with them at all. It's the closest thing to an actual substitute that I've seen so far.
They even let you import your old settings from iGoogle.

Just a thought.

He did, he did!

[hackshack]

Penguinisto, he mentioned Outlook 11 times in his last 3 paragraphs.

Re:First Post

[Anonymous Coward]

To summarize the fine article:

Ed Bott
I write stuff. Mostly about Windows. Sometimes I get paid for it,

http://www.edbott.com/ [edbott.com]

Full Disclosure

[drakaan]

(From the "full disclosure" link at the bottom of TFA):

Ed Bott is a freelance technical journalist and book author. All work that Ed does is on a contractual basis.Since 1994, Ed has written more than 25 books about Microsoft Windows and Office. Along with various co-authors, Ed is completely responsible for the content of the books he writes. As a key part of his contractual relationship with publishers, he gives them permission to print and distribute the content he writes and to pay him a royalty based on the actual sales of those books. Ed's books have been distributed under several imprints: Que Publishing (a division of Pearson Education); Microsoft Press (with production and distribution by O'Reilly), and Fair Trade Digital Exchange, where he was briefly a partner. On occasion, Ed accepts consulting assignments. In recent years, he has worked as an expert witness in cases where his experience and knowledge of Microsoft and Microsoft Windows have been useful. In each such case, his compensation is on an hourly basis, and he is hired as a witness, not an advocate. Ed sometimes receive fees and/or travel expenses for live speeches and webinars from companies and organizations. Acceptance of these fees does not constitute an endorsement of the company's products. Ed does not own stock or have any other financial interest in Microsoft or any other software company. He owns 500 shares of stock in EMC Corporation, which was purchased before the company's acquisition of VMware. In addition, he owns 350 shares of stock in Intel Corporation, purchased more than seven years ago. All stocks are held in retirement accounts for long-term growth. Ed does not accept gifts from companies he covers. All hardware products he writes about are purchased with his own funds or are review units covered under formal loan agreements and are returned after the review is complete.

Re:Past it? Long past it.

[kaiser423]

Anyone acting like Lotus is better than any other email client at anything is just incorrect. We actually have people switching to Linux and the running a Windows VM to do their actual work just so that they can use a Thunderbird or similar for email versus Lotus Notes. It's that bad. Earlier today I waited 35 minutes for my Inbox view to refresh so that I could actually see my inbox with only ~100 emails in it. We have a STOPNOTES.exe put on everyone's desktop by IT and that's the first thing they ask us to run if we call with a Lotus Notes problem. If by flexible you mean broke into a million pieces so technically you can make it any shape you want, then you would be correct.

Re:iGoogle Disaster was overblown

[PRMan]

I used it. I switched to ustart.org which imported the whole thing flawlessly.

Re:iGoogle Disaster

[aztracker1]

I have a domain on ms's hosting and it works okay.. I actually like the outlook style interface a little more than gmail.. though I use my gmail account a lot more via web than I do my personal account (mostly use that through the generic mail app on my phone). That said, I really don't trust google, microsoft or apple all that much, they've all done things counter to their user's interests. I have my own email server for my other domains, but getting tired of maintaining it, so a freely hosted solution is the best option for me as long as I can use a regular mail client. MS is the best of those options currently. I have another year on my business connection, and my plan is to have it all on hosted services by the end of the year. I'll still play around with my own stuff, it's just more than I have the time and interest to do these days.

Re:What?

[vux984]

Gmail has a 15 imap connection limit. Some clients use multiple imap connections. I know someone with an iphone, ipad, and laptop (mac using Apple Mail), and they run into the limit all the time.

Worse, apple mail doesn't merely just quietly 'fail' to sync until the connetions become available, it gives a general error message and prompts for username/password.

Re-Entering it doesn't help of course, because that's not the problem at all.

You have to quit apple mail, and wait a while.

Re:Full Disclosure

[drakaan]

I'm not attacking anyone. I am only pointing out that an article pointing out things about Google not having APIs that work for him, that pushing him to switch to outlook.com (and explaining to everyone else how and why they should) might not be completely unbiased.