Moonchild wrote: ↑2019-07-04, 13:06
I have a suggestion: stop using GMail. I myself am migrating off of the account I have with them because of exactly this kind of manipulative behavior. The Google account will henceforth only be for things that are unimportant like Android, required service logins, and to satisfy their captcha
I agree with the spirit of your suggestion, but it may be difficult for some people in practice. I stuck with Yahoo Mail for 20 years in the face of almost everyone from my generation and (especially) younger switching to Gmail in my part of the world. It turned into a complete mess. I finally had to make the move to Gmail when Yahoo essentially seemed to lose compatibility with Gmail and AOL (The service most people older than me that I know were using) on a regular basis. I'd never know if my emails had gone through or not. Their IMAP support was an after thought that would go down for days at a time (I suspect they only grudgingly expanded it to their free users to match Gmail and because of the advent of smartphones). Though by the end I only rarely was using their service in a web browser, there were auto-play videos there and all sorts of nonsense when I did.
Gmail has been virtually problem free for years now.
I can't even attribute my issues with Yahoo Mail to Google's usual antics surrounding subtly diminishing compatibility between it's products and other things to make it's products look better, because Yahoo was having problems with AOL and others as well at times.
Email is one of those things I have to be able to count on.
I agree that it would be good for the ecology of the email ecosystem to have people move away from Gmail, but we need a rock solid alternative that just works. I could put up with something that might have troubles occasionally due to some anti-competitive Google shenanigans beyond their control, but not if it's having trouble with other services as well.
Everything that wasn't Gmail, Yahoo, or Microsoft's email service seemed to be either Russian, Chinese (I have nothing against *the people* of Russia or China, but I'm not going to use an email service based in an authoritarian country), not compatible with third-party email clients, or a fly by night operation that seemed like it could go under at any time. In fact, when I decided to switch from Yahoo, a common refrain was to try some sort of open-source (Whatever that means in the context of email) thing based in France (I have no issues with the French government
). I considered that, but didn't think the service would be around in a year- and it wasn't, or at least was experiencing significant drama last I checked that was effecting the service.
And, of course, to compete with Gmail, anything else basically has to be no-charge, which is a tough business model if you don't have a giant advertising business to support it.
Anyhow, apart from a competitor to Gmail forming that did everything I wanted it to do with near-complete reliability, the one thing that could move me from Gmail at this point would be if they removed IMAP/POP3 access. If I can't use a third-party client to access my email, I'll find another email service provider whether it works reliably or not.
Otherwise, I'm going to continue to view Gmail as a necessary evil. Sometimes one wants to rage against the machine, and sometimes one just wants one's emails to go through.