Gmail: a short, sharp rant
Is arrogance a job requirement when trying to join Google? This story starts with me being furious. "I was bloody furious when my email provider suddenly, and without warning, started bouncing incoming messages." You would be, wouldn't you? Call me fussy, but I've been told this is the sort of thing which can give a small, …
Oh I never realised that if I had a support issue I was supposed to phone the Press office! of course silly me! just thank your lucky stars that you get a Human to Talk to!
your email could not be delivered because the email box guy.goma@Gmail.com is full!
Maybe you should also try calling the president directly, I'm sure they will patch you right through....i'm sure google doesn't get 2000 calls a day with some irate person asking to speak to the 'team' about an issue.
I'll pile on with the others:
- Every now and again, exercise some data-management and log in to delete e-mails you've already downloaded (I believe gmail won't let you delete when accessing via POP).
- And yeah, they could and should have provided a way to give warnings of full mailboxes, even if they are big, both for POP and web access.
Me, I let it pile up in gmail and then download to my personal computer and at that point clear out whatever I downloaded. I certainly have reservations about Google, but don't think they are above average evil, and like that I can have my Treo automatically check my gmail account free.
Keller
So what if its free... if they're professional they should act like it.
The big advantage of gmail for me is subscribing to info-mail services and using the google search to find what I want, when i want it. This means that I too leave almost all email in there, undeleted.
I bet he wrote the article within 5 minutes off coming off the phone to google.
Steve
Somewhere up there someone said something about leaving your email on gMail because it gave you a wonderful way of organising all your messages and searching through them, etc. (Something like that anyway.)
Then someone else said that you can't easily delete email because there's no easy way to categorize or search your mailbox(es). (Or similar.)
There's also something about not being able to tell your POP3 client to delete messages from the Google server without jumping through some other Google-icious hoop.
And, meanwhile, someone else mentions some hassle they've had with online apps from Google.
I think the main point here (that has already been made by other people) is that Google apps and gMail and such like are, largely, er...crap? As indeed are most online applications, SaaS offerings, etc. that I have ever encountered.
Bottom line: if your email, application or whatever is important to you and to your business, you would appear to be a complete and utter numbnuts if you are stupid enough to rely upon some remote online service (a la gMail) for it all. By all means, buy or rent your own server in a colo somewhere and set up and run your own service (or buy a properly managed service from someone else), but don't go down the cockeyed and cack-handed Google apps sort of route. M'kay? It might be trendy at the moment, but like many trendy ideas, it doesn't necessarily work properly (and may well never do so).
Cos you're reading the ads which are generating cash.
I don't mind, because they're text ads rather than really irritating Flash aminations (El Reg take note??).
I think Guy has a point - I also use MacMail, which is POP3, and it sends a mail when the mailbox starts to get full. It's not rocket science.
By default POP3 doesn't delete with gmail - but it does know that it's been downloaded so you don't get it again. That's part of the point with it ...
One thing that annoys me, as a developer, is that I can't send and receive certain attachments but it's not that big a deal, really.
on top of El Reg articles seemingly means "whiny pointless it's a cruel world and nobody brought me candy when I was sick rant", usually by a person employing a consumer-level product for a "professional" cause, only that in this particular case the person was not bewildered that her iBook, carefully charged to red-heat on carpet unde sofa each & every night, would break, but rather managed to fill 2GB with Email in 2 years (max respect, man) without ever bothering to delete any piece of junk he was sent, and now complains that nobody told him his box is full.
DUDE!
All in all, it means "avoid articles labeled First Person".
Google gives you a free 2GB mailbox. They give you a POP interface so you can use it with no ads whatsoever. They give you a form to submit feature requests.
You can't be bothered to log into the web interface, and you fill your mailbox. That they would even put a limit on your mailbox is an insult, but that they fail to immediately snap into action and implement your feature request is downright offensive! It's not like they have anything more pressing to do than add features that are only useful to lazy, ungrateful users such as yourself, who refuse to do any mailbox management.
If you don't like Google, take your business elsewhere. I'm sure Microsoft has a stable of Hotmail engineers eagerly awaiting your brilliant, inspired feature requests.
Perhaps if you pay for your mail service, you'll have more luck? I hear fastmail.fm is good, though I haven't tried it myself.
I've just signed into my GMail account and it quite clearly and prominently declares itself to be in Beta.
Learn to not be such a tw@t.
Gmail claims not to be like other services.
When they launched it, the blurb said there'd be no need to delete e-mails any more. It said that I could keep all my e-mail in archives and then when I wanted to find one I could just Google it.
Let's forgive them for making stupid promises they can't keep. But it's unprofessional to bounce e-mail with a permanent error (suggesting that you don't exist). POP3 Users won't see that it's full and Google don't seem to want to tell us.
Nor do they make it easy to sort/organise the e-mail to aid in deleting it, presumably because the developers didn't expect me to want to do this housekeeping any more than I expected to!
Gweef!
A little over a year ago I tried contacting someone in Google to discuss an idea/business model which would quite possibly have made billions for them.
Did they bite my arm off? No! Many hours of phone-ping-pong and unanswered emails later, I gave up.
You'd think that SOMEONE in Google would think "should we potentially waste a few hours talking to this guy VS. making a few $billion?" without coming to the conclusion "naaah! Too much bother".
This says to me that Google is now going the way of all companies that have lost their hunger.
https://mail.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=suggest
This was 2 clicks from my main Gmail page. Took less than 10 seconds to find. Was that really all that hard? Probably 10x more effective than this whiny rant at some PR person.
PR != user support or technical support
They may have some of the best ideas and have some cool products for the moment, but they are sowing the seeds of their own destruction with their approach with everyone who wants to deal with them.
I have had several e-mails deleted by g-mail with no explanation?
1 from mysteriousuniverse.org
Let's see... you write:
---------
Here's what is supposed to happen:-
1. I ring up the Google press office, and tell them what I've found
2. They say "Oh, wow! I'm sure the tech people will get onto that. Would you like a chat with someone on the team?"
3. I write a positive-spin piece saying: "Small problem quickly fixed: Google mail gets better and better!" - going on to say that there was a small problem for POP3 users, and they're on the case, and quoting a reassuringly expert developer saying how easy it will be to fix and how it will be done in days...
---------
Now THAT'S arrogance.
Yes, gmail is "technically" a beta, however, all too often nowadays, companies slap "beta" on a product or service as a CYA to make sure they don't have to support it.
Gmail is apparently "production quality" enough to be an "open beta" for which they've allowed a metric crap-ton of accounts to be created.
Gmail is apparently "production quality" enough that they don't feel any ethical ambiguity from placing ads in the site and emails, thereby receiving revenue from the venture.
So it's polished enough to let it be fully available to the public, and it's polished enough that they feel ok making money off it, but it's still a "beta"?? I call bullshit. It's a lame tactic that is happening far too much that just gives companies an excuse to ignore or give crappy support to their users. As the phrase goes, there's no such thing as a free lunch. We all pay for the service by including a google text ad in every email we send from our Gmail account. I think Gmail users have every justification to expect quality customer service from Google.
How does the author of the rant know it was a "young lady" to begin with, as repeatedly stated in the "article"? Is he just being a little bit more snug and arrogant or is this some sort of "polite" way (which I haven't learned yet) in the English language of referring to women you can't see?
Anyway, sad overall.
Hmm .. you use a free product, don't login to the web site and thus see ads, Google gets no value from you as a user, you over-use the account.
Right so far ... ?
Then, because you are such an important journalist, you expect Google to fix this "bug" within a few days and get back to you? You get cross that they can't respond to important people though no doubt uncaring that 2.5m other users probably also have gripes with the service but would never expect a personal response.
Facts still right?
Good, just checking I understood the ego behind this post.
Why didn't Google send a team of technicians via a helicopter to your place?
Google must be arrogant. It's the only conclusion I can think of.
I mean come on, your a journalist. You have the power to create and destroy.
What was Google thinking?
Wow, Apple doesn't give you a $600 phone for free, include G3, extra user replaceable batteries, and free two years of service through ATT and you are all ready to kill Stevie boy.
But Google, promises to have a user friendly email service that allows you to never delete an email with full POP and SMTP support, and when it fails, you guys are all defending it.
I thought Apple fanbois were bad! You googlers are much worse, and dare I say it? EVIL!
I do appreciate your perspective and your informed opinion on a lot of issues, but this really does say a lot more about you than it does Google.
I would strongly suggest an occasional stroll around the grounds of the ivory tower for a start. Once you're comfortable with that, have a wander to the village pub for a pint and talk to people.
Good luck,
M
Instead of ranting, I think that you should count your blessings that your account wasn't shut down for violating the terms of use - which clearly states "The Service is made available to you for your personal use only"
So not only are you using your maximum allowed server space - you're using it to conduct business. Try that with any paid ISP's non-business account service and they would have turned off your account as soon as you called to complain.
In the case of Gmail - we'll go back to the TOU and see this "In addition, you understand and agree that the Service is provided on an AS IS and AS AVAILABLE basis. Google disclaims all responsibility and liability for the availability, timeliness, security or reliability of the Service. Google also reserves the right to modify, suspend or discontinue the Service with or without notice at any time and without any liability to you." And you're trusting it for a business? You think having mails rejected for running out of space is bad - how will you manage if your entire account just disappears?
As for the whole section about the gmail teams not listening to requests of it's users - they most definitely do listen!! How do you think that POP option that your using got added? Users ASKED for it! And that's just one of many of gmail's features that have been given to the users over the past few years. And it's still in BETA because they're still adding new things.....y'all just may get the message size indicators - just let them know....the more requests the higher up the queue the suggestion gets.
and you're believing that they don't help fix problems? Try following the proper links from the Gmail help section and then follow the instructions given in the auto-response email. Just scroll down past the obligatory links to the help section and they'll tell you what to they need you to send in to solve the problem. If you get one of the dreaded "The Gmail Team is aware of the problem is working to fix it" responses - then guess what? That IS what they're doing.
And where the Gmail team may fail you - there is an entire help forum where users help each other around bugs and missing features. The link's in the help section.
And while this is already too long - to clear up the confusion about deleting popped mail from your gmail account - just click on Settings, then the Pop tab and there's an option to do just that, click and save the changes and you don't ever have to visit your Gmail account again.
FYI - I actually got to this article via a Google News Alert I have set to alert me to articles regarding Gmail.
Yes Guy should have just made a mental note to do a better job of housekeeping his account, apologised to those whose messages were bounced, and got on with his life.
However, those who have said that GMail should delete messages from the server after downloading to the user's mail client have missed the point. GMail actually has no fewer than three options of what to do when messages are collected via POP3: delete the GMail copy, archive the message, keep the message in the inbox, or delete the message. It's up to the user which action to take.
Archiving my messages gives me the best of both worlds: a local copy when I'm at my PC and a nice searchable archive that I can access from anywhere. I can even do this on my mobile phone, using Google's nice Java mobile client. Who needs a Blackberry?
People who use a free service need to accept that if it's worth more than the money being paid (i.e. nothing) that's a bonus. Despite its quirks, GMail is considerably better than many paid-for services so that's a very big bonus. Why they offer POP3 access at all is beyond me, as it undermines their advertising revenue, but I'm grateful that they do.
As others have said, demanding that Google introduce a feature that will benefit only the tiny proportion of users who use POP3, and have filled their mailboxes, while increasing the disincentive to view ads is ludicrous. However, making a modest suggestion, which they are free to ignore, would not be an unreasonable thing to do.
If any professional person, least of all an IT journalist, admitted to using Hotmail, or any of the other free webmail services for essential business purposes, he'd be laughed at with some justification. Why should expectations of GMail be any different?
Google may be an arrogant, even sinister, mega-corporation but if this article is the best its critics can do, its position seems pretty secure!
Rik - I use fastmail.fm, generally it's OK, but I do find the automated emails "Your FastMail.FM account 'xxxx@fastmail.fm' is 92% full" a tad annoying, particularly as they go both into the fastmail.fm inbox and the alternative email address you signed up with, and if you use imap you can see your used quota in the client anyway.
Maybe this is just what Guy is looking for ... oh wait a minute the free accounts only give you 10Mb of storage.
>We all pay for the service by including a google text ad in every email we send
> from our Gmail account.
My gmail doesn't send text ads. Is this something new?
you are obviously It savvy, but don't you have anything better to do?. why not delete the emails off the server. you obviously know how too but just want to have a moan.
get off the google is new microsoft bandwagon. and get a life.
"The problem is you are not using iMail by Apple. It has 1 zillion TB storage space"
Actually, .Mac costs real money, supports IMAP and is pretty fucking good. Oh, and it has a 512MB limit by default, though you can purchase more. Apple has been - by some margin - the most professional email provider I've ever used. Don't, however, let facts get in the way of another tedious anti-fanboy blurt.
seriously, I know other comments have been made along these lines - what is it exactly that makes this guy so important? I am fairly certain that if I called Google and informed them of who I am I might get a similar response. However, looking at this from Googles perspective - I wonder if the person taking the call was thinking "oh no, not this arrogant git again..." as the author whines away about not getting his rattle passed back to him once he has thrown it from his Google branded pram.
I mean, ringing the press office to ask for a new feature? I may not be as bright as the author, but surely they would be the ones to "fix" a "problem" like this?
Basically, I dont see it as a problem at all. Gmail is a webmail service, its designed for you to log in via a webpage. on that page you see how much space you have left etc. POP3 is just icing on the cake, its just them trying to be nice to you while they keep up with the Joneses.
If you are downloading via POP3 to your email client, you should be archiving your precious bloody emails off somewhere else.
What a spanner.
The people who are defending Google seem to be the ones who understand the limits of a mail system and product development.
Google aren't going to give you unlimited space when their mail servers offer storage to thousands of people. That's a given. It was foolish of them to say 'Never delete an email again.', that's certain.
However Google are not going to let you speak to one of their techs, since unless they work for you or you're paying large amounts for a service, coders are not generally customer facing. Even as the press you are likely to just get a canned comment, because making changes to a system aren't as easy as saying 'Sure, I shall fix this, by this point.', and anyone who speaks to the press regarding development issues without first consulting their superiors are going to get chewed out. Things need to be planned out first, with how any changes might affect other systems and sections of code, They're not going to give you a timeframe either, because development does not always work out that smoothly, and to be honest, this is an issue that affects a tiny number of users who have managed to collect over 2.8 gigs of mail, and likely isn't high priority.
It just seems like the journalist expects far too much from a free service, I'm willing to bet that someone at Google is likely laughing at how ridiculous this article is already.
I reported a bug to Gmail about me not being able to re-download my emails dated 9/12/05 or later. Strangely 2 years have past and they still are unable to fix it. I tried all the sensible solutions, then Gmail started with the stupid solutions. You can't help but get the distinct impression that they're not really trying.
phhht
waaaaaambulance.
Stop crying and get over it, if you can't do basic email housekeeping then maybe you shouldn't even have a computer.
As Rich pointed out its a standard feature of POP to delete messages after being downloaded and Gmail does support this. I dunno how long you have spent writing stupid letters and making pointless phone calls, when all you needed to do is take 5 mins out and check your configuration you idiot! Do you know what RTFM means?
Guy
Am I correct - you genuinely *never* login to Gmail.com and therefore never check for false positives in the Spam folder? Yet you are very concerned about one or two messages bouncing and feel that Google should jump to as a result?
I smell a big furry rat: if you are sane you must surely login (within every 30 days) if only to check for erroneous spam filtering results to rescue legit emails?
If not you are either foolhardy and blindly 100% confident in this free product, still in Beta, or, you have been filling your gmail account purely in the hunt for something akin to a bug so that you could be the mighty journo and report it to the world.
In short I do not believe one word of your G-whine to be genuine, instead I think it is an attempt to advertise your name and writing skills. Well done! El Reg has given you publishing inches, and we have all been sucked in to talk further about your lack of credibility. Of course you may simply lack common sense, or the reading comprehension to understand technical matters. Get out more and listen to people, face to face.
I knew that Google fanboys, like most fanboys, were clueless but not by such a degree. Talk about missing the point of an article and lacking comprehension skills.
As for the one that said that NewsWireless is a blog because it has a link to one, I'm lost for words. That would make the BBC, The Guardian and dozens of others media outlets merely blogs too.
And FYI, Kewney has been a much respected IT journalist from a time when most of you Google fanboys were still having your nappies changed by mummy.
1. Most organizations *like* real press-people to contact them via their press office before writing anything that could be seen as potentially negative. Anyone with half-a-clue should appreciate why this is...
2. From a strictly business perspective, Google is missing an opportunity here: *if* they sent "come clean up your mailbox" messages, then people would visit the site and see all those nice ads that are being avoided.
3. Google themselves have noted that they over-use the "Beta" tag.
4. What, exactly, does "personal use only" mean? Does it mean "non-commerical use only" or does it mean "use by you, as one individual only"? Common English suggess the latter, not the former.
5. Sad to say, but many journalists do have a slightly skewed view of the importance of their own opinions. I don't say this as a critique of Kewney, but as a critique of a press office that doesn't do a better job of keeping their egos happy...
1) Maybe he was having a bad day.
2) Why not set up a second account - or ten? then filter and forward to other mail boxes. Perhaps then you might never have to delete another email again?
3) I just had my first ever look in the Spam folder. ewwwww. I hope none of those are false positives.
10) If they sent you an email to tell you your mailbox was almost full, wouldn't that make it even fuller? goto 10.
5) Fred Gumby. you tease! Did you ever make those few billions?
6) everything everyone else said.
7) Quote from http://www.newswireless.net/ : "The Register, that august sister-site to NewsWireless" ! ?
8) there is a phone number on http://www.newswireless.net/ - perhaps we should all phone up and ask for 'minor' improvements and see how long they take to materialize?
9) Chocolate Rain.
The defense rests, m'lud.
To be honest publishing this article says more about the state of this site than it does about Gmail or even Guy Kewney.
I have been reading theregister almost from day one and have always been surprised that Mr Kewney has ever been allowed to post here at all.
His articles seem to be ads for his own site or as in the case of this one just complete nonsense.
Time for a change of editor at theregister me thinks!
Alan
Dude, that's the point... he *was* a respected journalist and now he's just the old man of one of the Reg staffers and a universally ignored blogger. Newswireless is not a news service any more than my own blog is but I would not have the arrogance to assume that just because I publish things on t'interweb means I should have some sort of special service and be able to log feature requests through the PR dept rather than through the feature request channels.
This guy sounds like the sort of bloke who walks into restaurants and when he can't get a good table shouts "do you know who I am?". Clearly not.
In my case google were right to say 'Never delete an email again.' but then again I guess im just norm. Ever heard the 'cant please all of the people' saying?
As for phoning the press office! no comment.
Oh and yeah I always read the articles about how good they were to fix it. dont recall ever seeing many of them in your repertoire...
They did make a stupid promise "never delete".
Server resources are finite. Any company that makes such promises should be avoided like the plague.
Guy is right to hold them to account for that but on the other hand he is not being realistic when trusting a critical service to a free provider.
If you want an SLA you have to pay for it. Don't get spoilt by free services because when their revenue model collapses so does your data.
In my business I have both models. Clients that need reliability pay more for an SLA and get the service. Those going without an SLA get better pricing but agree to a "best effort" service where we do try to rectify problems but not to an extent where it is costing us more than provision of the service.
Lastly anyone who calls others fanbois needs to go back to nursery. Don't you hate school breaks :-/
Guy, if this is the usual quality of your "journalism" (I'm not going to go to your piece of shit site to check because that would be another couple of minutes of my life I'll never get back), please do us all a favour and never again clog up the web with your fucking drivel. You are a pathetic, mewling, talentless waste of space.
Sorry if you don't find this to be constructive criticism, but frankly I can't find anything constructive to say and even if I could this poor excuse for an article would not merit taking the time to do so.
El Reg, what the fuck do you think you're doing publishing this shite?
Hmm wasnt aware that computer illiterate whinging middle aged fools actually wrote stuff for theRegister.... seems like they do
It is free and it is by far the best webmail service out there - try d e l e t i n g stuff - next thing we know you'll be writing some tardy post about your hard-drives full and "omg that spyware I just bought really isn't very good".
you definitely suck @ rl
Stupidity at it's finest.
I'm actually wondering if it's April 1st at the moment - are you seriously complaining because your inbox got full when you didn't delete yuor old emails? Comedy gold!
How arrogant do you have to be to contact the Press Office with a technical problem?
And how sad to be converted from a lifelong user to a childish Google-basher so easily.
Go use hotmail and stop whining.
omglolzorz!!1 I have the same problem....my rubbish bin....seems to be so full of rubbish.....what...do ...i ...do?
