The enshitification of Google is inevitable.
It went from all the space you ever need for your email to "you are at 93% usage. Upgrade to premium" in just a few years.
Well, if we didn't have corrupt regulators, Google would have been fined out of existence ages ago.
That said it will be interesting way of exploitation. If you want to find people who have certain email content, you can serve them ads manipulating them into taking an action. Like buying a scam product / malware.
Buy a domain, then you don’t lose your domain if you ever decide to jump to a different provider. I use fastmail currently. But I also keep my own backups.
It's basically impossible to not use gmail. Even if you don't have a gmail account or address yourself, the person you're emailing probably has it, so your messages gets sent to a gmail server and gets scanned by them. What I want to know is whether Google uses the contents to profile YOU.
Is it impractical to never send a message through Google? Probably, depending on the circles you communicate in. But that's not the same thing as saying it's impractical to avoid Google for most of your messages, and certainly not the same as saying you can't avoid GMail for anything.
My main email is not GMail, but I forward it to a GMail account to get free spam filtering, free backup, and free search. I encourage everyone to do the same.
This isn’t true and this level of cynicism is really unhelpful.
They originally used Gmail in that way. Many years later they stopped. This was a major victory for privacy. The fact they seem to be doing it now again is bad. Saying they’ve “always done this” is the kind of empty conspiratorial cynicism that dampens action and makes people feel it is futile to notice these changes or speak up about them.
The fact that they did it in the beginning and are doing it now makes the whole “well, there was a period of time when they didn’t do this” seem like a minor footnote to the notion that “they’ve always done this”. Even though the statement isn’t strictly true, it sure seems like the cynicism is warranted now and, with the benefit of hindsight, was back then too.
For your safety I'm sure.
That said it will be interesting way of exploitation. If you want to find people who have certain email content, you can serve them ads manipulating them into taking an action. Like buying a scam product / malware.
Is it impractical to never send a message through Google? Probably, depending on the circles you communicate in. But that's not the same thing as saying it's impractical to avoid Google for most of your messages, and certainly not the same as saying you can't avoid GMail for anything.
https://purelymail.com/
They originally used Gmail in that way. Many years later they stopped. This was a major victory for privacy. The fact they seem to be doing it now again is bad. Saying they’ve “always done this” is the kind of empty conspiratorial cynicism that dampens action and makes people feel it is futile to notice these changes or speak up about them.