The Downide of Your ISP Turning to Gmail

SlinkySausage writes "Google is offering ISPs the opportunity to turn over their entire email operation to Google, with all customer email hosted as Gmail accounts. This would allow Google to grow its user base rapidly (Google is a distant third with 51M users compared to Yahoo's 250M and Hotmail's 228M). There are some obvious benefits to end users — Google is offering ISPs mailboxes of up to 10GB per user. APCMag.com has posted an interesting piece looking at the dark side of Google's offer. Not least is in its reinforcing of the attachment people have to their ISP's email address, making it harder to change ISPs if a better deal comes along."

Re:Is it really distant 3rd?

[larry bagina]

spam generating zombie PCs generally falsify the From: header in outgoing mail, based on email addresses found on the victim's computer. The @yahoo.com email address would therefore indicate that yahoo mail is quite popular.

Re:The obvious downside...

[teh moges]

*checks link again*
Nope, APC article, NineMSN website. This also has nothing to do with linux. It's an MSN issue, not a Windows issue.

Article Summary

[cgenman]

Since so few people seem to be RTFA...

1. Google announces that ISP's will be able to release a google-apps branded for their users. This includes domain management, [google.com] docs, spreadsheets, calendar, web page creator, gmail, and 24 hour phone support.

2. MSN Austrailia points out that the ISP's will have to pay for the service. MSN Austrailia also points out that Google will tie users to their ISP account / domain instead of a more generic Google account. And they point out that Google's smallest ISP size bracket, 0 - 200,000 users, covers nearly all of the ISPs in Austrailia.

MSN Austrailia also takes pains to poke jabs at competing ISP's, specifically leaves out information, and otherwise sounds a lot like FUD.

Re:Eh?

[lilfields]

Thing is, for commercial accounts Google lets you use your own domain name, e.g. [e-mail], not limited to [e-mail]. That's got to be more of an attractor than keeping the domain name of an ISP you're familiar with.

You can do this with free accounts too, as I assume by commercial you mean Google Apps? Anyhow, even if you are talking about free accounts, free accounts are able to pull email from POP3 servers into the Gmail account and use the pulled address to reply...here is an example [alienwareniche.com]; so really as long as you were able to keep the POP3, you could always keep your old account.

Disclosure: I run the site linked

Re:Is it really distant 3rd?

[watchingeyes]

Yes it is. Every traffic comparison (not account comparison) I've seen also points to Gmail being behind both Hotmail and Yahoo!

Re:Is it really distant 3rd?

[asninn]

Indeed - both Yahoo and hotmail are artificially inflating their numbers. Yahoo requires you to have an account if you want to use just about anything on Yahoo (like Yahoo Groups, for example), and while a hotmail account isn't strictly required to use msn (the IM service), 99% of the people I know use one, anyway - M$ just tries you to steer away from signing up with a third-party email address in any way it can (or at least it did when *I* signed up).

So, yeah, it's quantity vs. quality. Maybe GMail *still* is a distant third, but I think the numbers for the other two services are overinflated and useless.

Re:Unlikely at the 'Full Service' ISPs

[Joe Hardy (_yoda)]

Errr... Google offer POP3 access to their mailboxes?

See here: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic= 1555 [google.com]

ISP hosted e-mail is nothing but an electronic noose. Myself, I'm most in favour of everyone having a domain they have control of, but a service provider offering flexibility of the likes of Google is pretty decent next best IMHO.

Can anything be worse than AT&T/SBC/Yahoo?

[dcavanaugh]

I, for one, welcome the new Gmail overlords. Here's why:

I had a DSL account with AT&T/SBC/Yahoo in Connecticut. The e-mail address is @snet.net. I have similar accounts for my wife and daughter.

I recently moved to Ohio, and pickup up a new DSL subscription from AT&T/SBC/Yahoo. At the time, I asked about keeping my old e-mail addresses. I was told, "no problem". I spoke with tech support when I put my DSL modem online, and they said the transfer would be taken care of.

After about two months, the old e-mail addresses were "suspended", evidently because they were no longer "linked" with an active DSL account. After EIGHT attempts (phone, e-mail, IM) to get this fixed, I have been given a combination of contradictory answers, finger-pointing, and "the runaround". Level 2 tech support seems to have no avenue of escalation to get this fixed. One of the more common answers goes like this: "We can register e-mail addresses from ANY other SBC domain, EXCEPT the SNET.NET region.

I managed to persuade a level 2 tech to "un-suspend" my e-mail accounts, but she warned me, "They're just going to get re-suspended in two months..." Now, THAT'S customer service!!!

The problem seems to be related to some kind of internal billing software issue. Evidently, the left hand is unable to work cooperatively with the right hand. AT&T/SBC bought SNET several years ago. If they can't move a customer smoothly across domains, they need a wholesale reorg of IT until they can operate like one company.

Gmail can't possibly be any worse than AT&T/SBC/Yahoo. NEVER, EVER RELY ON AT&T/SBC/YAHOO FOR E-MAIL. THEIR MIND-BOGGLING STUPIDITY MAKES THEM UNSUITABLE FOR RUNNING AN E-MAIL SYSTEM. I honestly don't think Google can be any worse. And besides, Gmail works reasonably well on my Blackberry.

Re:What's a 'Downide'?

[simon_clarkstone]

I have a spelling checker,
It came with my PC;
It plainly marks four my revue
Mistakes I cannot sea.
I've run this poem threw it,
I'm sure you're please too no,
It's letter perfect in it's weight,
My checker tolled me sew.

-Author Unknown-

Actually, Author Known. It was written (slightly differently) by John Brophy as a humour piece in the June 1996 edition of the Farm Journalist, newsletter of the Canadian Farm Writers' Federation. The edition used to be online at http://www.cfwf.ca/farmj/fjjun96/#spell [www.cfwf.ca], and is still present in the Web Archive:

http://web.archive.org/web/20050116015142/http://w ww.cfwf.ca/farmj/fjjun96/#spell [archive.org]

(Finally, after keeping that information for several years, it has become useful, and my struggle has not been in vain!!!)