Opinions on gmail?

[trancejeremy]

I'm pretty much stayed with Yahoo. Since I use yahoo all the time, it makes more sense for me. Gmail isn't bad though, and it was was forced Yahoo to raise the mailbox limit from 6 megabytes to as 100 . (Which still isn't as much as gmail, but good enough for me.). Yahoo's spam filters could be a little better, but it's pretty good. I get maybe 200 spams a day at my yahoo address, and it usually gets all of them.

 

[Psionicist]

I don't understand what you guys mean when you say googles ads are NOT intrusive. Google have the most intrusive ads on the whole internet!

Those really annoying rainbow colored flashing GIF thingies which promise FREE!!! things, or the Punch The Monkey and WIN!!! banners. They are not intrusive, just very annoying to look at. Why are they not intrusive? Because they don't target you directly. They don't look for words you have searched for or words stored in your e-mail account to figure out what kind of products or service there's a likelhood you will consume.

Google have nice banners, as in appearance, but they are really intrusive. Not in the popup or flashing image kind of sense, rather a "let me install this camera in your bedroom" kind of sense.

 

[Dimwhit]

Wystan, you rock! Thanks for the tip.

Psionicst, we're mainly talking abou Gmail adds. Only text ads for those, so no annoying animated images or anything.

 

[CarlZog]

Google is an advertisement business. That's where they get all their money. The thing with Google is their products are _good_, such as the search engine and Google Groups. This however, doesn't mean I trust Google with my personal information, private life or other things commonly stored in email message.

This is actually one of my biggest concerns about switching to a web-based, advertising-based email service. Although I'm rarely ever sending email that could breach national security or lead to personal indictments , I am a little creeped out by the Big Brother that Google is growing to represent.

Carl

 

[Abisashi]

I am a little creeped out by the Big Brother that Google is growing to represent.

I want to write a sci-fi novel where google has taken over the world; it just makes so much sense to me.


I find gmail to be excellent. A con is that you compose mail in the same window as you do everything else, so you need to make a new window/tab to compose mail if you want to be looking at other mail at the same time.


As to the flashing banners, gmail has none of those. As Cthulhu's Librarian said, they are just black text with blue banners. Also, if you are concerned about privacy, they aren't reading your email, they just have a computer hit you with ads based on keywords in the email.

 

[Dimwhit]

A con is that you compose mail in the same window as you do everything else, so you need to make a new window/tab to compose mail if you want to be looking at other mail at the same time.

For new mail, just hold the Shift key when you click Compose Mail, Reply, Forward, etc. and it opens in a new window.

 

[Dagger75]

Love, I have like 3 of them. The one I use to sign up all the stuff for messgae boards and stuff rarely gets spam. The filter catches a bunch of it. I actually just recently noticed the Ads on the right hand side

Took me a bit to get used to the groups and not having folders but I love it now.

Just so you know Google does nothing different than Yahoo mail or hotmail with regards to your privacy. All those look for keywords to send you ads. My Yahoo mail which has never sent out a single e-mail has more spam in it than all 3 of my Gmail accounts combined. I have never given that e-mail out either.

 

[Dimwhit]

I have a question. Does anyone know if it's possible to set Gmail so it doesn't automatically add to the contacts list every email address to which you send email? I just saw the size of my contact list, and there are a ton that I send a single email to but don't need stored. Not sure if that can be shut off.

 

[mattcolville]

I give it a B+

I lacks a preview mode, as far as I can tell. And it's spam filtering is a little TOO agressive.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Never mind, I misread a post and my reply made no sense...