Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

You make it sound like Google prices Gmail for free out of the kindness of their heart. They're a business. I use gmail for free because I feel it's in my best interests to do so, and they provide it to me for free because they feel it's in their best interests to do so.

The moment that agreement becomes invalid is the moment a person has the right to become frustrated.



Frustrated, sure. The remedy for frustration is to take your business elsewhere. Frustration doesn't entitle you to get support on a free service.


However this frustration does entitle us to accurately describe a 99% working service.

There are terms for something that works 99 days but on the 100th day makes you feel like gotterdammerung.

They are a crappy service, fails QA 101, never trust google and i'm switching my email to something else


That is, in my most civil interpretation, knee-jerk hyperbole.

You're certainly within your rights to feel that way, and if you do, I certainly encourage you to migrate to something else. If that's really how you feel though, I'm guessing you already would have unless... just maybe, the service is better than you admit.


You think that it is knee-jerk hyperbole because you do not take account to the user the risk of using the service.

The risk means that even if Google provides the service free, it still can have a cost for the user that can be very high depending on the importance of the emails the user is locked out of.

It also means that the cost is invisible 99% of the time, which is why people keep using Google services. After all, most companies that offer network services mitigate the risk for the user by allowing the user to contact them for help if things go wrong.

For example, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft both allow you to purchase support. However, Google seem to only provide support when they decide to invite you to it.

In my personal case, my main email of 16 years is becoming increasingly spammed. I needed to find another email to migrate to, and decided to try out Gmail. Gmail has failed my evaluation.


As he already pointed out: IT'S NOT FREE.

Google (read their terms) reserves the right to mine your communications for information that they then sell to advertisers. You're doing THEM at least as much a service.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: