Everytime I hear about Google starting to charge for something, or taking something away, I remember the time someone just told me to use Google because it was free, and easy.
I should have noted that they hadn't been on the internet in the 90's when Microsoft did the same with Hotmail, and others.
Ultimately, nothing is free.
Still,I can't help but wonder if ads in emails didn't generate enough cash so now it's tiem to charge.
I believe Hotmail/Outlook.com is free. Sure, they make you to pay to remove those ads, but if you use AdBlock on Chrome or Firefox, you shouldn't see those ads. Plus, SkyDrive is so much better than Google Drive. I had too many document compatibility issues with Google Docs that I kinda gave up and joined SkyDrive. Staying with Microsoft with their cloud services has been pretty good for me so far.
Sorry wideroots, I was referring to the late 90's early 2000's where Microsoft started charging for Hotmail "Pro".
If you didn't login every 90 days your free account would disappear. This was after Hotmail itself was built up to hundreds of millions of users with only free users.
At this time they were the main web email provider as well as Yahoo.
Yes I remember that, was involved in a client scraper that would pull the email via webmail interface so could merge into a mobile device stream. Microsoft kept changing and tweaking there web interface just enough to make it a rather annoying battle to keep up with the cheapskate route.
Guess Google has hit saturation point and are now trying to leveridge some services as a package instead of just gaining income from ad's.
Still at least getting some notice, albiet timed rather interestingly right before the holiday season and also after the canges to there app accounts.
I suppose you can get around this issue with a outlook account or another account that offers activesync for free or a cheaper price by having that account poll the gmail account via IMAP or the like. Also believe RIM device will not have an issue as they have a nice arsenal of webmail and other form of scrapers to centeralise your email push.
So in effect this realy will only effect the less-techy minded people out there with non android phones.
Yes, it's funny. Back in the mid-90s there was much talk of Microsoft's strategy for pretty much any product being to get everybody into a room, then close the doors and pump the air out of it.
Sounds like that's what's happening here too.
Introducing new services that are not available to the free-riders seems to me to be a much more friendly thing to do than to take away features that were previously on offer. The latter strategy will make people wary.
Sure! Nothing is free... Users need to be aware of the 'hidden' costs of anything whether it be free or paid. Time, learning, etc... all are involved with any software - or anything really.
Companies, on the other hand, typically exist to make money. This is nothing new... However, unlike traditional companies, Google is more sensitive to its users needs. After all: "Let the consumers decide whether we are going in the right direction" Unfortunately, the majority of consumers are lazy; not caring and simply consuming. A company needs only to change a service ever so slightly in order to not affect a large majority. Small change - After change - After change until a company has fully 'maxed' the potential profit.
I don't disagree at all. It's why I have no problem to continue to host my own email and web like I have since the 90's (Zimbra especially is intriguing) -- ultimately service providing will go through shifts every x years between providers anyways.
I'd love to be able to pay Google to not serve me ads/creep on my searches/documents. $100/mo, $200/mo? What would it take? People derive enormous value from Google--they're paying for that value even if they don't realize it.
Which most people? The 2/3rds still using Hotmail and Yahoo for everything?
Charging much more would mean targeting a completely different market segment with a fraction of the size of Google's current search and email users.
It's a strategy to consider, given the "desirability" of GMail users vs Yahoo users[1], but behavior of most people is highly likely to change when going from free to not free.
Me too. But wouldn't it be nearly impossible to sell? I can imagine anyone with the slightest anti-Google sentiment howling "shakedown!" and "protection racket!"
I can't help but wonder if ads in emails didn't generate enough cash
Only if you use the GMail web UI or official Google clients that can show you ads. Once they get people off native clients and onto either Android or at least official clients on other platforms they can start ramping up their mobile advertising to make-up for the loss of web advertising. They've been sly about it so far but they have to pull the trigger eventually. Like you said nothing is free. They may have waited a bit too long to pull the trigger. Now a lot of Google service users are under the false impression they can get a free ride. They may have started using Google services exactly because they looked like a no-trade off free ride. Those days are coming to an end now. It's going to be a very interesting transitional period over the next 12-18 months.
I pay by letting them dig through my email, calendar and GDocs and resell data advertisers. I have little doubt those impressions of ads hanging in front of my face in GMail all day long earn them 5 bucks a month.
And they don't exactly refrain from mining my personal data once I pay for their service with cash. So, it is little short of outrageous.
Thinking about it, sure, 5 bucks is outrageously much. Didn't give it enough thought, my bad.
Anyway, my major concern is that somehow my data stored with 'enterprise-grade' paid service still gets mined and resold to 3rd-parties. I'm being forced to pay while still it's me that's being the product. Privacy is a hefty enough price to pay for a personal email.
I believe you can get push support through IMAPs IDLE extension, but I've had a hard time finding an IMAP server that supports it and isn't a fully fledged corporate system.
Gmail supports IDLE according to a quick search. I wonder if battery life will be adversely impacted because now you will have another persistent socket connection to Google instead of reusing the push notification socket that Exchange syncing used.
I you're on an iPhone there's already a couple of other push connections that keep active too. Apples push notification service is just long-polling HTTP for example, I don't think it shares the same connection with iMessage either.
I can't pretend to know anything about IMAP or Exchange, but one would assume that push uses less than polling the email server every 5-15 minutes.
Interesting. I wasn't sure if Apple multiplexed their persistent sockets or not. I wonder how the baseband optimizes persistent connections. I suppose it doesn't have to do much of anything since the sockets aren't actively sending data.
I don't know really, I just remember seeing a bunch of long polling connections when I was using an interception proxy last. Some to Google, and some to Apple. I can't imagine the carriers particularly enjoy it, I imagine the connection drops and is re-established on quite a regular basis, it must put load on their towers.
I'm using IMAP IDLE for a few years now on my android phones.
Works like a charm and is not slower then ActiveSync (which i also used some months, on the same account).
I get email notifications between 1 and 10 seconds after they are in my inbox.
Yep, me too. Courier IMAPD (at least the Debian stable packages) works just fine. But where's the equivalent software for tasks, calendar and contacts?
How is this outrageous? Why should they spend money to support a rival's platform? iOS' integration/sync services are terrible, even with their own iCloud. I've been nothing short of blown away by the streamlined integration with Google accounts on my new Android phone.
I'm sure they want you to use the iOS Gmail app. While it doesn't support true "Push" email, it does receive push notifications which is a pretty good approximation.
It fairly awful if you spend any serious time with it.
The badge on the app reflects the unread count of every account that is active in the app, but even when you open it, there's utterly no indication of which inbox has unread email. I've just three accounts added to their app, and its already a hunting game finding where that mysterious (1) is coming.
Most of the interface feels weird too. You can't slide to archive an email in the new version, as it opens the siding panel. The behaviour is still hidden away though, tap and hold and slide tricks the old gesture into working again. Ticking and tapping for every interaction feels clunky.
It's not a replacement for proper psush email in Apple's Mail.app. I'd host my own push email, but I've struggled finding anything that is lightweight and supports IMAPs IDLE command (allowing for push email).
Fully agree. While you get new mail notifications, the messages are not downloaded to the app in the background as they hit your inbox. Every time you swipe the notification to view the message, you have to wait a good ten seconds for the app to load and then retrieve the message, assuming you have the good fortune for it to even send you to the right message (it's been spotty at best for me).
I could get over the interface oddities as that's mostly a matter of aesthetics, but it's nowhere near as fast as Mail.app to actually open your new email, and that's the killer for me.
I think this was discussed on another HN thread. The app is native to handle the push notifications, but loads a webview to handle the actual display of the inbox. And it seems like it loads the webview every time you view the app.
Lots of Googly magic is probably happening in all of that JavaScript.
The load time led me to delete the app. But I can't get mad about the loss of push to mail.app. TANSTAAFL.
I agree that the UI needs some improvements. But for me, the Gmail app is the only way to get consistent push notifications for new emails. The iOS Mail.app would always stop getting new mails if I don't use my phone for a while. Also you can't manage labels in iOS Mail, or specify a different From address.
I'm still really upset about this. If I update a calendar item on my desktop, it won't update on my device until after a considerable delay or whatever without this. Same with email, I won't necessarily get notified of emails.
This is making my move to Android more and more inevitable, actually. However, for a horrendous reason.
They say existing devices are OK, but is Apple sending the UDID or another unique identifier to the server?
Would restoring an iTunes Backup to a replacement device remove your support for Exchange due to the hardware being different?
That would totally suck! If it's locked down by account, I guess that's OK since existing accounts would be grandfathered.
From what I saw in IIS logs on an Exchange server and in MAPI stores, every EAS client registers with the Exchange server and creates a folder there to track its's state somehow.
So Google can surely change their EAS implementation to not register new clients.
Sure, but who uses iCloud as their primary email provider? I certainly don't trust Apple to get it right, given their experiences with internet services. They've already changed people's email addresses as least twice, which is beyond uncool (mac.com -> me.com -> icloud.com). Unlike your username to their services, your email address is tied into all sorts of other third-party services (not to mention address books) and is incredibly painful to update.
My @me.com address still works fine, I just now also have an @icloud.com pointing to it too. I believe that's the case for @mac.com as well. Don't worry, there'd be uproar if Apple took people's email addresses from them :)
Personally, I'm a bit of a hypocrite, because I use my gmail as my main account, despite being far more comfortable with a service I can pay for (in the past, that was MobileMe) and know I can get customer service on the phone. Honestly, once Apple can show they've got their act together for more than a few years I'll probably switch...
>Sure, but who uses iCloud as their primary email provider?
I do.
>They've already changed people's email addresses as least twice, which is beyond uncool (mac.com -> me.com -> icloud.com)
And they all still work.
>Unlike your username to their services, your email address is tied into all sorts of other third-party services (not to mention address books) and is incredibly painful to update.
Since the aliases still work, as mentioned above, this is not an issue at all. Personally I prefer to use the me.com domain as it's short. It still works and the services that I use with me still work, I continue to get email from them. The same is true with .mac addresses.
I agree - just pointing out however that Exchange is not the _only_ way to get push email on your iphone. For example, if you are using Gmail, you can setup a filter to forward email to your iCloud email address. That way you can continue to use Gmail like you normally would, but get "Push" email on your iphone.
I am sorry, but this is not true. IMAP as a protocol does not support push notifications. There are extension for IMAP that supports push, but they are not widely supported.
This is why I tend to prefer the android architecture over the iphone's. If I still had an android phone and a not-google 3rd party provider stopped offering ActiveSync, I'd just use whatever their new thing is.
iPhone says I have to sync using the X Y or Z protocol. android can connect to Exchange and also lets me write a custom sync app. I can download an app that hooks whatever-the-hell directly into my contact list (or other android system bits). As long as a little bit of java is written for it, any and every API can be turned into a 1st class citizen.
Its the same for sharing. I click the share button on android and I get a list of all the applications that can take my android.content.Intent.ACTION_SEND intent. On iPhone, I can pick any service I want as long as it's twitter.
Why you gotta look at it in those terms? Relative advantages and disadvantages can exist without couching it in the terms of pro-x anti-y. Seriously, would anyone actually give a damn about this if cellphones were not uniquely tied to the exchange sync protocol? Is it not true that the cellphone I choose to own is at a disadvantage in this particular circumstance?
You're the one who put it in those terms, not me. And yes, regardless of particular phones being tied to particular protocols, I would still care that google is disabling something that I've used every day of my life for years.
ActiveSync is proprietary protocol designed by Microsoft, and it has nothing to do with iOS or Android. Everybody is implementing it (and paying hefty license fee to MSFT), because it is the best and most-widely supported sync protocol.
I know you mean well, but I'm aware of that and it is tangential to my point.
What I'm taking issue with is the underlying inertia that causes it to be in a self-reinforcing loop as most widely supported protocol for mobile. When I got my iPhone I had to pick between a handful of sync protocols, EAS being one of them. My Android devices let me download apps that add new sync providers.
I don't so much as care about the day to day machination of google and microsoft as the ability for our tech to cope with whatever they want to throw at us. In this case google happens to be behind both gmail and android, but my point still stands that the android platform is a better suited to dealing with generic external changes w/r/t features that need to hook into the built in functionality of the device. I'm not saying I think it is better overall (I do have an iPhone), I just think this is one place where the architecture of that system is strong and wish that other mobiles took a similar foward-thinking design. If they did, it might not matter at all that google dropped X for Y, just a slight inconvenience while you install the requisite adapter to maintain the same level of integration.
Does anyone know if Google is paying royalties to Microsoft for use of the Exchange protocol? If so, this may be a sensible move, especially if Google is paying the royalties on a per-account basis.
Also, I'm doubtful that this affects the majority of users: on both major mobile platforms (Android and iOS), Google has a push solution with nearly identical functionality to Exchange.
What push mail solution for iOS are you referring to? The native Gmail app? I don't think I'd agree that is provides 'nearly identical functionality to Exchange'.
IMAP and CalDAV will still work, so non-Android users are not going to be left out in the cold. Contacts can be synced with CardDAV. I get occasional errors syncing with CalDAV but I haven't tried to debug them or anything so it could easily be my stupid.
You make it sound as if Google wanted you to use Microsoft's ActiveSync. They've only offered it so far for free (while having to pay Microsoft for it) because a lot of users needed it. But other standards have appeared since then, and they are pushing for the adoption of those, and less reliance on Microsoft's proprietary technologies. Apple is doing the same thing, too.
What other standards have appeared that support calendar, contacts, and tasks sync?
Google are doing this to stop third parties from offering Gmail integration without paying some kind of Google Tax (e.g. other platforms, apps, web-sites, etc).
And tasks? Plus that isn't really comparable since now instead of depending on a single connection (ActiveSync) you now need IMAP and a WebDAV server minimum.
This entire area has been so controlled by Exchange Server for so long that there really aren't many true alternatives. The WebDAV based ones are messy at best.
I mean the whole package -- even if a protocol exists, if the client I want to use/must use doesn't support it, it doesn't help. I mostly use iOS Mail on iOS, so I'm stuck there.
I wonder if previously the lack of support for IMAP Push was to try and sell you MobileMe Push Email (which used a different protocol for some reason). Now I don't see why it lacks it.
I think it's just that Apple is really really bad at online services (iCloud is doing better than anything they ever did before, and it's still not great). Safari is essentially the only top-quality piece of client software they've written, and even it 1) largely re-used something and 2) has peaked and sucks more and more now.
I don't think they made a conscious decision to suck in a specific way to push their own product.
>iCloud is doing better than anything they ever did before
But iCloud is simply the third incarnation of a line of online services. Of course it's better than before, because they've had a lot of time to improve it.
>I don't think they made a conscious decision to suck in a specific way to push their own product.
Where is the stable, open source CardDAV & CalDAV server, equivalent to Courier IMAP/POP?
All I can see are Zimbra, some other half-finished Exchange replacements or PHP monstrosities, or an unmaintained mod_caldav for Apache.
All I want is another piece of the Courier suite that integrates with my existing infrastructure, and uses the same modular authentication, TLS certificates etc.
I don't want to maintain lots of different stacks in lots of different languages each with their own peculiar auth schemes.
Perhaps I should just move the whole damn setup to Zimbra, but at that point it might as well just be Exchange.
Ever since they quickly killed Wave rather than keep it around as a research project, I've been more and more disappointed about the direction of Google.
And except for Google Drive, most of the stuff they're now charging for is clearly aimed at large businesses, with little consideration for smaller organizations or individuals.
Indeed, there was a lot of noise about his desire for broad-sweeping streamlining -- namely dropping projects (or combining projects) and increasing acquisitions.
Notably they stopped projects that had limited adoption.
Incidentally this was also when 20% time fell through and Google Plus really started to be pushed as the centre-piece connecting all other projects.
Wow, Google really hates people using Google Mail now. I wonder why -- is this to get people to switch to the premium service (and thus revenue), or to move them to Android?
>Wow, Google really hates people using Google Mail now.
No, they hate people using gmail as a free enterprise-quality backend for some other mail system. The message seems pretty clear to me: if you want to use gmail, use gmail (with an official gmail client and an @gmail address) or pay up. If you want to use some service other than gmail for your email, use their backend too.
You're right. Suggesting that Gmail is merely an enterprise-quality mail system is crazy. It wipes the floor with every other enterprise mail system I have ever used.
It's by far the best huge mail system, but I've seen lots of 1-500 user mail systems which are superior to gmail. They just cost more like $100-500/user/yr, vs. $0-$50/user/yr.
Compared to utter shit like Army Knowledge Online, sure, it's great.
right, i guess thats also why gmail/mail for apps has a message attachment size limit of 25mb, because it's so much more than enterprise-quality...
google mail for apps has still a long way to go to be real enterprise quality. but then again, it's simplicity to maintain and relatively low cost IS much more attractive than maintaining your own enterprise system.
Exchange truly and completely blows GMail out of the water in enterprise-quality mail services. Let's not kid ourselves. Gmail is good for consumers, but it has nowhere near the enterprise-level configuration and management options needed to compete even slightly with Exchange on a big, enterprise scale.
Having had the honor to administer an Exchange server in a past life (2006 was the last time I had to touch it), if it is comparable to how it was then, then:
yes, Exchange does have a lot more configurability which is needed in large enterprises.
but no, it is not "good" as far as the users were concerned - I had usability complaints very often, of the kind that my gmail users now don't have. Gmail is better now, and perhaps Exchange is too - but I have the impression that the problems people had with it are deeper than a UI revision.
But you're comparing a service in 2012 to one in 2006. That's not really fair. A fair comparison would be against Exchange 2013, which has changed quite a bit since then.
I also don't understand what usability complaints users would have, since for the most part, they access it through a client such as Outlook. Are you talking about the web app? If so, then it's been updated quite a bit since then. There's still a preview site available here http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/en/try-more-products which has a trial of the hosted version. Is it the connectivity or some feature?
> I also don't understand what usability complaints users would have, since for the most part, they access it through a client such as Outlook.
Disappearing & reappearing emails through outlook. (And occasionally disappearing and not reappearing; Had something to do with ActiveSync and outlook open at the same time, but I never quite managed to exactly characterize it). Despite exchange's hyper configurability, those disappearing and mostly reappearing messages did not have anything in their logs different than anything else.
Also, search was abysmal.
Larger mailboxen (3-4 GB at the time) caused huge slowdown, and people were moving stuff to local (though, not backed up!) archives sorted by quarter, so that the recent year or so would perform reasonably.
> But you're comparing a service in 2012 to one in 2006.
I'm comparing Exchange at 2006 (I think it was Exchange 2005? but it might have been Exchange 2003; It was the latest available at the time) to Gmail at the time. Everyone preferred gmail to outlook web access, and most preferred it to Outlook as well (for tags, search and predictable behavior).
I'm sure Exchange has improved since, but so has gmail. What can exchange 2013 (or exchange 2010, which is the recent battle-tested version, unlike 2013) do that that Exchange 2005 couldn't?
But it's more administrable (sp?) than Gmail is. It has a lot more options for configurations, and a lot more precise settings control for admins. Gmail doesn't come close because, quite simply, it's a consumer service. It's built for consumers first, companies second. It has a great experience for the end-user, I don't disagree even slightly, but it's a lot less customizable and accessible for administrators than Exchange.
Slippery slope. Many of us have Google in a good light because of the free tools they provide. We've given them our attention and trust when it comes to search, and therefore allow them to make money off of it. At a certain point this could backfire and allow a competitor to offer everything Google does, a good enough option, and not try to milk every cow to the last drop..
This press release was very poorly done. We are all concerned if mail on our phones will be shut off, but with CalDAV and CardDAV support and the Gmail app its probably going to be OK. This message should have been the first thing they conveyed.
Google does some pretty amazing things but if they keep cutting services with these sorts of announcements we will loose faith.
So the feature that I have used on 3 iPhones for the last few years will no longer work in 45 days time? My current iPhone will be the last device I am able to get push mail and contact syncing on?
When my phone finally dies, and I get another one, I won't be able to have the same functionality I had today?
Could someone please clear up my confusion as I am not very familiar with email protocols and standards. Which of the following will not work after Jan. 30th?
iOS
- CardDav for contacts (2 way sync)
- Exchange for email and calendar
Android
- default setup, I added my gmail at setup
- email, contacts, tasks, calendar... all work out of the box once you have added your gmail account.
Well this used to be the way I migrated people with old phones to Android. Since it is impossible to still get the arcane sync software for old Nokia or Sony phones to work, I always just synced them to Google. Once - then that person's new Android phone would sync them back. I can't imagine that was too taxing on their servers :-(
Switching to iCloud for Push Mail will not be a solution for users in Germany. Due to a patent lawsuit by Motorola (owned by Google), Apple and others can't offer push [0]. The patent in question is European patent 0847654 [1], for a "multiple pager status synchronization system and method". I wonder if Apple could implement IMAP IDLE in the mail client? Since most mail servers and clients support IDLE for years, I don't think anybody could claim it's patented.
This is unpleasant for many, and will hurt a lot of people who use personal devices at work. Why would Google do something like that? It's not inexplicable:
Perhaps the board feel that they aren't growing or earning fast enough to keep their shareholders happy. Maybe Google have some fears about the future of online advertising and want to diversify their sources of revenue. It could be that the service's free users are costing too much and are an easy way to save money. Either way, it's very unlikely to be a simple matter of avarice. Companies act greedily, but usually for sound (or at least consistent) reasons.
One possible benefit I haven't seen anyone else mention: they might finally improve their miserable customer support. That's easier to do when the product you're supporting is bringing in money directly.
Alright, it seems like we're getting to that point. Does anybody know if Fastmail.fm can be configured with ActiveSync or IMAP/IDLE? Is there a pay email provider out there that supports these, and is relatively trustworthy? My work relies on me getting email in real-time (clients send out requests for work to their entire freelance list, first come first serve).
While I think this is more a shot across the bow of Windows Phone (no support for cardDav and calDav, and no GMail app from Google), I don't think iOS users get away scott-free either.
I was under the impression that GMail uses their own version of IMAP? The built in iOS mail client does not provide push e-mail via IMAP but instead uses P-IMAP for push e-mail via iCloud.
I use the little sync app to sync my work (Exchange) calendar with my personal (Google) one. Is that what they've broken? I'm assuming so, since the download link has disappeared from the page.
Outlook.com is starting to become an alternative. I hate using anything related to Windows Live though. I also want to use my own domain name, I remember seeing a post explaining how to do this with Outlook.com.
Yahoo could actually try to take on Google Apps. The most choice the better.
I should have noted that they hadn't been on the internet in the 90's when Microsoft did the same with Hotmail, and others.
Ultimately, nothing is free.
Still,I can't help but wonder if ads in emails didn't generate enough cash so now it's tiem to charge.