Sunday, November 24, 2013

Tales from the Gutter: Why all the hate on Gmail?

Tales from the Gutter: Why all the hate on Gmail?: For the last 2 weeks I have been reading a lot of hate on Google's Gmail platform. I am wondering why there is such a backlash against ...

Why all the hate on Gmail?

For the last 2 weeks I have been reading a lot of hate on Google's Gmail platform. I am wondering why there is such a backlash against the service?
I have been using Gmail as my primary email service for the last 5 years. It has been the easiest service I have ever used for email. IT just works for me. I can also log in from many different platforms with out much effort. I can log in from all of my tablets, droid, apple and other. It works well in Windows 8 in the Chrome browser. Some may say, "yeah you gotta have the chrome browser to use the service!" Sorry not correct. You can use the chrome browser and have some extra features, but it is not needed to get to the service. I have logged into Gmail from all of the major browsers. I use IE as my primary browser at work and it works just fine. I have even logged in with Firefox when I had to test settings for a user. Even tried it on *gasp!* Safari! All of them worked great and I got to my email and was able to find the information I needed at a moments notice.

Some of the features that I like about Gmail are the tab view. I love when people scream about this being hard to deal with. As far as Im concerned its a folder with a different name. IT works the same and you can store your emails in different tabs or labels so its organized in a way that is easy to find things. I have about 13 different labels that I use for my mail and its very easy to find what I need and I can change the labels without a big fuss. It is also easy to view things in these labels even on a mobile device like a phone, this is big for me as I need to get my email on my phone and need to be able to pull information up at a moments notice. The other argument people have is that its hard to bring Gmail into an app like outlook or thunderbird and get it to read these labels like folders. Well Gmail shines more when its used in a browser where it can be manipulated as it was designed to be. I have used it in several email clients and all of them make me feel like somethings missing. I often found my self closing the app out and just opening the Gmail in the browser so I could go in and find what I was looking for.

The other thing I really like about gmail is the search feature. My email goes back about 10 years from emails I have carried with me throughout my digital life. These old emails are now sitting in gmails cloud with the rest of my email. I can hit the search button and find these emails in a quick amount of time and it is not a headache to search for things when using Gmail. Now to be fair I live in Outlook during the day for my work. I have to search through that email many times during the day and im searching a large amount of data in email, thousands upon thousands of emails. It can be difficult for Outlook to narrow down my search close enough so I can find things. If they are older than a few months it gets weird about bringing those results to me. Outlook would rather I remember the subject line of the email I am searching for and find it that way. Not Gmail. If I search for "Ebay" Gmail brings up "ebay", not "ebay plus here is some random emails with someone named jamie that is close to ebay like outlook likes to do!

There is also another area that people like to rag on Gmail about and that is the ads that gmail gives you. They are small and up above the top of your email but below the tabs that are showing. They are not big and in the way and they are related to things you have done online as Gmail likes to scan your email and use that data to bring up ads that are relatable to you. Here is where Privacy nuts jump up a down screaming about being tracked by google and how horrible and evil they are.... Okay do you nuts use Outlook.com or live.com? Did you ever see the ads on the lower right hand part of the page? Yeah same thing. It shows things that you did online and maybe even in your email and they took that and threw some ads in there that you may click on or want to view!
I know people go "How can they do that and its not fair!" Well here's is a tip, the email from Gmail and other providers is FREE, you don't ever pay for it! So they make money with the ads the put up! Guess what? If you ignore them and don't click on them they go away! POOF! Just like that! All gone! No more ads. And your saying they are using your data for evil? If all they want to do is scan my email and say "look here' is a place to buy some bowling balls! Fine go ahead and send me that ad. Thats great! I'll maybe check it out. If you use these sites that you don't have to pay for, they need to do something to make money! Online is not very private, so if your worried about privacy then you want to seek other ways to use online services.

The other issue people seem to have is the new tabs that gmail organizes your incoming email into. They are Primary, Social, Promotional, and Updates.
Some people do not like these and want to go back to the way things are. Not a problem. You can adjust your mail to go all into primary and you can turn these settings off. I personally like these settings. Its great. I get about 20 emails a day that are promos for different sites, they all go into that one tab and I don't have to look at them until I want to devote some time to looking at them and deleting the trash. It makes the email much easier to keep sorted. Gmail is very good at keeping you organized. You can filter your mail and there are some great settings for filters and labels and stars you can use the keep your mail sorted. The important stuff gets found right away, and the not so important stuff is there but not in the way of the things you need to get to quickly.

There is a lot of hoopla being thrown around about Gmail and I think some of it is undeserving. I have used different emails and different clients to get email and Gmail is my favorite to use and will be for the future. Some others are improving their service, like outlook.com. I have an address with that service and it nice the way they revamped it. But it does not have as much flexability as Gmail does I have seven no nine different email addresses and they are using various clients and various providers. Some are good some are not so good. But my favorite is Gmail and I don't see that changing anytime soon. What do you think? Am I going easy on Google? ARe they evil? Please leave comments and tell me what you think.