Does anyone recommend any alternate providers with custom domains, or some OSS? Is it possible to host your own email server on a NAS or RPi something?
You can use fastmail, or if you don't want to lose Gmail's UI you can use GSuite which lets you use a personal domain name.
* Respect the user
* Respect the opportunity
* Respect each other
The first one is obviously a joke, because nothing says "respect the user" like canceling a beloved service with millions of users, or "updating" the product while losing half the features.
The last one makes you wonder why they had to put it into a slogan. Isn't it the baseline expectation? It's somewhere on the level of "Don't steal your colleague's belongings" as far as slogans go.
But it's the second one that is absolutely the best, and by that, I mean the worst. Orwell would've had a lot to say about it. The thing is, it has absolutely no meaning in the English language. What's next? Say hi to agility? Don't offend capital gains? Console excellence?
Of course, it doesn't really matter. The whole thing has a mafia vibe, as Google's slogans and culture are drifting towards loyalty rather than standing up for what's right.
--------
If you want to have more fun, look at Google's Community Guidelines[1]
Compare to The Mafia Code:
* Be loyal to members of the organization. Do not interfere with each other's interest. Do not be an informer.
--[Google: Treat our data with care. Don't disseminate NTK information.]
* Be rational. Be a member of the team. Don't engage in battle if you can't win.
--[Google: follow Three Values, in particular: Respect the opportunity.]
* Be a man of honor. Respect womanhood and your elders. Don't rock the boat.
--[Google: Do your part to keep Google a safe, productive, and inclusive environment for everyone.]
* Be a stand-up guy. Keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth shut.
--[Google: Discussions that make other Googlers feel like they don't belong have no place here.]
* Have class. Be independent. Know your way around the world.
--[Google: You are responsible for your words and your reach.]
It's not only this issue with Google being like a wall when things happen, but also that I dislike their semi-AI based interface. While I like their good spam filter, there's a lot of other stuff going on there, and that without any inbox rules that I have set up.
No it has always been the same company, and we tried to tell you.
It is a docker based email server setup very well done.
More recently though I moved my personal domain to Microsoft Exchange Online - it's a lot less flexible than Mailcow (per-head licensing, but there's + addressing and catch-alls now) but I don't have any of the deliverability/gmail-spam-folder issues I used to have.
Exchange P1 Online [2] is roughly the same for my single-user as my old DO droplet cost per month
(edit: side-bonus you get an Azure AD tenant for your domain which is handy for SSO/IdP things)
[2]: https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/microsoft-365/exchange/compa...
The rest is literally copy-pasted, Ctrl+F is your friend.
Honestly, this reads like a Rule of Acquisition. I think Google may be run by Ferengi at this point.
It's absolutely possible to host your own e-mail server on VPS. You'll receive mail without issues. But sending mail might cause issues, so unless you're OK with some delivery problems and spending some time to investigate, I don't suggest going that route.
Hosting your email on NAS is problematic. You need to have static IP address with PTR record and most home providers won't offer those services for reasonable price.
I'm happy with Namecheap as my registrar and Mailbox.org for mail services, and have been for years (my Gmail account still exists and forwards the rare message it receives to the other one).
Mailbox.org offers ordinary IMAP and SMTP access + DKIM signing for your domain. Hosted in Germany. Prices vary, I pay about €2/month for several GB I think.
Their webmail interface is bad, but then again, I've never seen one that isn't. And I've never used it after logging in for the first time anyway.
> Is it possible to host your own email server on a NAS or RPi something?
It's possible, but I wouldn't recommend it for something as critical as email. It's not that the actual hosting is hard, it's that more and more of the big providers are refusing to handle email messages from certain networks.
Get an email address that you own, on a domain you control. Switch to a provider that takes your money for whom you are the customer - not the product.
I did this with Fastmail and Iki.fi, a Finnish non-profit[1], who have been selling people "permanent" email addresses since 1995.
Including that doesn't help your argument much. And apart from "do not be an informer" and "don't rock the boat" the mafia code is pretty much unarguably good advice. Employees should be following it.
We'd all be better off if everyone was rational, honourable, independent and classy.
Both have unpleasant web accessibility experience, but it is not consideration for many.
There is a different danger however — after about 8 years the annual fee went from about $15 to $60.
* Not to mention phishing. Is that link going to foobank dot com or foobank dot club?
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20171113150544/https://getstream...
Also no programmer had anything to say how bad it is. In a software company...
Now as far as "the user", well the joke is apparently on GP, as everybody and their dog knows that 'on the internet, if the product is free, you are the product and not the user!'. Even dogs on internet know this, but alas, HN has forgotten. So, "respect the user" means respect the folks who are paying us to track everybody and their dog on the internet.
Respect "the opportunity". Translation: This is a "Golden Time' for the few to lord it over the many! So the respect the user, and respect each other, and the rest should be grateful for having 'the permission' to use our platform.
Hope this helps.
That said, there are ccTLDs which behave more like gTLDs (like .io, .me, .fm, .gg, .cd) and are treated as such across much of what you do online, but whether that'll impact your email delivery depends on who you communicate with and how they treat spam.
Google now sells domains, as well as email through GSuite.
I use them a lot on new projects, because I find them so insanely convenient, but I can't help shake the feeling that now I'm both the product and a paying customer.
So I'd probably nuance your words with: "select a provider whose livelihood depends on your custom".
Some email providers have IMAP import, where you just give them the password and they'll do it for you. Not the best solution in terms of security but might be ok if you're getting rid of your account anyway.
For me it's google photos. While there are lot of great gmail alternatives these days there's still nothing like google photos unfortunately, is there?
Neither Google's new nor its old slogans are good according to this criterion.
That is exactly the point krageon is making. If you have a .so domain (or .earth like me), you need to have a backup at least, so you can still access things like a normal human. My @gmail.com address have been used for this, but seems I'm gonna have to get yet another domain with a normal tld so I can stop using the gmail one for when .earth is not correctly accepted.
If you are looking for a managed solution, I suggest one of those that you pay for (iCloud, Dropbox, OneDrive) since usually, paid services have at least some form of customer service and something like OP's story is less likely to happen.
[1] Also, the cloud provider where I rent the server might decide to block my account for whatever reason. To minimise the risk, I'm planning to store daily server backups on a different cloud provider.
And do NOT register it through a provider whose only support is Machine Learning!(tm).
With the complete lack of accountability, support, or recourse the giants seem to have, it has never been more important to not put all one's eggs in one basket.
You can the use whatever service you want. G Suite, Exchange Online, roll your own, …
But most of all, the user is still the product.
Unless by user they mean "the advertiser".
I've had the same .org domain for around 15 years now. Except for the coup we've seen last year where somebody tried to buy it privately (thankfully averted, I believe), I've see no price hike over time.
I've used both over the years, though the EasyDNS UI is a bit harder to work with. They seem more technically competent than Hover though, who are decent but not fantastic. ;)
Wow, didn't know this story. Imperialism at its finest from the Anglo-saxon world (well, actually started by the French with slavery but that was >200 years ago, I found way worse the decisions took 50 years ago).
That part is probably not a good bet, as life can go in unexpected directions.
Some country providers (eg .eu) only provide service to their citizens, so if you move country or otherwise become "not a citizen" they'll terminate your domain. As happened recently to the UK holders of .eu domains. :/
Probably better to pick a .net/.com/.org domain, for (hopefully) longer term stability.
From the perspective of an AI moderation system, all you have to do to be perfectly internally consistent is to ban all accounts that raise any flags.
Friend Computer sees no Conflict if one is no longer a Citizen, because being in Conflict with the Computer is Treason.
Actually, I've been thinking about doing the same thing.
But i don't know much about emails.
Also .org falls under US influence, which may not have worked out so well had you been making this decision in Ukraine a decade ago
That's not strictly true - British Indian Ocean Territory has permanent inhabitants, just not any native ones (never had had them, really - it was uninhabited until 1793). US military Diego Garcia base is there...
It's bullshit for other reasons, and expulsion of Chagossians to build the base is a tragedy - but not due it being empty territory (it's not).
Very much agreed on .org.
[0] https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/eu.html [1] https://eurid.eu/en/register-a-eu-domain/brexit-notice/
Ahhh, hadn't realised that. Though I'd suspect .com and .net would be in the same position as .org in that respect.
I still have my google accounts, I just don’t use them (except YouTube unfortunately). My gmail still forwards to my new address, but I mostly just get emails where people got their own addresses wrong nowadays.
What I did was: I registered a domain name from a company that i don’t use for anything else besides domain names (incidentally a local registrar who I trust and can call on the phone). I then set up a new email address (I use fastmail) using that domain name. Then I forwarded all my old emails to this new address.
If someone emailed my old address, I would always reply from my new one, which slowly updated peoples address books. If I got newsletters, I would either unsubscribe and resubscribe from my new one or just unsubscribe. I did that very slowly and it took a year or so before I stopped getting any forwarded, but there’s no rush. Don’t think “oh I have to update everything at once”. Similarly, I updated services that I still use that used the old email to log in on a case by case basis as I used them.
You can ditch google and it’s not as hard as it sounds!
But I still use my old gmail for one thing: Point of contact for the my domain registrar. Do you have any suggestions for how I can solve this?
So at least I could redirect my accounts to a new address if worst happens.
I’ve been trying to switch off gmail for a while but spam filtering is really hard for me.
A second hosted email domain has an additional benefit - it allows you to also control your recovery (secondary) email, such as you'd add to your banking/financial website, etc. and not have any of your email options where they can be taken away like this post. It's trivial to have one of the email hosted providers do an IMAP pull from your GMail account, so you can still keep it around just manage it as an external account (such as for your Android login needs).
I dont have a mac at the moment but have a iphone. Their windows application is very bad, unreliable sync and their web interface is missing a lot of functionality. No linux integration at all, but that is expected.
Onedrive works well for file sync but almost have no photo library + editing functionality.
It gives you all of your mail in mbox format, which is a common format.
It's not perfect, and I'm thinking more and more about moving to a paid service, but this at least gives me some peace of mind that if one day I run afoul of Google's AI bouncers, I won't lose a decade of info overnight.
If you buy a domain through Google, you should still be able to transfer it to another registrar.
With it, I have email from multiple domains doing what I want. I also have a <username>@fastmail.fm which has only been provided to one person: my domain registrar.
If you pay someone to handle your email this is a good approach, IMO.
The Mafia Code isn't bad because it has bad stuff.
The Mafia Code is bad because it doesn't prohibit awful stuff.
The Mafia Code says nothing about being not evil, or, for that matter, not killing your enemies, not extorting non-mafia people, and so on.
It's all about being loyal to, and protecting the interests of the Family.
Which is what Google aims to be - one big family, which will take care of all your needs, as long as you follow the code.
Towards other Mafia people.
Which is a key point. People who aren't in the Family have different opinions of people on the other side of the tommy gun barrel and its humane usage.
Now they are the establishment. Their power and influence is on par with the US government, so it's an expectation that they should actually not be evil. But they fail at that in the most basic ways and they're not held accountable for it because "they're a private company, they can do what they want!"
Nobody cares about "changing the industry" if it doesn't "move the needle". And in the end, the needle is neither the number of users, nor the positive impact of the project.
Citation needed. This seems like an arbitrary criterion to me.
"Do not be evil" was a good slogan.
For example, Google got a lot of flack for literally tracking its users' every move whether or not they consent to do so[1].
Is it "respectful"? Is that "the right thing"? You can justify everything by the value that Google provides.
But it's, you know... kind of evil.
Sadly, this not something one could refer to anymore in a meeting discussing this issue.
[1]https://apnews.com/article/828aefab64d4411bac257a07c1af0ecb
If you want to argue that Google is promoting these values amongst it's employees that is fine; but that is a great idea on Google's part. It isn't strengthening your argument.
Things aren't all-or-nothing, and taking this sort of approach can definitely help with making such a non-trivial change.
I go through the filter every now and then to see which services are still using my old address and change them to use the newer one.
It's also a nice way to find out how horribly some services have f-d up the change process. One had a non-working change email button and the CS rep just deleted my old account and told me to create a new one.
One just plain doesn't let people change their email. At all.
If you aren't giving something else up, then you aren't saying anything. It's just platitudes.
"Do not be evil" is basically meaningless as a lot of evil is done with the intention of doing good. With that level of ambiguity, it is entirely down to individual interpretation.