As a PSA, the Google Workspace version of gmail doesn’t train on your data, if you like other gmail/workspace features.
(Workspace TOS is now part of the Cloud TOS https://workspace.google.com/terms/premier_terms/)
Section 12.11 of the Workspace specific terms confirms that Google will not train on customer data(which Gmail emails in workspace are). Incidentally, this is where Generative prompts and responses submitted or created via GA versions of Gemini in workspace are identified as “Customer Data”, which is not used for training. https://workspace.google.com/terms/service-terms/
> My email is now being hosted by Microsoft, [...] Then I guess it's off to Switzerland ( https://proton.me/about );
I am all for moving away from Gmail, but I think this is completely the wrong way to do it. Why go through the hassle of changing your @gmail for @microsoft (or whatever it is?), already thinking about moving to @proton.me in the future?
Get your own domain, and then you won't depend on the service provider anymore. Try Proton, or Fastmail, or Migadu, whatever you want. Once you own your domain, you can change every year while keeping the same email address (e.g. me@m24tom.com)!
Note: I won't accept "it's too hard to setup a domain" from someone who spent more time writing a blog post than it would take to learn how to do it.
Just disabled the "Smart features" setting in Gmail. Disabling this feature force-disables these other settings:
- Grammar
- Spelling
- Auto-correct
Pretty dark UX to force users into an all AI or nothing situation.
PS1: Yes, I've paid for Google One for years and I'm not just a free user.
PS2: Yes, these features are entirely possible to provide without training on your specific user data.
My tips from moving away from Gmail:
- Mailbox.org is what I use and it's pretty good. I often see Fastmail recommended too.
- Use a standalone email client that allows you to connect to multiple email servers. This makes it easy to continue to monitor your old email account while you use the new one. I use Thunderbird on desktop and FairEmail on Android (though Thunderbird also has an app for Android).
- Transfer all of your most important accounts over initially. As long as you continue to have access to your old account, you don't need to transfer absolutely everything all at once, you can do it over time.
- Use a custom domain name so if you decide to change providers again in future you just need to update your DNS records rather than changing your email address in all your accounts.
- You may also want to set up a catch-all email address or use a service like https://addy.io/ to generate email aliases on the fly, and create a new alias for each service you use (for example, your email for GitHub could be github.com@mydomain.com). This helps protect your actual personal email address from spam.
Since we're all posting about our favourite email provider, Purelymail has been one of my best discoveries of the last year or so. Ten dollars a year (though it's expected that price will go up) for as many mailboxes as you like. There's a webmail too in case you don't want your own IMAP client. I migrated every email I had (except an unmigrateable @gmail.com) to Purelymail over Christmas and I couldn't be happier.
I've had purelymail for several years. I've only had to contact support once. They responded within an hour and fixed the problem as well.
I've helped nontechnical people move to purelymail as well, they all love it.
I migrated to Purelymail around the same time! It's working great for me. Unlimited domains, unlimited users, easy to setup. I'm slowly moving all my accounts over to my own domain.
Purelymail is really good. I've been using it for over 4 years now and haven't had any issues around deliverability or availability. It might not be fancy but it has almost any feature you'd want.
I also love Purelymail. I love the fact that it's so cheap, but that also scares me, because I know it can't last forever.
I have more than 20 years of email in my gmail account. How do I even start migrating?
And even if I migrate, I will need to keep my address alive and forwarding to my new address at least for a few years. So no privacy gains there either.
Does anyone have concrete advice as to how to make the transition?
My gmail address was also almost exactly 20 years old when I migrated two years ago. Here's how I did it:
--
1. Register your domain (if you're doing that) and get fastmail set up -- I remember feeling a physical discomfort clicking "register" on fastmail, it felt like such an insanely impossible thing to do.
2. Set up the IMAP link so that anything sent to your gmail gets delivered to fastmail. Doing so also allows you to send email from your gmail address (with valid spf/dkim) if you want to.
3. Import all your old mail using fastmail's import tool, which Just Works.
4. Set up a vacation autoresponder in gmail that responds only to people in your contacts with a note telling them your new address.
5. Set up a label and filter in fastmail for anything that was addressed to your gmail, so you can easily see what is still sending you email on your old address to assist with migrating services.
--
It worked a charm. I was completely convinced of it within a week, long before the 30 day free trial ran out. I have been an immensely happy customer since then. Could not imagine going back.
That's what I thought as well, until I actually started migrating. I learned a few things:
* You probably don't have that many accounts associated with the email, actually. I have about 50 accounts that I care about enough to move, which took me a morning, but it's doable.
* For the same reason, you probably don't have that many (real human) contacts as well. But I could be very wrong. For me, I still occasionally use Gmail to communicate with a few people (like every two months), but that's infrequent enough that I don't care about how bad Gmail is.
* You probably want to review which services you don't regularly use any more, and if you don't have precious data stored with them (you probably shouldn't), consider closing the account instead of changing the email address, if that's an option for the provider.
* You can of course keep checking the original inbox or do forwarding. My experience is that, very quickly, I only need to occasionally check the old email. I still get a few useful emails here and there, but it's manageable. (Plus emails that remind me I should just delete the account)
You can do it.
> I will need to keep my address alive and forwarding to my new address at least for a few years. So no privacy gains there either.
Ya, there's no way of not letting google know what your new address is, but you're going to be emailing a lot of gmail addresses anyway so there's no way around that, really. But with the forwarding they only know incoming mail.
I switched off gmail 3.5 years ago and all I can say is that it wasn't anywhere near as scary as I thought it would be. I setup an auto-responder that would hound people to update their contacts for me and slowly switched over services I cared about (and closed others!) An important point, though, is that I don't really care about old emails. I do still have access to my gmail account, of course, but I have yet to go back. Surely there is a way to export everything and import it into something searchable, though?
Fastmail migration takes about 20 seconds, and you can use your gmail identity from the Fastmail web app.
Wrote an article[0] on how to migrate away from Gmail a few years back. Hope it helps!
Do you really need for the old emails to be "in an account" to make sense of them? Google lets you just download an archive that can be loaded in a local mail reader.
I was in the same boat as you. I tried Fastmail and they have a really great tool that just did it. I was skeptical but after I tried it was very pleased. Give it a shot.
are you only using the web based version?
A dedicated client like Mozilla's Thunderbird might be helpful for de-cluttering.
Notion Mail also seems like it has potential - ability to group together certain types of mail.
Someone already recommended Google Takeout to back up all your mail, then finding a business email host that can easily import your data
Fastmail provides an easy way to migrate [0]. I setup a label in my Fastmail account that will tag all mail coming in from Gmail. Then you go through that list at your leisure and make the requisite contact with the people or services emailing at the old address. It's really not difficult at all. I've been on Fastmail for ~4 years now, and haven't once considered looking back or regretted it. Good luck.
Exactly this! After ~3 years I rarely receive an email with the Gmail tag now that all contacts/services have been switched over (or unsubscribed). Fastmail is easily my most valued paid service, and yet I never have to think about it. Just works very well.
- Start with takeout
- Setup automatic forwarding
- Then probably just use that old email for searching old emails
This has worked okay for me
I think it depends on what you use your email for.
Basically all email I get is from accounts created on services. Almost never it is an email from a real person.
The ones that matter I have been migrating to Proton (e.g.: bank, utilities, etc).
"My email is now being hosted by Microsoft..."
Out of the pan, into the fire.
my recommendation: i've been happily using fastmail for years.
I tried using Hotmail as my primary for a while a few years ago and I've never seen more legitimate mail being entirely dropped with no explanation. It would never reach the inbox, it wouldn't be in the junk folder, it was as if the other party had never even sent it, despite assuring me they had. Never had that happen with Gmail or really any other mail service out there.
Maybe it’s just me, but I have serious issue with Fastmail’s spam filtering. Meaning, it seems that I am the spam filter. I find myself considering closing the account on a regular basis because of it.
I am also extremely frustrated with Gmail’s AI features now being apparently impossible to disable.
> Fastmail’s spam filtering
I had issues with it early on, and after some back and forth with support they explained to me what is going on: it takes about 200 spam emails before your personalized filter kicks in, before that you might see something slip through. Also, the spam filter updates after you delete emails from your spam folder. Just remember to empty your spam folder, and add some custom rules until you reach that 200 threshold.
5+ years in, everything is working great, nothing to complain, best email provider I've ever used. I only wish they had servers in the EU.
This has been my number one request for fastmail for years. They're happy with GDPR compliance but no intentions of having EU servers.
Fastmail's spam filter has been better than Gmail's spam filter in my experience.
Thier spam filter is really great, probably only one time they flagged a legit email as a spam. On the other hand, the email I have that uses fastmail never ended in someone’s spam.
Have you considered using AWS WorkMail? Very easy to set up, even helps you with MX/DKIM/DMARC/SPF if you use Route53, and only $4/month/user I believe. Granted, you won't get anywhere near Google's level of automatic credibility, but even that is relatively low for young gmail accounts.
I thought it's meant for business usage. Why are you interested in WorkMail compared to other million email products?
> $4/month/user
My VPS host lets me use hundreds of emails for like $7/month besides the actual hosting. Of course, Microsoft charges even more for a single...
Seconding Fastmail here.
Microsoft is an insane choice, just look at what they've done with Windows and their Office suite.
Pretty much lost me at that point.
Yeah I laughed when I saw he'd moved to MS, but I'd love to get some more alternatives.
My ISP has already said they're going to stop providing email service at some point in the near future and I'll have to migrate at some point. In the past I'd picked up a cheap domain and self-hosted for a bit, but I'd love to not have to. Any good email providers out there that actually respect their customers and support IMAP?
Purchase a domain and point the MX record(s) to any provider you'd like. If you end up not liking that provider, you simply point the domain to a different one.
That's the main advantage of not using the provider's domain as a part of your email address (like @gmail.com, @outlook.com or whatever).
I moved my personal email from Google a few years ago to https://inbox.eu which was by far the cheapest option for mailboxes for the whole family on custom domains etc. They've been very solid, I have no regrets. Their spam filtering has been a little hit and miss but other than that, solid.
Work email is moving from Google to https://www.infomaniak.com/en/ksuite/ksuite-pro - if you're not bothered about custom domains, they also offer an excellent free tier for personal use: https://www.infomaniak.com/en/ksuite/myksuite
"My email is now being hosted by Microsoft..."
Please tell me this is parody.
I moved my custom domain from google workspace to fastmail a few years ago and didn't look back. Very happy with that decision.
The only two downsides:
1. A few people have reported my emails from fastmail (calendar invites mostly) going to their spam folder. Not enough reports so I'm not worried.
2. Google won't let me sign in and create / edit /comment in google docs with my custom email hosted at fastmail so I have to have a random@gmail.com account just to use free google docs to collaborate with people who only send me google docs.
Overall I think AI features are going to be great but give me the ability to pick and choose which I enable / disable and we should be good. If not then I agree with OP - Bye Bye Gmail.
oh, and don't read my emails and protect my privacy google! - no? Ok bye bye!
> I tried turning off Smart Features and oh my, that's not usable.
Why? What did it do?
This is the problem. Overload. It is not a google problem. If you get 200 emails - even without AI - just by using Thunderbird or k9mail (android) it will be a problem.
edit: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15604322?hl=en
I cannot find that "Messages and attachments might be reviewed by humans, so don't share any sensitive or confidential information."
anywhere.
Of course, there is nothing wrong about changing the provider. Variety is good.
I had Smart Features enabled for years. Years! They worked okay. They put good accurate stuff on my calendar and so there was useful work being done by the AI in background.
Unfortunately, in the past few months, Gemini AI really started shoving its way in. And there were some features that were really unpalatable, that were basically dealbreakers for this. Yeah, I believe the "AI Summaries" had a lot to do with it. They were bad, misleading, and I did not want them crowding up my app.
I couldn't disable those features without disabling Smart Features entirely. So that's what I did.
So now I sort of suffer without the automatic email event-calendar integrations, and the other cool stuff that AI had provided, but it's totally usable. I have no trouble using it as an email service with that AI disabled. It works fine.
Anyway, it is no secret that Google has always used the text of our emails for their own marketing and analysis purposes. Always has. Why did you think Gmail was a free service? Obviously, you were paying for it! We all paid for it with our email content!
I've been using Fastmail for several years now, I remember when I first said something about it on here I got a negative response about how Fastmail doesn't do something correctly or something, and now most of the comment replies are praising Fastmail. I still like it, it's just interesting how fickle things are here.
> My email is now being hosted by Microsoft, so hopefully will be free of the outages
Ironically Microsoft just had an outage a couple of days ago.
OK, while I briefly have a bit of your attention: what would you advise to use instead? What I need:
* Server-side filters.
* Tags. No, not folders. Many of my emails have 2-3 tags, some have 4-5. I wonder if it can even map to IMAP4; I see a few ways to model it.
* Good deliverability.
* Reasonable spam protection.
* Not hugely expensive. Ideally near-free, or self-hosted.
What are some options?
is there any FOSS based webmail and/or IMAP that supports tagging instead of folders?
i use supmua (which inspired notmuch) which like gmail uses tags instead of folders. i could not go back to a folder based system. but i am really missing a webmail interface that works with tags.
I've been spamming enough about Fastmail (just a happy user), it ticks all your boxes except near-free/self-hosted.
Re: tags, you can switch between classic folders or Gmail-style labels.
Re: filtering, it has an easy-to-use UI but you can write your own custom Sieve filtering rules if you want.
Awhile ago when I logged in to my gmail account I was asked if I wanted to try AI summaries, I clicked "no" and nothing has changed in my user experience in either the web interface or mobile apps. It also told me I could that I could enable or disable AI features with the Gemini icon next to the settings icon, which it looks like I can still do, at least in the web interface. Am I missing something?
Being "an early adopter" is not proof of anything other than being an early adopter.
I have had gmail for decades.
The best thing I did recently was turn off the smart features, add a bunch of filters, and unsubscribe from stuff I was no longer interested in.
It was initially a shock to see so many emails I hadn't cared for, but an hour of curation, and it has been a delight ever since.
I did the same, turning off all AI and smart features (including those Primary/Social/Promotion tabs) made Gmail so much better.
I'm planning to move to another service provider though. I can't trust Google anymore.
Both me and partner switching to Infomaniak (also Swiss), can recommend. Not E2E encrypted, but kMail is more usable than ProtonMail (also a lot cheaper on all levels).
Been using ProtonMail for 5 years but so annoying I can't propely search my emails because of the encryption, can't use standard IMAP without a proprietary connector, and their Drives/Docs suite is missing a lot of features.
Account creation needs phone number?
Single best thing I've done to get control over my public email:
* add a filter that moves all email with "unsubscribe" into an "unsubscribe" folder
combined with fastmail spam filtering, my inbox actually became usable again instantly...
https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-be...
Sure.
Google Has Most of My Email Because It Has All of Yours
I’m not sure what to do except encourage others to consider, in the wake of the Snowden revelations and everything else, whether you really want Google to have all your email. And half of mine.
I’ve migrated my main mail account (gmail) to a custom domain on apple’s icloud.
No regrets (since I am a mac & iphone user).
Plus, I can have a email per website, without exposing my main address.
Been having a custom domain on Proton for almost 10 years now. No issues and I'm happy my Google sceptisism is now paying dividends
I have been looking into options too. One option that seemed attractive was called Zoho mail. Any experiences from that?
I've been using it for years and have no complaints. But some people say Zoho can even read your emails by human, I'm not sure if that's true.
Been using Zoho for years with no issues. Both via the web interface and IMAP.
Is it easy and advisable to host your own email server on vps?
My opinion after self-hosting for over a decade is that, yes, it's easy. See my comment further inside the thread for my take on whether or not it's advisable.
I am no expert, but from what I've read...
Easy: I don't think so.
Advisable: Hell no.
I believe you have to constantly maintain it, and good luck with deliverability.
Anyone: correct me if I'm wrong.
> Anyone: correct me if I'm wrong.
OK: it's easy, unless you're the "atechnical" sort.
Is it recommended? I'm torn here, because the big beasts are systematically spam/junk-classifying and even rejecting e-mail sent from independent MXes despite ticking the right checkboxes (FQrDNS, SPF, DKIM, DMARC) and having a clean IP-address in a tidy network.
Not an expert, but I suppose that you can safely receive email using a self-hosted SMTP server. Sending it without being blacklisted / greylisted is trickier. If you don't want to muck with obtaining an IPv4 with a good karma, there are options to send via large providers, such as GMail (IIRC free), or AWS SES, or things like Sendgrid or Brevo. The latter may be effectively free if you send only a handful of emails per day.
I’ve been self hosting E-mail (send and receive) with SSL and IMAP, for my family and a few hobby clubs on a $5 Linode VPS for at least a decade, probably more. Very few problems over that time period. Basic exim4/dovecot setup. Occasionally some crappy ISP’s spam filter gets too aggressive but I follow their unblocking procedure and am fine from there. I do keep my old empty gmail account around in case that changes but I don’t use it much.
The fear around self hosting seems overblown. LetsEncrypt falls over more often than my E-mail.
I used to do the same for many years woth dovecot as well. Its not too difficult plus now with the llms it can probably be easier to maintain the configuration fires (I havent tried).
However I did have issues with the VPS provider I was using getting blocked and not just my VPS’ IP but the entire block. So at some point it became tok tedious to have to follow the unblock process.
And so I switched to fastmail and have been using it for over two years. No major complaints.
Would I self-host again? If I have the free time I think its fun and you can learn a lot. However, if you have young kids and are too busy with life I would say go with a provider you trust with your data.
I host a few client marketing & transactional mails.
Mostly sending stuff from marketing automation/newsletter software.
Not an issue. Will be migrating the first few domains of off paid google workspace E-Mail to a self hosted solution. I actually don’t expect too much trouble.
But that’s currently still a hypothesis. I have seen a few people do that successfully. So I know it’s possible. Still. Not having hosted a mail infrastructure in 20 odd years…
#di_day #ccc ;)
... What does this mean in the current context?
It would have been nicer if this was about a general Google boycott in general, but this will do too.
I'm very happy with MimeStream. I get gmail, without the UX of gmail, and something that I can command-tab into, instead of a browser window.
Looked up Mimestream. So it's a subscription-based app that basically gives you nicer UI/UX for your google emails. Oof.
Only on HN will someone who makes money writing software complain that other fellow developers are asking for money from him for their software.
No, you probably haven't read the conversation piece. The post is ultimately about switching providers because Google's service crosses a line from (1) targeted advertising to (2) using personal and confidential information for model training.
A service to clean up the UI does nothing to solve the issue at hand.
"I tried to turn it off. I can."
The complaint was about the summary, which Mimestream doesn't include.
The dealbreaker was data usage for AI training, not UI:
"We are going to use your email to train our LLMs. I'm not okay with that... my confidential commercial information is NOT okay to use to train your models [...] So... goodbye Gmail."
The title is Bye Bye Gmail.
They admit they can turn that off.
That is not what my comment is about.
You might want to edit your comment to explain because that was my own takeaway as well.
I agree with your comment fully, but it also doesn't follow the guidelines.
Fair enough!
$50/year for a nice app that I use on a daily basis to make my life better? Worth every penny.
But google still is presumably still training their AIs on your email content regardless if you don't use their frontend.
OPs issue was more clearly directed at "A week or two ago I was surprised to see a Google Gemini summary at the top of my email on my phone", which Mimestream doesn't include.
The rest of the complaint was about a bug that happened, just today, with sorting and spam control.
OP meaning the author of the linked article? Maybe I missed the mark but I felt his main rejection of Gmail ended up being because they train their AI based on his private and or commercial data.
OP = original poster
"I tried to turn it off. I can."
The complaint was about the summary, which Mimestream doesn't include.
Recently I was surprised to see a Google Gemini summary at the top of my email on my phone. A day or two later this appeared in my web client as well. Look, I love our new overlords (for the record m'lords I nearly always use please and thank you. I was an early adopter. I still am a frequent user..I mean someone who has all the answers and blows smoke up my ass..perfect right!
Despite that, it appears it's not good for me (https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/your-brain-on-chatgpt...) It's great, it's easy, makes me feel good in the moment..of course it's bad for me!
Here's the thing. I like to read things from my friends that they have taken the time to write. I personally hate texting. All the nuance is gone. Often the humor. Sad. Makes me want to have a beer with you...eye contact...blech. The LAST thing I want is a summary...at the top of the email...highlighted..that I CANNOT turn off.
I tried to turn it off. I can. It's under `Gmail -> Settings -> General -> Smart Features (checkbox)`. BUT..the AI summaries is now grouped with the Smart Tabs.
For those of you who do not use Gmail Smart Tabs, Smart Tabs (officially the Tabbed Inbox) have been part of Gmail since 2013; well actually the technology behind them—Smart Labels—actually debuted two years earlier. (Thank you Gemini, yes I DO truly love you. Tell me again about the comparisons of Stephen Miller and Heinrich Himmler's tactics please?)
Smart Tabs automatically sort my incoming flood of solicited commercial email (cue laughter from those who know my first start-up) into five buckets:
* Primary: Email from you. * Promotions: K&L Wine Merchants at the top of the list. * Social: Hi Andrew on Facebook (that I only log into from Firefox running on a VM). * Update: Actual transactional emails from companies. * Forums: The Information at the top of the list (a newsletter I'd like to read but don't want to make the time justify paying for the content).
I tried turning off Smart Features and oh my, that's not usable. So I lived with the AI summary at the top. For a week. Then this morning, I saw several messages in my Primary tab that normally get sorted into Promotions, Social, Updates or Forums. This is not unheard of; sometimes a company uses a new incoming address or something and stuff gets put in the wrong bucket.
But THIS time, I got a popup that says I must "Share" this message with Google and links to the Privacy Policy and Google Terms of Service. And an explicit sentence: "Messages and attachments might be reviewed by humans, so don't share any sensitive or confidential information."
I'm not naive. I'm an early adopter, my email address includes my name and no numbers. I AM a direct marketer. From the get-go, having Google read my email in order to provide targeted advertising was part of the deal. I was fine with that.
BUT...now...what they are saying is that...we are going to use your email to train our LLMs. I'm not okay with that. That knowledge of my way of writing, my personal details, my confidential commercial information is NOT okay to use to train your models. 'Cause I expect mistakes will be made and more information will reside in the model than those at Google (or FB, MSFT etc) intended. And I'm not really up for assuming that risk.
So...goodbye Gmail. It's been great. Really great. I'm sure I'll miss you. Bye.
My email is now being hosted by Microsoft, so hopefully will be free of the outages and limits some of you have experienced with that email in the past. There it will reside until I cannot turn off MSFT's ability to read my email. Then I guess it's off to Switzerland ( [https://proton.me/about](https://proton.me/about) ); my email can be with my gold. JK.
Tom
p.s. why thank you Gemini for reformatting that for me into a clean, engaging markdown blog post. Yes, I do agree this is a sharp, timely take on the "AI-ification" of tools we use every day. I love you. Kill me last?
Other long-time features are now tied to having those stupid summaries enabled too. It's an all or nothing deal. So frustrating and unnecessary.
Speaking of botched LLM summaries, my bank has been doing this to me for several months now.
Instead of the transaction info which is strictly defined and uniformly formatted, they've attempted to give "friendly names" to each one and "simplify" the descriptions.
This has been a supremely bad idea. Firstly, it deprives me of essential info about each transaction, which I cannot access at all in the mobile app. I need to go into the website on a desktop computer, click through a few screens to say "this description is incorrect!" and request that they show me the original.
The "simple descriptions" elide a lot of useful info, such as the vendor's phone number.
Sometimes they are completely incorrect, like the name of my church gets a completely different and misleading name in every transaction. I cannot disable this.
Last year, there was a transaction during tax time that I believed to be some sort of penalty by the government, and I was freaking out about it, but it turned out to actually be my refund and had been "helpfully renamed" by my bank to be extremely misleading.
I have discussed these issues with the online support staff, and in person at my branch, and they are sympathetic, but there is nothing they can do about the app, and the only workaround for me is to individually flag each transaction as it comes in, and fix it, and there is no "global disable" or "global unfuck everything" button for any of us, anywhere.
you can use your gmail on zoho, they have some low cost plans
How will that prevent google from training AI's on his data?