Google confirms Gmail is “here to stay” amid speculation over plans to scrap the email service

Gmail is the gateway to their entire product portfolio; no way they’d kill it.

Google getting rid of gmail would have to be hands down one of the biggest internet shakeups since its inception. Gmail has been the de facto free email service for almost two decades now. They have like a 53% market share of emails in the U.S.

With the terms of service for their “anti spam” and “productivity auto-sorting” features, they must gather SO much data about people by reading their emails - there’s no way they’d turn that off lol

I mean... I don't expect them to scrap GMail, but their reassurance means nothing. IIRC they said the same thing about Stadia.

Why would they voluntarily lose access to all my personal information?

I just now created a Proton mail account just minutes before seeing this. I think I'm glad I did.

I've been thinking about de-googling myself for some time now. After being with them since they created the Gmail service in the early 2000s, I practically have my whole adult life on Google. I've been using drive and photos as well for as long as it has existed. It's going to be a lot of work to sort through all of this data and start over on a new service.

I don't trust Google anymore over anything. Whether it's privacy (though I was pretty naive to think I had any in the first place) or their ability to keep a service up long enough for anyone to commit.

It's a shame because they started as a really nice company with their do no evil motto with great services and then everything went to shit. Even their killer feature, the search engine, has become complete shit.

Killing Gmail would be like killing search or youtube, they would NOT dare.

It's funny that most comments here are debating this seriously when the article (that apparently nobody bothered to read) clearly says it was a hoax.

Any of these large business coming out to explicitly say "this will not happen" is concerning.

Gmail is untouchable. That more than any other product has kept me tethered to Google since 2004. That being said I wouldn't be surprised if some greedy, future regime at Google botches it up.

The biggest thing holding me to Google is Gmail and photos.

They scrap Gmail and I'm literally out. No more Google accounts, except to use an android.

Google offers very little value to the consumer these days

Next week: "Google scrapping gmail."

One thing that's very clear to me is that when a tech company says something is "here to stay," it doesn't actually mean it's here to stay.

I’m starting to worry Lemmy users read the article at a lower rate than redditors.

Of course it is. I know Google scraps a lot of things, but Gmail is for the most part liked and, far more importantly to Google, is an absolute treasure trove of personalised, easily parsable data, yet nowhere near as costly to maintain as, say, YouTube.

The fact that after making search, an email provider was their next big project, shows how serious they are about it.

Why does anyone think Google would shut down Gmail? You'd have to be stupid to think that they would shut down the most used email service on earth, one that is deeply integrated into Google as an ecosystem.

Next week: Fires 60% of the gmail staff

This would really be the ultimate fuck you to everyone if they did this. I sort of wish they would so we'd all stop giving them all our personal data.

Exactly what a company about to shut down their email product would say.

Stupid question: what the shit do you do with your 15 years of communication history if your email provider falls off a cliff?

Oh thank goodness. Ya know I trust Google, when Google speaks it's always true. They're very not evil. And this definitely isn't a fun way to lessen the blow of an announcement that would be so.. displeasing to the masses.

/$

I fully expect GMail to be enshittified in the future.

"GMail through gmail.com and GMail App: Always Free"

"GMail Pro (IMAP/POP/Forwarding): Only $3.99 / mo"

Too bad I'm degoogling as we speak.

see if they were even remotely trustworthy or even rational no one would ever even entertain the possibility of Gmail being discontinued. for any other party this would be laughable. with Google it's plausible.

RIP Inbox.

Why do I feel like them saying this makes it MORE likely theyre going to shut it down?

That would be insane if they actually scrapped it.

It's here to stay....for only $3.99 per month! *

*cost for monthly subscription only. Excludes fees for sending and receiving messages. Chat and others services extra.

Anyone want to take a bet, this is where we will be in 5 years?

My "Gmail is here to stay" press release is raising a lot of questions already answered by my press release

What about my "Gmail is here to stay" tshirt is making you think Gmail isnt here to stay?

Of course it is. e-mail is well established and very widespread for both personal and corporate use, Google would never abandon this service which is actually a great source of collecting personal data from users and non-users and therefore a source of revenue for them

Google almost killed Gmail for me - I'm on a deprecated google apps free family plan they tried to kill recently. It was going to cost over a hundred dollars a month to move everyone on my personal family domain to a professional plan to keep it, and at the last minute they retreated and kept it free.

But for me that was a warning shot I can't ignore. Way back I ran a Microsoft Exchange server for the family, before that postfix with squirrelmail. But I'm tired of all the tech support that came with it, so some kind of permanent, relatively spam free email option that we call rely on for decades would be welcome.

Google ditching Gmail would be so many people ditching Google.

Recently moved to protonmail. The setup was fairly easy, with proton copying all the mails over and setting up forwarding from gmail. I've started to gradually change accounts over. Decided to subscribe as well, even though could manage without.

Chaotic me wishes they would kill Gmail. The next handful of cool things would surface from the ashes and I could finally cut ties with big G.

I'm finishing up moving all my accounts to Proton. I don't trust them at all anymore. Late stage capitalism at its finest.

Wait didn't someone on Lemmy just make the fake Google shutting down Gmail image? Did it spread that far or was there already illiterate idiots already thinking that it was on the way out?

The only reason I'm locked into Google is Gmail. If that goes away, I'll purge everything Google from my life in a heartbeat.

They need it for AI training I guess

For now.

Sometimes those rumors are spread by the OG to test the waters....

Not a problem. I use my Domain so can easily move elsewhere. And I have a backup of all my mail in my email client.

It would be impossible without a replacement because we use gmail extensively internally

Yeah, I don't believe you though

I'd like them to scrap it actually. So much bullshit you have to do setting up an email server so that GMail would accept your, you know, mail. And there's little demand for alternative services cause everybody has MS and Google mail address (or a dozen).

Spam is a bad thing, yes, spammers have to be fought. But again, I personally would prefer only obviously invalid letters (with spoofed From etc) to be discarded this way. There are local spam filters after all for many local clients, which is how you are supposed to use email.

I have a few internal sources that say that gmail will be sunset slowly because Google finds it needs space for AI work.