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.

All it takes is one MBA with little foresight in the wrong position - the Gmail team is all expense (server hosting, labor), and no revenue; that's the "Ads" and "Drive/One/Business" teams.
- The MBA. The only graduate degree you can get by attending class 3 days a month.
  How some of these MBA programs can be considered a “masters” degree is an insult to people who actually had to spend years on 40-70hour a week graduate programs.
- Remember. There is no such thing as free. They’re data mining the hell out of your email. You can rest assured that gmail is a revenue generator. Just in ways you don’t see.
You are awfully confident about a company that kills things like a Russian dictator. I think what perhaps you mean is there's no way they'd kill it now. If they wanted to push users to some different type of platform they would certainly entertain the idea.
Howeeeeverrrr...
Google has been looking for the thing to kill email for a looooooooong time though.

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.

Also the shitstorm it would cause, when you can't access an account that you used Gmail to sign up.
- Maybe it would finally force the surprising number of websites out there that don't allow for email changes to change their policies. I recently switched every account I could to a personal domain and I couldn't believe how many just don't allow for it.
- I'm glad I got my own website years ago....it's literally just a function email server for me...no bullshit spam and I can have separate emails for stuff that I don't need to monitor.
- OIDC is the future of this, logins tied to an account rather than a service.

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

Ugh, I've gotta switch from Gmail, any good email recommendations?
- Proton mail is the peak email service money can buy (it's also avilable for free but i suggest paying)
- Fastmail is fantastic.
- It feels like everyone hates Apple, but their hide my email service is bundled into their family plan, and it’s real nice just being able to give every site an email address you can then just delete if they spam you.
  No one knows who I really am, and I’m good with that.
  I guess my recommendation is to find a service that lets you make throwaway emails.
  And I think Proton does that. Mozilla has a service for that, but their new CEO has thrown some question marks into that mix. There are definitely others.
- disroot
I dunno Google has a cancelation tick so like i wouldn't be that surprised
- I would imagine Gmail is the primary reason people create an account with Google.
- No way will they cancel gmail. Google is using Gmail to train Gemini and power their Ad business. It might be a free email service in terms of not having a monetary cost, but you are paying for it with your data.

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

They make too much money from data harvesting to scrap Gmail, though.
Stadia was destined to fail though. I still remember the key note in which it was introduced. The CEO started with the lines "I don't play many games, but ... ".
The fact that the question is significant enough to deserve an answer means somebody somewhere got wind of something real.
It probably doesn't mean a full cancellation of gmail but I wouldn't be surprised to hear they're trying something like Wave again.
- Here's a wild idea - you can read the article and discover that the whole thing was a hoax.

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

They have enough to train an AI version of you and already predict your actions. Tracking real you is just boring now.
- For the time being the compute required to simulate me is more expensive than tracking the real me.

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.

I agree, but just a counterpoint...
Back in the day, after Hotmail and Yahoo! email but before Gmail, people started becoming really skeptical of emails from @xyz.net and started treating anything that didn't come from a major email provider as "spam."
I've kept my old gmail accounts around for "spam" and "work" respectively because despite people (finally) waking up to the privacy issues of Gmail, I cannot trust that emails with a @protonmail.com address won't be viewed skeptically by people recieving the email. Especially in regards to jobs. Unless you're in Cybersecurity and taking privacy seriously is your professional obligation, you're not going to run into tons of people who view ProtonMail very favorably.
De-googling is good, but don't leave yourself stranded and ignored by people because you had the audacity to use a different fucking service.
- I'd wager most people who don't think about cyber security even look at the sender email address these days.
- I don’t think that’s really much of a concern. I can’t imagine any world where a proton.me email will cause you any issues. I’ve had mine for years now, in fact on my resume and job applications I used my own domain’s email addresses and I’ve never experienced a problem. What you’re saying isn’t entirely impossible but it’s definitely not a problem you’re very likely to run into. You’re not likely to run into a single person that cares about your proton email much less one that views it disfavorably.
- Good counterpoint, and to add, Gmail itself is more than happy to throw any email into spam if it isn't from a major provider. I had this happen with my own domain email, and even after telling Gmail the email is legit, it still spam filters it.
  Plus, guess what email provider HR often uses but shouldn't... That domain isn't Gmail but you better believe their boss paid the 6 dollars a head to get them a gsuite portal with Gmail Spam filters.
- Use a custom domain to hide which email provider you use. Plus it let's you move to another provider without having to inform all your contacts of a new address.
- Does proton mail allow me to use custom domain names?
- I've never had a problem with that. My simplelogin aliases on the other hand, they're much more weird. But for email I share to people, it's a protonmail.com address. Even my parents use it, it's fine.
Good for you. I degoogled in 2019. It’s been fine.

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

Yeah, I'd drop Fi, Pixle, and use of Google in a second. Gmail is the backbone of everything Google is. Had it since day 1 and will have it until it disappears, and then I will disappear into the woods forever.
- I don't know if it's still there but a couple years ago poking around in gmail settings I was able to find that there was still a section for inviting new users to the gmail beta. I had 97/100 invites remaining. Been like that for almost 20 years now which is crazy.
Oh well, it doesn't feel like Google Search is going that well. Searching on Google now feels like shit.
Ain't nobody killing off the golden goose!

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.

Doesn't matter. It's in the aether now that "Google promised Gmail won't go anywhere," so it will definitely be eliminated. People believing a Google product won't be discontinued is the Google product kiss of death.
- Fully agree. I find it surprising that Google’s public image deteriorated to a point where just mentioning rumors of them shutting down a service gets people upset with them.

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

Especially Google who is famous for randomly getting bored of developing and then suddenly cancelling services
I mean this would be insane. Gmail is probably the most used email service in the world, and even though I'm not a Google fanboy, it's also probably the best.
What are people gonna use? Outlook? Fuck that. I only use that piece of trash because of my job.
- Yeah a random website on a DDG search (ironically) that I just did said that Gmail has 30% of the email marketshare, which I'd definitely believe. It would be a HUGE shakeup and very disruptive if they were to stop it.
- gmail has a fine website but email is a commodity service, hundreds of replacements exist and could be used.
- Same but with education. Fuck the dept. Ed. Qld
Exactly, it's like if a company said "We're not going to launch a bomb, trust us"... It would totally mean that they're considering launching a bomb
- I mean, unless there was a hoax that led to widespread belief that they were gonna launch a bomb
  Its suspicious if its out of nowhere, but less so if its in response to an existing rumour
This is in direct response to a misleading viral social media post that claims that Gmail is going to be discontinued, which selectively quotes from a real announcement that Gmail is discontinuing the "basic HTML" browser interface for the service, now that pretty much every device has good performance on the regular browser interface.

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.

I already moved over to Proton in anticipation of Google charging for Gmail. It's untouchable as far as longevity, but it's going to be majorly enshittifiedto the point that leaving it will be more desirable than staying.
- I am in the process of moving to Proton now. It's way easier than I though it was going to be!

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

I bought a domain and started using it for all my email last year. It’s the best and I suggest it to everyone.
The combination of your own domain, Fastmail, and Bitwarden is powerful.
You can move email services by changing a few DNS records and Fastmail has an API that Bitwarden hits to create new masked email addresses using your domain so every site gets a different email address. Start getting spam? You know exactly who leaked/sold your info and you can now send that address right to the trash.
Is google photos free?
- It's free if you stay within the data limit. For anyone interested in self-hosting, immich is getting pretty mature these days.
  https://immich.app/
- Some services only accept whitelisted domains for accounts sadly.
You don't need a Google account to use Android.

Next week: "Google scrapping gmail."

I doubt it. It's free data, they ain't getting rid of that.
exactly my thought.
"They are saying its here to stay, which means people should get their data off it asap"
100%

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.

Google does have a reputation for unnecessary and/or prematurely killing everything it makes so I wouldn't blame people for believing an email that looked like it was from Google saying that Gmail is shutting down in August
- They shut down services that aren’t profitable. Gmail is highly profitable as it’s an important lever to identify people’s interests, which they use to sell ads at a higher price. They’d have to be stupid to shut it down.
- Google shuts down projects so regularly that I just wouldn't adopt anything new they make because it's not going to be around in 5 years. The core products: search, email, youtube, chrome, android, are decades old now and I wonder if the company can survive shutting down any of them.
Because there's a viral post going around that they are. They're just squashing this dumb rumor, because despite how dumb it is, it did get some traction.

Next week: Fires 60% of the gmail staff

The week after: Google introduces AI Mail that will receive and automatically respond to all mail. This will happen without the users' consent or knowledge. In fact, users won't be able to access their mail anymore at all "for security reasons".
- Charge you 1/10th of a cent for each automatically generated email

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

They are not going to stop their spying. The email ain't going no where. Suckers.
- Exactly what a plant for a company about to shut down their email product would say.

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.

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

You pop3 your mails or keep a local copy of you imap them. That'll make sure you don't lose any historical communication.
As soon as you start doubting if the service with persist, start switching services over to a new address, logins first.
- You pop3 your mails or keep a local copy of you imap them. That’ll make sure you don’t lose any historical communication.
  *checks email inbox historical folders: oldest entry 1997-05-07. :)
  I messed up my data partition ONCE on a windows upgrade with the most recent backup being over a year old, and I still beat myself up over it.... The only time I actually ever paid a professional data recovery service for private purposes.
Nothing you can do. This is the implicit (and sometimes explicit) contract we have with cloud services, that they'll keep our data safe and keep the lights on forever. If you think about it, though, unless you're paying for it this is untenable. A single user, when paying with their attention, will only ever generate a fairly fixed amount monthly. And yet the cost of keeping them on as a user grows steadily over time as more data is accumulated.
I would recommend getting a Google Takeout export every year or so. Even before it falls off a cliff it's a good idea to have your own backups. Accounts can get blocked, hacked, etc.
Restore it from the backup that you regularly make rather than relying on a free service to protect it for you for decades?

Too bad I'm degoogling as we speak.

Hey Liz Lemon do you kind if i degoogle myself in your office?

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.

/$

The amount of insight they get in their ~~advertising targets~~ customers through handling their email must be enormous

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"

Don’t give them ideas
I couldn't stand pop3 25 years ago, I can't believe it's still around

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

RIP Inbox.

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.

That would be insane if they actually scrapped it.

Not their first rodeo

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?

Nah, they want to keep the data pipe wide open. Everything that can get you to voluntarily put your data into their service they'll leave as free as air.
Plus, Gmail has the added bonus of being like a supermarket loyalty card: it gets their name into your browser toolbar and daily routine for bonus psychological impact.
I doubt they'll give any of that up for a paltry $3.99.

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

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

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

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.

If you buy a custom domain then you won't have to worry in the future, you will be able to switch mail provider without changing your email on any service you use
- That's a good point. I've considered it before, but always struggle with coming up with a domain name. Also, with respect to tracking a personal domain means that anyone can check the registrar information to find full name, address etc?

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.

ProtonMail has a family plan, and they promise to encrypt your emails.
PurelyMail is nice and super cheap, the only downside is that it's run by a single guy.
Zoho is like 10 dollars per year per user, even though it's geared towards companies and not families.
- Proton is way too overpriced for older accounts with a lot of stuff accumulated and encryption is a gimmick unless you're only communicating with other Proton users. All companies encrypt email at rest.
  I'm currently using and can definitely recommend purely mail. Obviously backup, but so far the service has been excellent. It's the only fairly priced service out there for personal hosting that supports custom domains.

Google ditching Gmail would be so many people ditching Google.

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

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.

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.

This is good advice for anyone considering to move out of Gmail.
Do not just move to another provider, use your own domain and you'll never have to worry about changing your email address everywhere
- I'm assuming just to host it and send through an SMTP provider? Even in the self hosting community whenever I see someone ask about running their own email server the answer is usually "don't". I think because dealing with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC isn't usually worth the effort.

Yeah, I don't believe you though

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

My uncle works at Google and he says they're bringing back Google+
- But with the 15kb limit and the pay as you go $5 for 5mph? Basically you pay more per second the fast you go.
- Oh yeah?
  Well my dad's uncle's niece's friend Trish says that Google Reader is coming back.
  But maybe don't listen to Trish: she has one tit bigger than the other.
That would be the dumbest decision ever. Email is a prime space to be revolutionized by AI.

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.