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Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

2) Why in the world would Gmail get shut down? The veins of treasure to be mined from within the user's emails are vast and endless. It is quite simply a mother lode. The only bigger source within their direct control is the search input screen.

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> The veins of treasure to be mined from within the user's emails are vast and endless.

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en-GB

> We will not scan or read your Gmail messages to show you ads.

the veins dried up back in 2017.

only if you believe them.. I dont.

> only if you believe them.. I dont.

And I don’t believe that PHP is the best ;-)

It will not go down, but you can get locked out by AI policies. This is likely.

Why do you say this is likely?

It may be unlikely if google already mined all information from you.

This explains it, better than I would in an Off hand comment: https://www.devever.net/~hl/logindenial

Your link describes how security lockouts are probabilistic, yes, but it doesn't get into what the probability is. The article we are commenting on does try to get there, by looking at how often ending what scenarios HN users report getting locked out.

Your link is also talking about the no 2FA case, while the article is recommending 2FA with (multiple!) hardware security tokens.

possible and probably are not even close.

I think they are talking about some change to workspace effectively breaking the service for them. This has some precedent (with the old “dasher” personal accounts having growing pains for some people migrating IIRC) but also seems like a very low risk.

What are the "dasher personal accounts"? I haven't heard of that before and search results seem to think I'm asking about DoorDash.

That was the internal name for personal paid gmail - I honestly cannot remember the nondescript word combination they called it publicly, but it was rolled into Gsuite which is now google workspace and google decided they wanted to focus on business users instead.

I think this is a relevant article: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/01/google-relents-legac...

Anyways, basically agree that gmail isn’t going anywhere, just a gmail-related story of people depending on a new flavor of gmail/ google identity that was being migrated messily.

GAFYD (Google Apps For Your Domain)

I used this for 10 years or so before realising they'd moved the backends as they were planning the workspace thing and they were separate - you couldn't share between the two, loads of features missing etc .

Typical Google - all the ideas, no execution.

OP specifically mentioned Google Workspace for individuals - that's what I used to use so I can use my own domain and so "own" my email address. There's a good chance that gets shutdown. Google Workspace for large orgs or Gmail does not have the same risk.

Having read some 'digital archeology' where people gather data off old MainFrames and Minis, that at some point someone could just buy all of @NetZero.com, netscape.net or ZipLip's email servers and opening up all of the stored email for a fee ($99 per email address). How much would you pay to read your former business partner, ex-girlfriend/boyfriend, or that person you crushed on email?

I agree, but I do worry about it being ruined some other way - forcing me to use Chrome, censoring emails, bundling it with a paid service, ad-blocker-blocker, something else...

This is more the truth of it. It isn't some quantifiable probability that a big-tech service night disappear. It's that they're such clumsy lumbering beasts, and so insensitive to humanity they will steamroller over your rights and needs like crushing an ant. You mean nothing to them. And in turn their pledges and promises mean nothing. A cow is a dangerous animal not because it has claws and teeth, but because it's big, fearful and a basically a bit dumb.

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