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Comment by rexreed | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if I'm the only person that feels anxious that Gmail + Google Calendar + Chrome + Google Drive + Google Search + Google Docs + Android Phone + Google Maps + Google Voice + ... gives one company an astoundingly deep and unfettered view of exactly everything you are doing, who you are talking to, and even what you are thinking (to the extent it is reflected in those activities) at every waking moment of your life. Rational nervousness?

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Maybe, but so far Google has behaved much better that any other company would have in their exact position. Give Apple and Microsoft the same market dominance in online ads and search, and I think we would be a lot worse. Those 2 are behaving pretty badly even when they have much smaller market share.

While some of those things don't have alternatives, some certainly have. You just need to use them.

> Gmail + Google Calendar + Chrome + Google Drive + Google Search + Google Docs + Android Phone + Google Maps + ...

What about: Gmail + Google Calendar + Firefox + Dropbox/Wuala + DuckDuckGo + Live Docs + Android Phone + Nokia Maps + ...

Of course, you could go Google free if you want, I just pointed the alternative that doesn't regress in usability and convenience from what you currently use.

I actually still POP my mail (if you can believe it), so I haven't yet adopted Gmail, but I feel the lure. If I want to share my archives across any of my machines, I have to constantly sync them, and I don't really have remote access to my mail, unless I leave it on the server for X days, and then I don't benefit from deep search. But I do get access to my mail and archives going back to 1998 while I'm offline, and that's definitely a plus.

I've been looking for a good, self-hosted version of Gmail that can replace my POP for a while, but the main reason why the lure of Google is so strong is convenience. And cost. And to some extent, reliability. Living a Google-free life is definitely doable but it can come at a cost (time, expense, convenience, functionality, reliability). That's the main tradeoff.

If you use IMAP then you have access to all your mail from anywhere, using a standard protocol.

GMail supports IMAP, but then so do many other mail servers.

(You can also use a web front end like RoundCube, if you want to.)

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