I see no upsides to a Google/Microsoft duopoly in email. Except for those already-far-too-powerful corporations.

EDIT: "I see no upsides to X" means "X is NOT good". (Responses suggest that this was not clear.)

leonidasrup 16 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This very much depends you been U.S. citizen or not been U.S. citizen.

"PRISM is a code name for a program under which the United States National Security Agency (NSA) collects internet communications from various U.S. internet companies. The program is also known by the SIGAD US-984XN. PRISM collects stored internet communications based on demands made to internet companies such as Google and Apple under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to turn over any data that match court-approved search terms."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_program

"Section 702 permits the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence to jointly authorize targeting of non-US persons reasonably believed to be located outside the United States.

By targeting, it is meant that US persons or persons located in the United States may not be the intended targets of the collection. The targeting must have as its object the acquisition of foreign intelligence information, as this is defined by FISA."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FISA_Amendments_Act_of_2008

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avian 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How times change.

I remember when Gmail came around and everyone was more than happy to hand off their email to Google. No spam and ability to send and receive huge (for the time) attachments I think were the main things people wanted.

Not sure if that was before or after everyone was happy to hand off their web browser to Google.

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inigyou 17 hours ago | parent [-]

The alternatives to Gmail, at the time, were either Hotmail, or email provided by your ISP who charged money for additional email accounts. Those were the options.

	▲	palata 16 hours ago \| parent [-]
		And Google, at the time, was cool.

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herrherrmann 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You like using Google and Microsoft products as an end user (even ignoring all the ethical issues with these companies)? That seems surprising to me. I find their products so horrible compared to e.g. Fastmail.

	▲	bell-cot 15 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> You like using ... ? NO, and I avoid both of 'em as much as I can. (Note clarifying edit to my initial comment above.)

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thelastgallon 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

We have to figure out a way to get out of FB social, iOS/Android phone, Google/Microsoft email, AWS/GOOG/MSFT cloud oligopolies. There is no competition and there will be massive rentier capitalism extraction from all these players for the rest of civilization.

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mrngld 16 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There's competition, but no one is interested.

TBH, I blame IT leadership. The easy choice is Google or Microsoft. "No one ever got fired for buying IBM" is now "No one ever got fired for subbing to Office." Someone needs to bite the bullet and stitch together an alternative array of services. They've cultivated their own monoculture by hitting the easy-button and forking over for Office365, etc.

Which if we're being honest, Microsoft and Google products are rarely best-in-class at any one thing that they do. Teams, SharePoint, Google Docs, someone somewhere is doing those things much better. Those competitors just don't necessarily have a whole ecosystem that makes it a big Easy Button for corporate IT to smash. And they sometimes charge as much by themselves as Office365 costs in whole. But I know one problem my own employers IT team struggles with a bit is putting out the constant fire of different teams deciding the Microsoft tool we pay for sucks and going rogue and trying to subscribe to something else. Dropbox was a big one, but Teams and Planner alternatives come up a lot too.

Not pretending to have all the answers but it doesn't seem to be a completely intractable problem.

	▲	remote3body 16 hours ago \| parent [-]
		[flagged]

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inigyou 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It starts by just avoiding them as much as possible. E.g. self-host email. If you encounter a system that refuses to receive your email, I give you permission to use your old Gmail account with that system, while using your self hosted account for everything you can.

If your email is Google or Microsoft, there are other people with self-hosted email who feel pressured to use their Google or Microsoft accounts to send email to you.