It's basically impossible to not use gmail. Even if you don't have a gmail account or address yourself, the person you're emailing probably has it, so your messages gets sent to a gmail server and gets scanned by them. What I want to know is whether Google uses the contents to profile YOU.

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wahern 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

GMail has a 25-30% share of the client market.

Is it impractical to never send a message through Google? Probably, depending on the circles you communicate in. But that's not the same thing as saying it's impractical to avoid Google for most of your messages, and certainly not the same as saying you can't avoid GMail for anything.

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warkdarrior 2 hours ago | parent [-]

My main email is not GMail, but I forward it to a GMail account to get free spam filtering, free backup, and free search. I encourage everyone to do the same.

	▲	wafflemaker an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		You don't get spam if you use aliases everywhere. The few that actually get spam can be turned off. Like I recently had to turn off alias for made4men.no. srsly, signing me up for spam and not removing me from the spam list even after i unsubscribed. You can tell it's a swedish shop that just happens to own a Norwegian domain. I actually had to do the opposite. I have a filter that catches all messages marked as spam and unmarks them as spam. VERY rarely there's a spam message caught in there. Much more often sth super important that just would have landed in spam if not for my genius spam filter.
	▲	adiM 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		How does that help in preventing Google from profiling you?
	▲	frizlab 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That’s, to put it plainly, dumb.

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msm_ 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If everyone reads "it's impossible to avoid gmail, just use gmail", then yeah, gmail prevails.

But it's plain false. YOU can decide against using gmail. I don't use gmail. I sometimes talk with people who use gmail, but more often than not, I don't. Stop being fatalistic.

	▲	markburns 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I think they are being more factual than fatalistic. You just differ by definition of “use Gmail”. They are saying you are using Gmail when you communicate with someone on Gmail.