We love Google. Well, mostly. I bet you and I like our email more than Google — especially when it's mission-critical. And we'd probably be less fond of Gmail when it messes it up. I thought I would compile a list of what's wrong with Gmail lately — along with links to the evidence. You may want to bear this in mind before you switch to Gmail:
Note: This is way off-topic, but this these issues have affected me personally — I thought everyone should know. Maybe "Gmail paper" is a good idea, after all?
1. Gmail goes down
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/001110.html
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/012896.html
http://digg.com/software/Gmail_Down_12
1a. Gmail goes down … again
http://seoblackhat.com/2007/01/08/still-no-gmail-2/
2. Gmail deletes your email
http://www.seoegghead.com/blog/seo/gmail-lost-7-days-of-my-email-p175.html
"I logged in to Gmail earlier this past December 2006 only to find that my localization setting was set to Chinese. It took me about 5 minutes to figure out how to get it back to English, mostly because I don't read Chinese! I assumed it was just a fluke. Maybe my cat walked on the keyboard? My password wasn't particularly strong, but based on what happened, I doubt it has to do with that. The data is just plain missing. But then I noticed something else, Gmail appears to have eaten 7 days of my email!"
3. Gmail deletes or disables your account entirely
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/013175.html
http://drumsnwhistles.com/2006/09/14/gmail-woes-again/
http://gigaom.com/2006/12/28/mom-google-ate-my-gmail/
(this has happened to me, twice — personally)
Google statement via GigaOM:
"Regretfully, a small number of our users, around 60, lost some or all of their email received prior to December 18th. Once we found out about this issue, we worked day and night to confirm that only a few accounts were affected and to do whatever we could to restore as much of the users accounts as we could. We've also reached out to the people who were affected to apologize and to work with them to restore the email from any personal backup they might have. We know how important Gmail is to our users, we use it ourselves for our corporate email. We have extensive safeguards in place to protect email stored with Gmail and we are confident that this is a small and isolated incident." (http://gigaom.com/2006/12/28/mom-google-ate-my-gmail/)
4. Gmail makes you look unprofessional
http://seoblackhat.com/2007/01/03/help-me-gmail/
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/012775.html
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/013175.html
"My account was disabled - a very important account which was receiving the responses to my dissertation online survey. It took 13 days and 8 e-mails from me to get it back. The incident nearly ruined my dissertation." (http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/013175.html#comment-308399)
5. Gmail does other mindless stuff
http://seoblackhat.com/2007/03/28/dear-gmail/
http://contentious.com/archives/2006/10/05/help-request-my-gmail-may-have-been-hacked
"When I make a rule to tag incoming mail, please do not send it to the spam folder. I wouldn't set up rules to tag something if I wanted it to go to the spam folder. This wouldn't be a problem if your system learned from my behavior (like marking 100+ messages not spam), but it doesn't.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Your loyal Gmail user,
QuadsZilla" (http://seoblackhat.com/2007/03/28/dear-gmail/)
Now, I know, Gmail is free, right? Well — not really. It's ad-supported. Gmail isn't free. And Google markets the same product as a hosted service to corporations. I expect more from you, Google. Even Hotmail has been more reliable for me. Rely on Gmail at your own risk. It may very well cause you grief in the future.
… and, of course, when you email them about your problems, they send you a form letter about how to choose secure passwords. At least when your ISP's email server goes on the fritz, you have someone to talk to.
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Sure there are occasional problems with Gmail but on balance it remains my email app of choice. I use it for both my personal email and my own domain's email (via the hosted service) and the worst problem I ever suffer is being logged out of the 'talk' feature from time to time. In terms of usability, spam filtering, integration with other Google apps and much more, I really can't see a better solution. Added to that, relying on an ISP's mail service ties you to that ISP… freeing yourself from an ISP based email address allows you to shop around more for a better ISP.
I was referring to hosting with an ISP instead of Gmail (for a domain, not @isp.com). I would be very hesitant to use Gmail for corporate, mission-critical applications based on my experience (and others'). I noticed (anecdotally) that many SEOs have early accounts (we were "hooked up," so to speak). I can't prove it, but I suspect the people worst-hit may be the early-adopters. I didn't make it up. Gmail has eaten my email, locked me out for hours, etc. Consider yourself lucky. I'm not the only one.
Of course, I realize this post is just Diggbait, but still … In my experience, since the early 1990s, these kinds of things happen with any e-mail provider. Google is a high profile target for critcism; most ISP's e-mail problems don't reach the headlines. One alternative is to set up your own domain. This is not foolproof either. I've had addresses administered by ISPs using my own domain, but if something happens to the ISP, your e-mail goes with it, and it takes a few days to move it elsewhere. And if you've made certain alterations in your whois data, the move is frozen for 45 days at most registrars. Running your own server means you have to be a sendmail expert. Consider that there are only 17 sendmail experts in the world, that's not a good solutiton either. I'm now using my ISP's domain for some e-mail, my own domain on my own server (administering with webmin and crossing my fingers) for other e-mail, and Gmail (several accounts), for good measure.
I use gmail for everything and I do hate it but i like it better than yahoo or any other email out there so I use it. Until someone comes up with Gbettermail then I will switch..haha
These 5 points are true. However, I think Gmail is growing more and more and I don't think Google wants to have one big such as "email suppression"… I hope. I notice that I don't use Gmail (I have no problem with Yahoo… Why would I change ?
Don't forget to add to your list that Google actually reads your emails. Not personally, but emails are scanned to help rank blogs in the google blogs search engine. If you mention a blog or website, google knows. Scares me, personally.
Joshua is right - Google uses email content as a factor in its ranking algorithm for regular SERPs. Heard this from a Google engineer himself (I even made him repeat it because I thought I had misunderstood). He wasn't amused when I suggested that massive email spam was now going to be part of my SEO repertoire. With Gmail, Analytics, Sitemaps, search history all tied up into a single account, the amount of data GOOG has on us is quite astounding. And the backlash seems to be minimal. I'm amazed at what they've managed to get away with.
I am pretty much a Google bot if it is a Google based service I want to explore it to its deepest letter of code. There are many Features that I do not find to be the best solution to email storage and archives, however I find that I prefer to use this email service in combination with Thunderbird to provide the exact thing I look in an email service. Easy web navigation when I am free surfing in some internet cafe off in a distant land, and the ability to download all the messages apply my filters and re-sync my Thunderbird when I get home. Let us not forget without gmail we all would have the 20 meg email storage space at yahbull or hootmail. You remember the day when gmail said 2 gig of free space. This is why you came. Simply put Google sets the pace for online search and small business services.
Hi, Yes, Gmail has its problems, so as every webmail, isp email, and desktop client. Yes, Google does keep important and a lot of information from everyone WHO USES THEIR SERVICES… if you don't want to leave that info there, you don't use their services… I know you're saying people shouldn't use Gmail based on personal experiences… well, if you consider Gmail users and the people that had those problems… I don't think it's that relevant… Many people just seem to be jealous about what Google acomplished… I use Gmail and personally I think it's worth. I'm an early adopter and never had any trouble with missing emails or long-time outages… I think you should consider giving a better justification for people to stop using Gmail than just "it happened to me and a lot of people I know"… Be Free to use what you want! Anyway, peace!
Yeah I really like Gmail, and it has features that others don't provide that I pretty much couldn't live without any more. I've had it since way back when you had to *buy* an invite from eBay or beg someone that had it, and I've never ever had a problem with it. Not once. There were a couple of times it was down for a short period of time for me, but what mail client doesn't have that problem occasionally?
Very useful information. Thanks for this. You got a great blog .I will be interested in more similar topics.I'm very interested in CMS and all its related subjects. Cê Inove Já! » Blog Archive » Gmail, ser ou não ser?[...] i9-adores de plantão, Algumas noticias sobre o GMAIL tem me assustado ultimamente. Especialmente porque elas não são tão boas assim. Nunca tive nenhum problema com o meu GMAIL, no entanto tem pessoas que estão enfrentando alguns probleminhas. Achei um post no meio do emaralhado de feeds que traz como tema principal "5 motivos para não usar o GMAIL". [...]
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