Yahoo delivers profound haymaker to Gmail and Microsoft
Yahoo announced today that they will be removing all size limits to email storage on free Yahoo email accounts. The service will begin rolling out unlimited storage in May. Yahoo is also debating a lift on storage limits for Fliker.com photo sharing accounts.
Yahoo hopes that lifting the storage limits will lead lock customers in for good.
Even if Google does match the offer, the real loser in this battle is Microsoft and Windows. If you can access your email, calendar, documents, and photos from any computer anywhere no matter what operating system you are using, Microsoft will have a difficult time finding a market for future versions of Windows.
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gmail and big brother
Gmail is Google's new online mail program. It differs from your normal email programs in that Google keeps your emails forever, even if you delete them. It also stores replies to gmail users, even if those people replying do not themselves use gmail. This is all in Google's privacy statement.
In recent news, the feds have subpoened all the browsing histories of certain popular web-search companies. This will certainly happen to gmail in the future.
If you use gmail, you might as well post all your emails in the public square, because they are no longer private, and they are no longer "yours" to control.
I will never use gmail, nor will I correspond with those who do use it.
More on gmail
You just made sarcastic remarks about my gmail comment on air. Unfortunately you are wrong. You claim that you can delete gmails. You need to read the gmail privacy statement. They stay on the active server for up to 60 days, and on the backup server indefinitely, even if the user deletes it.
Did the federal government subpoena browser histories or not? As you know, they did. Any prudent company has a file clearance policy to limit the material available during lawsuit or other discovery procedures, and individuals should do the same. The gmail policy of indefinite storage of your emails prevents thorough file clearance.
With "normal" email, when you delete them, they are gone. I called Yahoo and Earthlink (the two that I use) and explicitly verified this.
In any case, I did not appreciate your sarcasm when I was trying to help people see a significant difference between gmail and previous email services.
Conspiracy theorists
Adam and I talk constantly about privacy or lack there of on the Internet. We (Adam, pipe in if I misrepresent your feelings on the subject) believe that if you don't have anything to hide, then on the OFF chance that your emails (even the deleted ones) get subpoenaed, there shouldn't be anything to worry about.
Google is a data collector, and from the beginning they expressed their desire to collect data...even emails in order to try and develop better and better advertising algorithms for their business.
We do jest at many of the conspiracy theories, partially because we know that many of them are bunk, but maybe we don't want to know the real story. Sometimes ignorance is bliss...and I am very ignorant (on purpose) about many topics. We are glad that you are out there visiting the site and listening, but please don't take our views personally.
Google as Data Collector
You cater to less-expert computer users. I suspect that MOST of your listeners do not understand the implications of Google's "data collecton."
Gmail is a discontinuity in email privacy. Prior to gmail, if you deleted an email, even with online email services, it was GONE. Gmail is the first email provider to indefinitely store all emails passing through their server, whether or not the users have deleted them.
You said: "We ... believe that if you don't have anything to hide, then on the OFF chance that your emails (even the deleted ones) get subpoenaed, there shouldn't be anything to worry about."
You are indeed blissful. It is outside your expertise, but I suggest you pay a bit more attention to how email evidence is used in court cases, as well as some recent notable cases of prosecutorial abuse. And the issue goes well beyond prosecutions.
I'm surprised you are so cavalier about your clients' privacy.
"Haymaker" objection displays agenda attitude
As anyone should know, a "haymaker" is a knockout punch, in other words a punch aimed at the chin of a boxing opponent which has so much force behind it that, if it lands, the opponent will be knocked unconscious. The word "haymaker" has been around forever, and has nothing whatsoever to do with "lingo," "geekspeak" or computers. Anyone who doesn't already know that might want to research the word up before publicizing his ignorance.
From a logical point of view, there was nothing wrong with Adam's use of the word, which leaves us with unspoken agenda, or attitude.
Some people just have an ignorance-based emotional aversion to controversy or "making waves" of any kind. Reality, however, is not always compatible to those "touchy feely" feelings.
Simple fact is, there is nothing whatsoever wrong with people resenting a company trying to maximize its profits at their inconvenience. Microsoft has, in the past, had products that were worth me spending my hard-earned (and scarce) money on. I was never able to afford Apple, even though it has arguably always been better. And I lacked the expertise in geek to be comfortable with Unix. Therefore, Microsoft has always been my choice of last resort. And, as economists like Walter Williams would no doubt point out, earlier versions of Windows were worth the reasonable price I paid for them, or I would not have bought them.
HOWEVER, I don't like new versions of softwares which try to coercively control my computer by removing all earlier versions and trying to intrusively make sure everything in my computer is registered before it will operate. Socialists and control freaks might like that kind of thing, but I sure don't. Newbies, especially, have every right not to like that kind of crap.
Back when I was a kid, my money-challenged computer friends and I would sometimes share the price of a software by each buying a different one and then sharing the ones we bought with two or three of our friends who had bought different ones. It's how we learned. We viewed it like "test driving" an automobile. If we didn't like a software, we wouldn't buy one for ourselves, and if we found a software that was highly useful to us, we would buy one for ourselves. As I said, that is how we could afford to learn. It was the honor system, and all the newbies I knew at that time were honorable. Every piece of software in my computer was, and is, legitimately purchased.
Having said that, I (and any other computer user/newbie) have an absolute 1st Amendment right to resent vendors who carelessly look past incompatibility issues and try to eliminate the honor system and try to coercively try to intrude into, and control, our private computers by their manipulation of software merely to maximize their own profits. We have an absolute right to serve OUR best interests and try to find cheaper solutions to our computer problems. A computer is not just part of some giant Orwellian (as in 1984) system owned and controlled by a bunch of billionaire control freaks who are worshipped by a bunch of mindless acolytes. It is a privately-owned tool, not unlike a lawnmower.
The free market is a two-way street. So I stand against ignorant "goody-two-shoes" who think "haymaker" is geekspeak or lingo.
As for "Gmail," if the protester had bothered to do a Google search, s/he would have found:
"A Google approach to email.
Gmail is an experiment in a new kind of webmail, built on the idea that you should never have to delete mail and you should always be able to find the message you want. The key features are:
Search, don't sort.
Use Google search to find the exact message you want, no matter when it was sent or received.
Don't throw anything away.
Over 2834.364838 megabytes (and counting) of free storage so you'll never need to delete another message.
Keep it all in context.
Each message is grouped with all its replies and displayed as a conversation.
No pop-up ads. No untargeted banners.
You see only relevant text ads and links to related web pages of interest."
Nobody likes a whiner. Get a life, and try to make your posts constructive. Adam is one of the good guys.
Huh?
What is HAYMAKER?
What is GMAIL?
Why talk in lingo?
Yahoo email
Time to buy Yahoo stock??
For me, Windows is just an operating system from which to launch software applications. Microsoft blew it with Vista, which has compatibility issues with a lot of software programs. What good is an operating system if you can't use your programs?
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