alt Hacker NewsI hate Google when they pull anti-consumer crap. I believe they're too big, too unaccountable, and something needs to be done about them. Their power rivals that of a country and that shouldn't be considered acceptable.
But man, I would hate to be the one dealing with Gmail. It's a nightmare for the reasons I listed above.
Someone can in fact hold both of those opinions.
I was also actively telling people to de-Google and go elsewhere for a mail service.
Does everything need to be black and white?
Gmail is a nightmare for everyone else to deal with. Gmail is anti-consumer crap, through and through. A big part of why everyone uses Gmail is because using Gmail is the way you get your e-mails delivered to people who use Gmail. Google arbitrarily blocks e-mails from people using other domains, so together with Microsoft they've created a monopoly on e-mail that forces people into using big tech e-mail domains if they don't want their e-mails to get eaten. And the reason they do this is even more anti-consumer -- because they are farming a massive trove of data from your e-mails.
It's bizarre how you make up a sob story about how Gmail is just so hard for Google to deal with. They aren't maintaining it for charity. I'm sure, if I had no ethics, I could manage the burden of dealing with a software system that harvests the data of >1 billion people as part of my corporation's business plan that nets hundreds of billions of dollars a year. The reasons you listed for why it would suck to be Google -- it's "free" for users, expensive for Google, and oh god, you have to hold on to the data... are not reasons at all, because Google profits from it and Google wants the data. The data is the point. You belabour how Google has the burden of controlling a huge chunk of the internet's infrastructure, as if gaining control of a huge chunk of the internet's infrastructure is not literally their anti-consumer goal.