For more then seven years now I have been using email hosted through one of my domain names, if not several. I made the move for several reasons, one of which was when I started photography on a more serious level; having a Hotmail account didn’t seem so professional. I enjoyed a spam free life for several years as a result and have loved the ability to use Outlook and custom scripts.
About two years ago is when the spam started to get really out of hand for me, today I receive upwards of 1500 messages daily and my web hosts says they are doing everything they can. While I doubt they are really doing everything, I’ve had the need to be more mobile with my email. Dealing with that much spam through a web based interface sucks, so I got a Gmail invite shortly after it was announced. Back then, one could actually sell invites to Gmail, strange, I know.
In any event, I mostly wanted it so I could get the email address of my choice and not stick a bunch of numbers or underscores or dumb stuff under it. For more then a year, it sat idle; I had no use for it. I dealt with the spam, tried to run custom scripts, and just got overwhelmed. After not checking my email for about 4 months I logged in to see close to 70,000 emails download from my server. That’s it, I was done, and it was my breaking point.
During this time I also needed a way to get a hold of people outside of social networking sites and text messages, in addition to paying bills online and getting a few email newsletters I truly enjoy. This is where Gmail came to save the day.
While I tend not to jump on the bandwagon when new products and services come out, this is one I should have jumped on earlier. I love the ability to be back to a web based email, checking at work, forwarding to phone, etc. I could run it through Thunderbird, my favorite mail application now, however I don’t. In a previous article, I’ve mentioned my love for a Firefox add-on that allows me to upload files to my Gmail account, comes in very handy as a personal server.
My concern now is that Gmail is still beta. Google has a long running habit of keeping products in beta forever. Blogger took several years before it was a final release and Google very rarely dumps products that have passed alpha and made it to beta, but they could.
Millions of us are now addicted to Gmail, what if it ups and closes tomorrow? What if it goes to a fee based service? I wouldn’t pay for it, I already pay for my own domains and web hosting, but I like Gmail, so maybe I would. Not having control over the final outcome makes me a bit weary.