mixed feelings about gmail

I’ve rarely felt more ambivalent about any product than I do about gmail. Since a few days ago I’ve been forced to use it full-time, since a flaw with my mail program (which no one can figure out how to fix) repeatedly downloads “ghost” copies of already-downloaded mail, leading to a couple of outrageous internet bills for me in recent months.

On the one hand, Google is a privacy menace and a corporate behemoth quickly approaching monopoly status in areas that no one has any right to monopolize. (On privacy issues they may be just as bad as Facebook, though the Google owners are more mature people and so don’t blurt out insulting remarks about their customers the way those Facebook punks do.) I also don’t like the way the messages in the inbox are displayed, though perhaps there are better ways to customize it. And it’s undeniably creepy to read advertisements that are obviously based on the content of my personal messages.

On the other hand, I used to waste too much time sorting messages in my mail program; now I don’t have to bother. And the ads are actually helpful, just as Amazon’s personalized ads are. Often those ads have solved practical problems for me that I had just been wondering how to solve.

I hate Google chat, by the way, and have made myself permanently invisible. If you’re a correspondent of mine but never see me on gmail, don’t worry, it’s not just you— I’ve closed myself off chat for everyone. I find it just about the least enjoyable medium of communication there is: all the physical hassle of typing, with none of the direct togetherness of voice communication.