To be fair the 2003 version of Word didn't have all the Nanny State spyware-report-to-Microsoft stuff in it the current versions do.
"The fact that GW provides the requested features today is moot, because tomorrow those features could be removed or changed rendering your conclusion incorrect." Yes this is correct - we have an Expense Report spreadsheet at work that uses a complicated macro that someone in the IT department created so that users can just type in the source and destination city in their travel and have the mileage calculated. It uses a http call to Google to obtain the mileage. Well 8 months ago - Google made a change to the URL - a very slight one - whereupon the expense report spreadsheet broke, causing much hair-pulling and consternation. It took me around 6 hours to figure out what that change was and explain it to the IT department tech who wrote the macro so he could fix the sheet. Needless to say there was no documentation on the Google website explaining why they made the change, and even more annoying the "old style" URL still worked perfectly - when typed into a web browser - thus greatly complicating troubleshooting by misdirecting me down innumerable rabbit-holes. That sheet also breaks when the credit card number on file with Google declines - which happens every 6 months or so when the purchasing department changes the card due to someone having stolen the number and not telling us they changed it. Yet Google never charges the card because our usage of the API is below the minimum threshold. The whole system Google has setup for it's public APIs is completely ass-backwards. And they get away with it because for 90% of the lower volume customers that use it, the APIs are free. And you can bet Google tells their high-volume spammer..I mean users... that they are making changes before they do. But the rest of their "customers" are out with the garbage - they are mushrooms, kept in the dark and fed BS. Ted -----Original Message----- From: PLUG <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Ben Koenig Sent: Friday, August 9, 2024 9:17 AM To: Portland Linux/Unix Group <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PLUG] email hosting - who? Obligatory XKCD 743: https://xkcd.com/743 A lot of people use "privacy" as a shorthand way to reference the larger issue of trust when it comes to companies like Google. Yes, GW does provide a lot of features that may fall perfectly in line with what users want. But there is more to infrastructure than just "does it have feature X?" Google in general has shown that it is not reliable from an infrastructure standpoint. They have a tendency to kill projects, and those projects that are not killed will someday change and end users often have no say in the matter. The fact that GW provides the requested features today is moot, because tomorrow those features could be removed or changed rendering your conclusion incorrect. Rational people generally avoid Google because they trusted them in the past, got burned and learned from the experience. IIRC there was a discussion very similar to this on G+.... let me get you a link... ;) -Ben On Thursday, August 8th, 2024 at 8:49 AM, mo <[email protected]> wrote: > Not really. > > Privacy? Considering the insane amount everyone puts on social media, > what privacy is there? Plus anything other self hosted = someone has your > data. > > Market diversity? Idk what that one means precisely. > > GW not Gmail. So not free. > > 144% for 1000% more services than mere email host. > > So nope, don't understand even slightly why rational ppl would not > choose GW in this scenario. But I appreciate the effort regardless. > > On Thu, Aug 8, 2024, 07:29 Tomas Kuchta [email protected] > > wrote: > > > Privacy, market diversity, not having all eggs in one basket, gmail > > is free anyway, .... and 12*6=72 that happens to be 144% of 50 > > > > I hope that gives you some idea what others may or may not think > > about when chosing a service provider. > > > > Tomas > > > > On Wed, Aug 7, 2024, 11:36 mo [email protected] wrote: > > > > > If $50/yr, why not just use Google Workspace? $6/mo for all their > > > services. > > > I'm asking bc I want the cons of using GW. > > > > > > On Wed, Aug 7, 2024, 01:18 Tomas Kuchta > > > [email protected] > > > wrote: > > > > > > > ++ for fastmail email hosting. > > > > > > > > Works great with(out) own domain for $50 per year. > > > > > > > > The only feature I am missing - their calendar foes not export > > > > birthday calendar over IMAP. > > > > > > > > -T > > > > > > > > On Tue, Aug 6, 2024, 16:13 Courtney Rosenthal [email protected] > > > > wrote: > > > > > > > > > Yeah, been there, done that. > > > > > > > > > > When I quit email self-hosting I went to fastmail.com. It > > > > > works out to > > > > > $50 per mailbox per year. I have a bunch of domains there. I > > > > > setup aliases in those domains that forward into one of two > > > > > mailboxes. So it's costing me about $100/yr for that and I'm > > > > > super satisfied. > > > > > > > > > > They won't do DNS though. I'm using cloudns.net and I'm very > > > > > satisfied with them. I've had to use their support a few times > > > > > (for their monitoring service) and they've been super > > > > > responsive -- including implementing a feature request I made. > > > > > > > > > > On 8/6/24 14:34, Michael Rasmussen wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > I'm winding down my self-hosted web space. Part of this is > > > > > > finding a place to host jamhome.us - or more accurately the > > > > > > email portion. > > > > > > > > > > > > Can you recommend a place that would do that? They can host > > > > > > the domain name too. > > > > > > > > > > -- > > > > > Courtney Rosenthal / [email protected] / www.crosenthal.com
