Err…
Users will keep their exisiting (sic) email addresses on this service, and would get it free for the first year. After that, there will be options of paying for a service, or an ad-based free service after that.
So, what’s the problem, exactly? Just take the ad-based free service. Gmail, Yahoo, etc. are ad-based free services too. Nobody is forcing them to change anything.
People who use the default email their ISP gives them don’t like change. The new service will probably have a different login screen and that’s going to upset aunty Ethel and uncle ron. And then a different colour background. It’s the worst thing that anyone could ever do to them
Anyone who had a bookmark set to their webmail years ago will need a younger person to fix it. Same with anyone who had Outlook, Thunderbird, whatever configured for them will have to start using webmail. If someone doesn’t have younger family in the area they will be fucked. My own mother gets thrown way off by the slightest changes.
I’m not apologizing for boomers never investing in actually learning how computers work (for some, they’ve had decades of time). Just illustrating some of the hurdles.
My father was a mechanical engineer with fucking patents. I’m convinced he could have learned much more than he did. He just relinquished any notion that he could and that then played out. How many times did I tell him to click on the Apple menu only to have him ask (yet again), “What’s that?”
I can understand the pain, though. Moving accounts to a new email is not a fun process. Especially if someone has an email for years, decades even, that’s a lot of stuff that could be registered with that email. And trying to save emails isn’t necessarily straightforward. Migration, if it’s even available, isn’t foolproof or easy, either.
While I’ve grown up with the Internet, I think I’ve only changed my main email like 3 times over ~30yrs. The last time I did it was over a decade ago, to Gmail from my family’s then ISP-based email. I think I’m way overdue to do it again, at least moving my important accounts like banking and government stuff to a new email address, but it’s just so time consuming.
And I say all this as a tech person. I work in IT. For someone who’s not particularly tech savvy, forget about it.
i am not a boomer and i am also pissed when firefox upgrade decides to unilaterally change the installed theme to something that looks like shit and i can’t find the old one. so i kinda do understand aunty ethel.
Whilst I agree and sympathise with people on how difficult it is to change your primary email address (been there), the outcome will be better for them. They are no longer wedded to an ISP purely because all their mail goes there.
To liken it to something more tangible; when you move house, you need to change your mailing address. For renters, that can be often and is just as painful. Or when your phone number changes and you have to update your contacts. The difference here is who is pulling the trigger; the end user vs the provider.
Gmail is a great option, as is Proton Mail for the security conscious and tech savvy.
This isn’t to excuse the ISPs; it’s a shitty move on their part and the people using these mail accounts will likely be older technically challenged folks, but it is a logical one from a technical perspective. They may have also inadvertently taken the only thing away that’s creating stickiness between them and their customer and driven them into the arms of another ISP.
Gmail is a great option
after you spend two paragraphs explaining how it is inconvinient to depend on someone who can change anything at their will, your conclusion is to move to google? 🤣
Didn’t even know this was a service to begin with.
It used to be quite a big deal, back in the day. The other day I read a really old thread on some local forum here in NL, and it said that you couldn’t sign up with an “anonymous” email address, such as hotmail or gmail. Only provider-issued email addresses were accepted there so “they had an idea who they were dealing with”. Times really did change a lot.
It was the main introduction to email for a lot of Australians, they’ve been using it as is for 15-20 years.
It’s more than just one generation that uses it, I know people in their thirties who use theirs via the Gmail app as with any long-term email their is no need to change address.
I remember only signing up to Gmail because it felt new and techy.
