So there you have it – ads are very likely going to be part of Gmail soon. After all, it seems almost silly to not monetize a core app with an absolutely massive install base – between 500 million and a billion. I just hope these ads won’t be overly intrusive, and from the looks of things, the Gmail team is approaching the situation with care.
Ads on my Android Gmail application? Seriously, Google?
Alternatives?
Any IMAP capable email client ought to work, such as what’s found on Windows Phone
Edited 2013-09-28 23:32 UTC
^– This! Install something like K-9 Mail (OpenSource, Freeware, available from the Play Store) and access Gmail via IMAP (for as long as Google doesn’t decide to pull the plug on IMAP because it won’t annoy us with ‘precious’ ads).
On another note:
That somehow is now only just the next “let’s totally wreck the user experience” incident in Google’s ongoing mission to rid themselves of the little-to-less reputation they still have.
First they went after “Talk” and replaced it with “Hangouts” (which is still totally unusable even in its latest release version) because XMPP/Jabber seems to be too good for us.
Then they wrecked the “Maps” UI with version 7.x.x.
Then they came up with the Gmail app which sorts into categories – and at the same go wrecked the Gmail web interface with the tabs and the new editor.
Now it seems we well better prepare for ad-ware infested Google apps on our Androids.
Seriously Google?
I guess with the stable release of CM10.2 for my device I’ll skip the GApps altogether – Google is on a fast downhill slope IMO.
Edited 2013-09-28 23:43 UTC
This is what I fear will happen. I don’t know what I’ll do when they inevitably disable IMAP access. I wonder how many Gmail users actually use IMAP? I almost never use gmail.com and therefore I never click on their ads…
When at home, or via a private laptop I tend to use Thunderbird with IMAP access.
The web interface is only when at work, or some cyber-cafe when travelling.
However it wouldn’t surprise me, if Google disables it.
I’m glad to see I’m not the only that is worried about a possible IMAP access riddance.
I also have no idea about what to do IF they decide to pull the plug on IMAP. It doesn’t look entirely unlikely that it could happen.
Anyway, since Google released the new Gmail editor (for me it was before they came up with the “Tabs”) I switched over to IMAP on the desktop – still using the Gmail app on Android with that useless “Tabs” turned off because I miss lots of email notifications if that crap is turned on.
I used the browser-based Gmail frontend, on the desktop, since “Day 1” up to the “betterfication” of the editor just because Thunderbird wasn’t quite there back in the days.
As for the “clicking on ads”: What ads?
I simply banned them off the screen by using a custom ABP rule simply because I never came across any useful ad at all.
On a second thought (didn’t read the whole comments yet, so please forgive me if it already got mentioned): Maildroid (Payware app) is also quite great on Android.
If that happens I say “bye bye google!”
I’ve heard Outlook.com recently added IMAP. So there are alternatives if one wants a “free” email address with IMAP support.
And basically, the fact Microsoft has added IMAP would make it an illogical move for Google to remove it from their service, as that could cause a move of their users to the competitor.
1 – We use hangouts just about every day, have our dev meeting with 6-12 people spread around the world, and works like a charm. Cross-platform, quick, and free. No complaints here.
2 – Google is an advertising company. Google is an advertising company. Google is an advertising company. How many times can people ignore this? Android is just another advertising platform that is also a mobile OS, similar to a browser add-on. That’s why there is so much extra, buggy crap installed by every brand maker.
k9mail for Android looks best for me and I’m using it for all my emails. Just use the latest versions from their website https://code.google.com/p/k9mail/downloads/list or better use Fdroid open source application store. They tend to provide latest versions. k9mail on Google Play is usually outdated.
That is not correct.
The K-9 Mail app published on the Play Store is the latest _STABLE_ version of the app. On Google Code you can download any development release to play around with.
Link for K-9 Mail on F-Droid:
https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=email&fdid=com.fsck….
The Mail app in iOS works fine as well, hmm, cannot find it in Google AppStore, what a shame 😉
Don’t use Gmail or other Google software products on your Android?
I really don’t know why more folks don’t walk away from these companies when they start sticking it to ya, I too have an Android phone but after Google changed their privacy policy and start bugging me to tie everything into my Real-ID, even something as simple as watching a YouTube video? I deleted my Gmail info from my android phone, disabled sync, and started using the Yahoo Mail app instead.
As long as you come up with “work arounds” instead of refusing to be jerked around? These companies will continue to act like jerks. if you and many others just start using IMAP how long do you really think that IMAP will be allowed for “non premium” customers? After all you WILL take the abuse, you show them that by refusing to stop using their mail service, so why should they care whether you like it or not?
If Google wants to act like jerks and slam me with ads so they can pump up their quarterly earnings? While I may have no choice but to use an android phone (Both Apple and MSFT are trying to out do each other in lock in) that does NOT mean I have to use Google software on it! I am using Yahoo Mail, using Dolphin browser, using Bing search, the only Google software I use on my android besides the OS is Google Play and that I use sparingly. If you don’t walk away when they treat you badly why should they stop doing so?
Stop the nitpick for once! There’s no free lunch!
Somebody works, somebody pays. You want everything for free and no ads? Common…
Totally agreed. They think Google is a nonprofit.
Oh, but Google does profit from GMail, they scan email content to learn more from you and show you adds in other places.
Edited 2013-09-29 15:03 UTC
Last time I checked I paid for my Android phone. So from my point of view I did pay money and I expect an ad-free mail app as part of the bargain.That is what I get if I buy an iPhone or a Windows Phone.
And you get an ad free mail app called “mail”.
Which offers access to GMail through the IMAP protocol. And since I use other mail accounts as well, I use this to access my mail. I see no point of using two different apps to read my mail.
So you can use the mail app to access all your mail accounts then, Gmail or not.
As long as it supports either IMAP or POP
Tell that to Microsoft. You bought a Windows 8 license or a Windows 8 machine and you have ads even on stock apps …
Yes but you paid less. Apple makes their profit on hardware. Their business depends on high user satisfaction, so that people will be willing to pay a premium for the devices. There is no need (and in fact would be counterproductive) to put advertising into core apps because that would drive people away from the platform.
Google makes money on advertising. After all, how much money could they possibly be making by selling something like the Nexus 4 for $200? So you buy the hardware, but you are only covering their costs. They make money from you in retrospect with advertising.
Edited 2013-09-29 03:44 UTC
GMail is not just an app… it’s a service that you have probably have not paid for.
OK, then sell us a version of the application with NO ads. $1, $5, $100, or $1000, whatever you think it is worth to not have to deal with ads at all. Some of us will pay for it. I want NO ads, in ANY software I use, so give me the option of paying a price for that privilege and I will gladly oblige. Don’t just make it a requirement that I must deal with ads forevermore to use the application. Not everyone will want to pay, and that is fine, but at least give the option. I do not expect software to be free, I appreciate the work that has gone into creating it and I am willing to pay for it, but ads are NOT the price I want to pay.
Edited 2013-09-29 10:07 UTC
For Android, look here:
https://f-droid.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-Droid
F-Droid is a software repository (or “app store”) for Android applications; it functions similarly to the Google Play store, but only contains free and open-source software. The apps can be browsed and installed from the F-Droid website or directly from the F-Droid client app (which is not available in the Google Play store, but can be installed by sideloading). The F-Droid client app will automatically update installed F-Droid apps. The website also offers the source code of all applications for download. F-Droid does not require users to sign up and by default hides applications that contains “anti-features” such as advertising, user tracking or dependence on non-free software.
F-Droid client app screenshot: https://f-droid.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/fshotnew2.png
Edited 2013-09-29 12:27 UTC
http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=172471
http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/pricing.html
$5 bucks per month.
I hope that something else comes along that can challenge Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Hopefully Jolla, Ubuntu/Canonical, or (really long shot) KDE can put up some kind of challenge. Maybe the security aspect can be pushed due to being Open Source and verifiable as not having backdoors. Canonical could become the new Blackberry since they have the beginnings of the underlying application, cloud, and Enterprise support necessary to provide a secure but open environment.
Who knows maybe KDE Plasma Active on OpenBSD could be made to work?
The biggest challenge that I see most of these newcomers facing are the big players obscene patent war chests. Patents need to be done away with; or at the very least software patents.
Canonical? Ah! You’re talking about the company who put an Amazon search lend in Ubuntu!
The problem is not patents as much as, you know, feeding the developers.
Define challenge.
If you run replicant with FDroid on your mobile, and any linux distribution on your PC, you can basically do anything.
There are great mail apps out there (Mutt, K9Mail, KMail, etc.), and replacements for most things.
Personally, I like KDE for the unified experience and customisability without sacrificing ease-of-use.
Until recently, I was using only console applications and AwesomeWM for most non-office/multimedia tasks though, and that works fine too.
Anything required for work that is windows/OSX specific can easily be run in a VM, with the actual workstation and all applications except those outliers running in Linux.
Your OS doesn’t need to be dominant; just popular enough. Linux is that.
Edited 2013-09-29 10:23 UTC
OpenBSD have never been about a desktop. It can certainly be used as one without a doubt, but it never been every been marketed/presented that way.
In fact I that quite a few people that use it in production environments use OSX as a workstation for example.
Edited 2013-09-30 18:34 UTC
Yes, pay billions to make your own damn mobile OS and then give it for free.
The nerve on some people.
The giant corporations can no longer be trusted. Build your own mail server. Use a raspberry pi, if you have to. Google is as evil as Apple now, and they should all rot in hell.
Drama queen much? Google has built its empire on ad revenue. Frankly anyone who is surprised by Google’s move to place ads in Google mail for Android is naive. I purchased my Android device knowing full well that I would be subjected to advertisements in exchange for an open platform with many more hardware choices and at a much lower cost than Apple’s iOS devices. Get over it.
I wasn’t aware there was ever a time when they could be.
I always hate how when you sync with play, it also syncs with Gmail. I have always from the beginning used exchange and mail app. In the beginning as in windows mobile days. From a practical point, it doesn’t automatically sync photos and all that baggage.
also the Gmail app could not zoom for a long time.
I don’t like scrolling, or better yet chopping.
but google has managed to gimp exchange server, I would sometimes have Gmail and mail with xchange on at the same time and xchange was usually a little faster on receiving email. But on the recent Gmail builds I mist admit it was 50/50 which would pop up first.
You can turn off syncing of the individual google services under the sync options….
Yeah, that’s exactly how I feel about the osnews ads.
You pay for OSNews?
I don’t pay for gmail either.
I pay for my phone. Android Gmail is part of that.
I doubt your phone was free.
You pay for your phone, not for gmail. Android’s free ya know.
You could say that I paid for my computer and internet access and osnews is part of that so why should i see ads?
Except, that’s not the case. OSNews is not installed on your phone. It is not part of your internet connection.
You’ll have to come up with better argument than this.
You didn’t buy your phone from Google, did you? No, you didn’t and Google is a distinctly different company from the one who made your phone so you did not pay for Gmail.
Even if you DID buy it from Google GMail is still a different service, and not exactly critical to the usability of a *phone*, so you didn’t “pay” for it.
The fact that GMail happen to be installed by default isn’t really relevant.
Yes, up to a point. Ever installed a clean AOSP build? No Gmail app in there, and if you want to ship the Google Apps with your build, you go through an extended vetting, of which the requirements are non-public, so we do no even know if Android *with* Google app is free…
Not even going to the FSF definition of free, which it will never be…
You pay for GMail the service by paying for your phone!?!?!
GMail the app is free and is available to be installed on non-certified releases(see Cyanogen)
Yes, I do. In particular the mail app itself as it was pre-installed on my phone.
My Galaxy S2 was bought for $500. How the money was distributed is none of my problem. That is between Samsung, Google and the store where I bought it.
As part of that money exchange I have come to expect the pre-installed software to be ad-free, and some amount of free services included for a reasonable time period. This is what the competition has offered for decades now. If Google is not willing to offer me ad-free software I just might take my money elsewhere the next time!
Completely irrelevant. As a typical end-user might reply: what the hell is Cyanogen? I bought my phone at *insert store name here* and it is a Samsung!
You did not bother to read the fine print when you purchased the product. What you bought is not an undefined product and service which you get to define based on your expectations and uninformed assumptions.
Just because you exchanged your hard earned money for a samsung product, it does not mean you should expect the CEO of the company to come to your house every day around noon to wash your dishes either.
The terms and conditions you agree when you sign up for a gmail account are between you and Google, not you and samsung.
Gmail App and Gmail itself are like the rest of Google and is paid by the ads that they put into the interface and the information they harvest.
It isn’t free and tbh I think it is surprising that it didn’t already have ads in the Gmail App.
Back to the point at hand – you don’t pay for any services when you buy your phone(unless they are declared as “free” additional services)… no more than you would expect mobile network to give you free access to their service just because you paid for a phone.
I paid for my TV. I pay taxes for owning a TV. I pay for cable TV. And I am still seeing ads. And even if channels were ad-free, as soon as you see a sporting event you see ads. O the horror!
and in some cases this is a lot worse than ads in an app on your phone. Like those huge-ass billboards that lines roads and runs the landscape.
Edited 2013-09-29 15:24 UTC
C’mon Thom. You understand the advertising model.
You have paid for your phone, and you can reasonably expect that you won’t see an ad on the launcher, but you have not paid for the Gmail service, and so you get ads.
That Google would push harder to monetize Android once it took over the market was obvious from the start. Just like Facebook started out with a very clean mobile app free of ads and now they integrate ads into your news feed.
Edited 2013-09-29 17:27 UTC
Time to disable gmail app auto-updates?
Except Osnews ads is the only income of the Osnews. While Google gets cut of every app sold in the play market and they get money from Android Manufacturers who wish to sell android devices with Google services.
Edited 2013-09-29 07:36 UTC
Well, to be have and expose the complete picture, They don’t have the same income but they don’t have the same “outcome” either. Google has a shitload of employees, infrastructure, bandwidth costs, projects, R&D…
That revenue stream is barely self sustaining.
We don’t know if they charge for Google services. CyanogenMOD certainly does not pay for their version.
“Barely sustaining” They take a freaking 30% cut from all sales. Also most free apps are monetized by Google ads.
CyanogenMOD DOESN’T come with Google apps, you have to download and install them after you install firmware.
“x equals y? Well that’s preposterous x is a very large number!”
Thanks for posting irrelevant data.
10%, 20% or any other number has no relevance when it does not generate profits, it does not generate profits.
What does CyanogenMOD’s inclusion of Google apps have to do to support you assumption that Google charges for them?
double post.
Edited 2013-09-29 07:33 UTC
A while back, I went around all the free e-mail clients on Android and was distinctly unimpressed with all of them (they all had annoyances that couldn’t be configured away, which is usually the strength of Android apps).
I’m wondering if a Gmail apk of the last non-ad version can be extracted and used to keep ad-free (mind you, I also run Adblock Plus on Android, so it’ll be interesting to see if that blocks the ads.
I did a similar thing with Google Currents – I have a pre-Dec 2012 apk with the old design of GC which is so much better than the latest GC (which frankly has an appalling UI) and I install that on my devices instead.
I do not understand why someone should want gmail.
For about € 10 (one time payment) and the cost of a domain (depends where) about € 8 to € 20 a year.
You can get 5 mail-accounts and 30 email-addresses, no adds, no google or whoever.
Run it with webmail and you do not even need a mailclient.
OK it is not free, but free from trouble.
There are quite a few reasons why people use Gmail:
* It’s free.
* It has a Web interface.
* It has an app to go with it.
* It has a *lot* of free storage.
* It’s unlikely to “go away” (e.g. Google go bust, get taken over, renamed etc.).
* High speed/availability due to Google Data Centres.
* You can set up as many accounts as you like if you’re so inclined.
* It has pretty good spam filters.
* Supports IMAP should you want to avoid GMail’s interface.
* Once you’ve got a Gmail account (and historically that was the first Google product with registration that most people used prior to Android), the same credentials work with all the other Google properties (especially the Play store if you’re on Android).
I suspect the average user isn’t going to hunt down a cheap mail hosting deal if they don’t want GMail – they’re more likely to pick a free mail competitor to GMail (MS, Yahoo etc.).
Edited 2013-09-29 09:23 UTC
Seriously, doesn’t anyone remember what we had before Gmail? Remember 80mb limits? Gmail has ads forever, why should mobile be exempt? The internet runs off ads, just like TV, newspapers, ect. Get over it.
Normal people don’t run their own mail servers. Normal people don’t even know what a mail server is. Yours is a solution for an infinitesimally small percentage of the smartphone-using population…
This is what you get when you leave your e-mails to an advertising company. Considering how much evil Google has become, I’m surprised this didn’t come out before, and most of all I’m surprised that their POP/IMAP service is still alive.
So evil. Like, evil like TV channels. Or evil like sporting events. Or evil like the local mayor who allows billboards. So, so evil.
At least they don’t have “don’t be evil” as their own hypocritical motto.
Do we have to have Ads with everything we do?
How long before the Ads send their serving details to the NSA?
This all reminds me of an old SF story I read a long time ago. It was about the consumer society and how everything you bought had a finite lifespan and if you didn’t replace it within that time not only would it stop working but your face (if I remember correctly) was posted on billboards as the latest ‘anti-consumer’.
The sort of anthesis of 1984 in many ways.
I will continue to block ALL adverts when I use the internet. Whilst some people may find this as ‘not playing the game’, I am old enough to be able to make up my own mind about something. If I really want to spend some money no amount of advertising is going to persuade me to buy one thing over another. I will do research, ask questions and THEN make my own mind up.
Yes folks, I am a Grump Old man and not really high on may advertisers target market list so in reality they won’t mind (well I hope so)
I do financially support a few web sites just to keep them running so blocking their ads is worth it in my opinion.
The other reason is that how can you trust those ads not to try to do nasty things to the system you are using? We can’t. I am sure it won’t be long before the NSA(or other security services) start hijacking ads and slurping our browser history (and other things if they can get away with it)
They won’t catch many terrorists but they will get a lot of Porn splattered over their systems. Not a bad thing IMHO
I have never seen a single advertisement on my Nokia N900, including in the wb browser with adblock.
I’m hoping Jolla will continue this trend.
Get an iPhone.
Seriously. I bought a HTC One about a month ago to replace my aging sluggish iPhone 4. The HTC ads, unremoveable FB stream and lack of an “off” option for autocorrect (when i type “fine”, don’t change it to “fino”, i’m not italian!!!) means its sat in its box waiting for me to get around to putting Cyanogenmod on it…
I thought i’d give Android a whirl, but HTC Sense ruined it for me. Maybe Cyanogenmod can redeem it, but with Google putting ads into everything, i might just sell both my phones and buy a 5S with the money 😐
Edited 2013-09-29 11:08 UTC
I am actually buying an iPhone 5S in the coming days. My contract renewal is up, so “free” phone.
Lucky you! 5s is fairly awesome…
If you want to give Android a whir then you should have gone with a Nexus phone.
For Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.steyla.compail
This isn’t any different than the monetization going on by the various services within Microsoft. I’m frankly surprised that any of you are surprised by this. Google has been a services company longer than Microsoft.
There is no free lunch.
It seems absolutely silly not to monetize a core app with an absolutely massive install base. The only thing sillier is thinking Google would’t eventually.
I use AquaMail on my tablet for both my normal mail and GMail (to use *only* AquaMail, turn off the “sync” in GMail’s settings; you can’t delete the account). The premium (ad-free) version costs £3 (about $4-5) but you can have as many accounts as you like, including GMail. It’s more flexible – you can set it to delete rather than “archive” emails you don’t want, for example. If GMail starts having ads, I’ll switch to AquaMail on my phone too (you can use it on as many devices as you like).
I use Sparrow both on my Mac and iPhone. Works great with GMail’s conversation-based workflow, and supports several feature like labels and the like.
Unfortunately they got bought out by Google right before they released the iPad version. It is now discontinued, but still available in the App Store(s) and still works great.
Actually I began using the Gmail app just because it was a core app and it was always checking my email although I had configured the more generic Samsung’s Mail app too. I couldn’t find a way to disable it, so I just moved to the Gmail app and forgot about Mail.
Now that I use Cyanogenmod, it’s quite easy for me to simply uninstall Gmail and get another generic mail app, that will also support other accounts. Win-win.
As long as it works as the browser version it would just mean now you’d have two spam folders instead of one (and you should be able to opt-out as well).
Then again I haven’t seen any of those ads from Gmail in my Promotions folder yet.
Edited 2013-09-30 07:15 UTC
Squeaky mail is the answer.
I quote them from the Android Play store:
“This is an email client derived from the popular, open source application K-9 Mail. The main difference between the two is that Squeaky Mail integrates with PGP KeyRing, a crypto provider. If you are a user of PGP KeyRing, this email client will integrate seamlessly just as K-9 Mail does with APG. Both the trial and full versions are supported.”
Edit: I had forgotten to mention that I have disabled the default Gmail app. Useless for me.
Edited 2013-09-30 14:50 UTC
Reason #893i75439853 to move away from gmail. Yes that i was on purpose.
You know, just do it. But if you don’t like ads, move to a paid service.
Tasteful, generic, non-intrusive advertising is a fair trade for offering either a service (such as mail) or news and information (such as here).
But! The precise moment they move from generic, context/venue based ads, to ads based on the all intrusive TRACKING of individual’s habits, as it’s Google’s (and all the other filthy maggots who run trackers) want to do, they’ve gone too far. I’ll never acquiesce.
Knowledge is power, so knowledge specific to you, is power over you. They don’t need that power to offer you products.
That said, if all my fellow tech savvy types who are also capable of free and independent thought, are waiting for a point where the masses of asses will say when enough is enough on this totality of control and tracking front, you’ll dry up and turn to dust (Apple’s popularity is exhibit one). More likely, you as I, will continue to be dragged–kicking and screaming–into this surveillance state nightmare by the mechanism of the shrinking numbers of viable alternatives. This is by design. The “don’t buy it or use it if you don’t like it” excuse is only valid when there are alternatives that don’t suck the same or more.
Seems as though “what sucks the least” choices are the hallmark of this new century.
Opt-Out while you still can…..
There is no free lunch.
Don’t like ads, buy your own mail domain (which costs next to nothing) and use one of the free mail apps for the phone platform.
Edited 2013-09-30 18:55 UTC