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Gemini will now automatically summarize your emails unless you opt out
(workspaceupdates.googleblog.com)
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this post was submitted on 30 May 2025
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Mega brain move right here. Combined with a multitude of open source web mail clients and ur golden. SOGo and roundcube my beloved.
Cool, how do I disable this shit feature?
Stop using the shit service.
You go ahead and waste resources on summarizing the 200 emails a day in my spam account, you fucking morons.
So this is why I got an email that was completely wrong.
I told a guy I used to work for that I moved and it’s the perfect place to help him and his company.
He replied that he hopes I found a house where I used to live.
wtf it’s like he never read the email at all, now that this AI trash was added, the email makes sense.
I guess he is fucked and doesn’t get the help he needs for his company.
Most email is short. I don't see a need to summarize it. Google is run by idiots and assholes.
Ai will write complicated long mails, you'll need an Ai to summarise it
If an email needs to be summarized, I'm not going to read it anyway.
ive actually used it at work for stuff like "when did Wendy approve the design? did she send it to brian?" when I have 5 different email threads over 3 different organizations, with 10 different respondees. But in personal use I would never.
Ok this is the first step where I feel an actual urge to look for Gmail alternatives. (Been a Gmail user since like 2007.) I'm a desktop-only Gmail user, but I can see where this is going... :/ Also heavy user of Google Drive and Sheets, so it's going to be annoying if I have to replace all of them :/
For me it was: Gmail to Tuta, Drive to Filen.io (some cheap German guys). But Sheets would be the most difficult. Maybe Zoho or Infomaniak? Infomaniak has the complete package IIRC.
thanks, I'll check them out!
Would opting out actually do anything except keep you from using the feature? Pretty certainly they will still let the ai read your emails if there is any benefit to google in it, but you just wont be seeing the summary.
If you read the article, it says this only applies to people that already have premium google office stuff already. The 90% of people with regular gmail accounts aren't affected by this. For now at least.
A single message now generates 20 different summaries and analyses, requiring a rack of GPUs and a diesel generator.
We're so lucky that electricity is unlimited and free, otherwise it might've caused a serious problem.
Why would you use Gmail in the first place?
I have been moving away from all of the big name companies for big name products.
It's a shame, because I used to be very supportive of Google.
I have a Google account at work with the domain name of the company. The AI is annoying and I wished they used something else.
Do any other email services/clients have a very similar search function? Where I can search for date ranges and email sizes in addition to the more typical operators.
At my workplace I have to deal with Outlook, and it's a pile of crap in comparison.
How the hell can they even afford that?! There are so many Gmail users and so many emails a second and Gemini will summarize them all? That sounds so expensive and like a waste of resources
It is, but the bubble mustn't burst or the grifters will stop making money selling "the end of skilled labor" to braindead capitalists.
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Google makes a lot of money, and summarising stuff uses a surprisingly small amount of energy. You can do it trivially on-device on a laptop and on plenty of phones.
When it comes to LLMs, training the models is generally the thing that requires ridiculous amounts of energy.
This is dumb as fuck, though. I don't want Google's LLM to miss out critical details in my emails. That shit could be important. If people want this they should opt in.
They probably use a smaller model for summarizing.
That's ok :) All my important mails go to proton
The Proton owner is Trump-y. Tuta is another option
I can't go changing my email every time a ceo flips a switch and goes crazy. Your all gonna have to find something better than 'just try this other one'
Get your own domain and use it for mail routing to whichever email service of your choice. Afaik gmail offers this, and so does probably any other decent email provider. That way if a provider turns to shit, you just need to set up with a different one, but don't have to change any accounts.
Downside: you will have to pay for that domain for the rest of your life (or change all accounts again)
I've been meaning to do this for a while, maybe I'll finally do it now.
Self hosting then
You can have Google forward your emails while you move over your accounts
Btw (sort of just thinking out loud) could paying for an email domain be a solution? I see many webhosts offering email + domain packages for like 1-3 GBP/month, and we could just download the emails into, say, Thunderbird, so if a company turns shit, we still have the domain and all the emails received/sent over the years.
Good luck getting people to pay for their own email setups let alone learn what it takes to host themselves and move said hosted setup around as the hosting service ceo's flip scripts.
Ive actually been thinking about doing something like this. Im tired of being forced to rely on some company’s computer
Evidence?
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End users: To access Gemini summary cards, users need to have smart features and personalization smart features in Gmail, Chat, and Meet and smart features in Google Workspace turned on. Visit the Help Center to learn more about collaborating with Gemini in Gmail.
Sounds like it's an opt in, what am I missing
If you already had smart replies or similar enabled (they were available before Gemini hit the scene) then you have to go opt out.
That makes sense
Sounds like it’s an opt in, what am I missing
Because it's a clear step on the enshittification slide. It's opt in for now.
And that's why I set up forwarding from Gmail and Outlook to my new Tuta account.
In a few months I should be free, happily paying for EU alternative were the default swipe gesture stands for delete instead of archive.
Forwarding in itself doesn’t do shit as they still have your mail
But yea if you want to avoid Google's website that’s nice I guess
I would also use a mail alias service so you get more privacy and can switch mail host whenever you want
Both of the services have the option to delete all forwarded messages. This is simply the best first step in order to be able to review what accounts still work with the old addresses (via inbox rules) and slowly change them. I use addy.io for mail aliasing already, but that is not really related to gaining independence from those companies.
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