Gmail is the gateway to their entire product portfolio; no way they’d kill it.

Google getting rid of gmail would have to be hands down one of the biggest internet shakeups since its inception. Gmail has been the de facto free email service for almost two decades now. They have like a 53% market share of emails in the U.S.

With the terms of service for their “anti spam” and “productivity auto-sorting” features, they must gather SO much data about people by reading their emails - there’s no way they’d turn that off lol

I mean... I don't expect them to scrap GMail, but their reassurance means nothing. IIRC they said the same thing about Stadia.

Why would they voluntarily lose access to all my personal information?

I just now created a Proton mail account just minutes before seeing this. I think I'm glad I did.

I've been thinking about de-googling myself for some time now. After being with them since they created the Gmail service in the early 2000s, I practically have my whole adult life on Google. I've been using drive and photos as well for as long as it has existed. It's going to be a lot of work to sort through all of this data and start over on a new service.

I don't trust Google anymore over anything. Whether it's privacy (though I was pretty naive to think I had any in the first place) or their ability to keep a service up long enough for anyone to commit.

It's a shame because they started as a really nice company with their do no evil motto with great services and then everything went to shit. Even their killer feature, the search engine, has become complete shit.

Killing Gmail would be like killing search or youtube, they would NOT dare.

It's funny that most comments here are debating this seriously when the article (that apparently nobody bothered to read) clearly says it was a hoax.

Any of these large business coming out to explicitly say "this will not happen" is concerning.

Gmail is untouchable. That more than any other product has kept me tethered to Google since 2004. That being said I wouldn't be surprised if some greedy, future regime at Google botches it up.

The biggest thing holding me to Google is Gmail and photos.

They scrap Gmail and I'm literally out. No more Google accounts, except to use an android.

Google offers very little value to the consumer these days

Next week: "Google scrapping gmail."

One thing that's very clear to me is that when a tech company says something is "here to stay," it doesn't actually mean it's here to stay.

I’m starting to worry Lemmy users read the article at a lower rate than redditors.

Of course it is. I know Google scraps a lot of things, but Gmail is for the most part liked and, far more importantly to Google, is an absolute treasure trove of personalised, easily parsable data, yet nowhere near as costly to maintain as, say, YouTube.

The fact that after making search, an email provider was their next big project, shows how serious they are about it.

Why does anyone think Google would shut down Gmail? You'd have to be stupid to think that they would shut down the most used email service on earth, one that is deeply integrated into Google as an ecosystem.

Next week: Fires 60% of the gmail staff

Exactly what a company about to shut down their email product would say.

This would really be the ultimate fuck you to everyone if they did this. I sort of wish they would so we'd all stop giving them all our personal data.

Stupid question: what the shit do you do with your 15 years of communication history if your email provider falls off a cliff?

Oh thank goodness. Ya know I trust Google, when Google speaks it's always true. They're very not evil. And this definitely isn't a fun way to lessen the blow of an announcement that would be so.. displeasing to the masses.

/$

I fully expect GMail to be enshittified in the future.

"GMail through gmail.com and GMail App: Always Free"

"GMail Pro (IMAP/POP/Forwarding): Only $3.99 / mo"

Too bad I'm degoogling as we speak.

Why do I feel like them saying this makes it MORE likely theyre going to shut it down?

RIP Inbox.