You no longer need someone’s email address to send them an email. At least, that will soon be the case if you want to email another Google+ user. A new Gmail “feature” will let you simply type in anyone’s name into Gmail’s “to” field and send them an email. Google announced the new Google+ integration on its Gmail blog today, but company representatives have clarified to The Verge that – by default – anyone on its social network will be able to send messages to your Gmail inbox.
It’s opt-out; so it’s enabled by default. I don’t think Google has ever had a more stupid idea than this. This is just all-around bad – no ifs, no buts, nothing. You must be completely brain-dead to think that implementing this “feature” is in any way, shape, or form, a good idea.
I’ll be turning this off right away – I don’t want random internet people emailing me any more than they already do. Equally idiotic, when you start typing a name in Gmail’s to/cc fields, it will autocomplete to Google+ usernames. I have no idea if you can turn this brain fart off.
I don’t like Google+, I don’t want Google+ – I just want it to go away. Please.
What’s that persona’s email? …. Oh yeah, I just need to remember their name. I stopped fearing spam long ago. Ease of use for the win!
Hi,
Apparently, my email address is “slightly similar” to the email addresses used by several people in America. Because of this I receive things like their login information for various online services, receipts and quotes for their personal transactions, their University enrolment information, details concerning recently deceased relative’s wills (their inheritance), etc.
I can go back through the emails I’ve received over the last few years and match the information I’ve accidentally been sent to build up a profile of each intended recipient, and end up more than enough information about most of them to steal their identity. I can also cancel University enrolments, disconnect their electricity account, change them to “homosexual” on various online dating sites, etc.
Now, how many people do you think have a name like “Andrew Clunn”? Some hairy guy in Germany called Andree Klun is going to be invited to your high school reunion instead of you.
– Brendan
I used to think my name and spelling was rather uncommon..
Until I started getting confirmation e-mails of people entering my e-mail address for new accounts^aEUR|
Then of course my login ID I made up in the late 80’s that for a decade people thought was silly, now has a line of people wanting to take for themselves.
http://xkcd.com/1279/
Hehe jep, i guess Thom wants you to dial information services at the local phone company and use the exact same feature google just implemented except it’s free and a lot faster.
This is genius. So i must be braindead.
And i don’t miss the days where i had to maintain my own adressbook on my nokia phone, no sireee.
Thanks to google everyone i write or that write me are easily found on my android phone too.
You must be completely brain-dead to think that implementing this “feature” is in any way, shape, or form, a good idea.
Well, but at least google can boast again that number of fake users of their shitty ‘social networks’ grows…
I know virtually noone using google+ (of the folks that I care or know even remotely) nor wanting to use it. From the looks of it – (when I every once in a while stumble against a link to it) it seems more like a dumbed-down blogging platform…
Well, I use it from time to time. I probably am a person you don’t care about, though. Alas, I quite like Google+, it’s more serious than Facebook or the likes and seems more suited for actual discussion of stuff. And I like how it falls in between blogging and random fluff/chatting. It certainly attracts a whole different kind of audience than Facebook — something that I find a big plus.
Yup… I got e-mail from that… If I find something interesting I simply share it with a (few) people(s) and then there is this ‘replay to all’. A bonus – it’s easier to track the discussion and mark mails as read/unread (i.e. to respond later)… (and also – I love the usenet and mailing lists – no webby fluff at all!)
USENET is geek. Pure unadulterated geek. In fact it’s main feature that it’s geek and hard for your average user to actually use it.
Even geeks stopped using it.
Edited 2014-01-12 00:30 UTC
Once I realised that Google+ wasn’t trying to be a better Facebook, I started to enjoy using it. Don’t compare it to Facebook, it’s really nothing like it.
Think of Google+ as a better Twitter, and suddenly, it makes sense. And it’s useful. And the security settings make sense.
As for the e-mail thingy, it’s really no different than Facebook Messaging (send someone an “e-mail” to their Facebook account knowing only their Facebook screen name). Especially when you start to look at things as being part of a cohesive package:
– G+ is the blog/public profile/webpage
– GMail is the slow/long-term messaging portion of G+
– Hangouts is the instant messaging portion of G+
– Voice is the VoIP portion of G+
– etc
When you look at it that way, it’s really no different than what Facebook is trying to do.
– Facebook is the blog/public profile/webpage
– Messaging is the slow/long-term messaging portion
– Messaging is the instant messaging portion
– Messaging is the VoIP portion
– etc
Then why is Google trying to turn it into Facebook? Nevermind that they keep opting in users to every shitty idea like this that they come up with (the auto sharing of +1’s was another), but if G+ were a tool for serious communication, then why can’t I have the ability to filter/hide posts based on keywords or hashtags? I follow some people because I am interested in some of the things they talk about, but they also post a lot of stuff I couldn’t care less about, so every day my stream is flooded with crap that I have 0 interest in. In other words, just like Facebook. But it’s even worse on G+, because it doesn’t have anything like the Social Fixer extension for Facebook, and that is because Google, being the champions of openness that they are, refuse to publish an API that developers can use to bring us these tools.
Perhaps the reason why Google hasn’t implemented these things yet is because they’re too busy turning G+ into a photo editor, and making sure we can have animated snow flakes in all of our pics. LOL, what a joke. If you don’t think G+ is trying to be like Facebook, you’re just not paying attention.
Please … you must be new here !!!
Its way more cool and you look way geekier if you just insult and call other people/companies stupid!
Making proper logic and reasoning makes you look bad!
Just call it the dumbest stuppidest move ever ever forever … and you are a true 1337 geek !
The problem – I don’t look ad G/G+ as a ‘better whatever’ – I look at it as a communication platform – we had perfect gtalk that I could talk with all my folks on federated networks but no – google had to break that (well, it’s still working but it will cease to exists sooner or later); we have (had?) perfect e-mail platform but no – you will have to transition to closed-facebook-shit where you mainly could communicate with folks on the platform and the rest of messages will end up in ‘other tab’ (your own words that google is trying to mimic facebook behavoiur somehow). I don’t like that. I don’t like walled gardens. Period.
I liked google for openess and flexibility it gave me. As for the e-mail – I like the uniqeness and ability to have it as my ID… no need to rely on overlaping “first name last name” where they gonna soon collaps and without more details extracted from users it will be virtually impossible to distinguish who-is-who thus a logical step for google will be to require even more personal data to offer better result/correct match. It looks like reinventing the wheel or, I don’t know… why break something that just works (e-mail)?! It’s beyond me…
I’m not sure how to feel about the email integration. On the one hand, I do like Google+ and I’ve had great conversations with you and many other friends there. On the other hand, I’ve been weaning myself off of Gmail and onto my own self hosted email for a while now, so this would be one more reason to keep going in that direction if it does turn out to be a spam issue.
I guess I’ll give it a go, and if it gets annoying I’ll be sure to opt out.
But how long do you think that is gonna last before Google takes a steamer all over it Werecat?
I too like G+ for geeky discussions but the problem is that Google won’t be happy until it gets Facebook money from G+ so its gonna keep doing boneheaded crap like this until G+ is as worthless as MySpace.
And THAT, that right there, is the problem with western business in a nutshell. Nobody is happy just letting something grow, find its niche, and be reasonably profitable anymore. Nope, gotta be as big as (insert huge company) or its a giant screaming FAIL! and not worth messing with.
So don’t get attached to it Werecat because G+ will go the way of Google Reader. It won’t matter if it has users, won’t matter if they are making a profit on it, its not FB money so they’ll keep doing stupid shit like today until the entire platform is so toxic nobody will touch it. Sad but that is just how they do it now in the west.
You’re preaching to the choir there, mate. I’m not attached to it, I’m only using it while it serves a purpose without any obvious disadvantages; once it no longer serves a purpose or its disadvantages start to bother me I’ll move to something else.
How is it shitty? I find the conversation much better on G+ than on Facebook and I can easily share my pictures to my family….even those who do not have or actively use G+ (sends to their e-mail)
What’s missing from G+ is proper threading, where replies to specific comments go right underneath that comment.
It’s really annoying trying to read through a long list of comments and trying to keep everything straight in my head about who is replying to who.
If they do that, a lot of issues with G+ will just disappear.
He doesn’t use it therefore it’s shitty. Basic internet logic.
I am using Google+ even though none among my facebook friends/family were using it.
It is technically better than Facebook, and you have more control over what to share and post.
It’s puzzling. The Verge puts it like it is proper mail with Google+ accounts acting as aliases, while from reading the announcement on Google’s blog I had an impression that this is simply Google+ disguised as mail. And does it mean that I can use Google+ names as aliases for outgoing mail via Google’s SMTP server?
P.S.: As an IMAP user I will most likely see these messages in my inbox, so Google made my IMAP usage yet less comfortable…
Edited 2014-01-09 21:21 UTC
Shame on you for posting incredible bullshit like this one.
1) If you hate Google+ so much, delete your profile. Don’t use gmail.
2) gmail’s spam filter is rather good.
3) that random stranger doesn’t get your email address, they have to know your name and they must use gmail, thus greatly reducing the risk of automated spam.
4) In practice, with your name, anyone can find your email address anyway.
Since when osnews have been place for unfounded, stupid rants?
I feel sorry for you, I really do… but you probably fit greatly into this whole ‘google idea’…
It means that we must be other centered, not self-centered. There are many people who are using Google+ including me. I connect with g+ because it is easy to find photographers, graphic artists, classic guitarists etc. Sure, you can find this same people at facebook, but I use facebook for friends and family, if not for them, I abandon facebook long time ago. In fact, I am the first one among many who left Friendster and go with Facebook.
Google+ is technically better, superior platform if you want a centralized social network.
Well… if you pride yourself at being absolutely anonymous on the net, then maybe. But I assume you hod other values as well, the ones that other may find laughable and a reason to feel sorry for you.
Pretty much since its inception. Thom regularly puts up op-ed pieces, or adds his opinion to press releases/news links. I don’t mind one bit.
Well, OSAlert was around for a while before Thom came on as a main contributor, so not since its inception. But yes, it’s a great balance of news and opinion. In my case, I guess it helps that my views tend to line up with Thom’s more often than not, but it’s no different than Ars Technica, Engadget, The Verge, The Next Web, Slashdot, etc. in the sense that commentary is added to each post. It sounds like ajklq1 just wants a web based RSS reader.
Then again, their account seems to have been created just today with a username that appears to be mashing keys on a keyboard, so they may simply want to troll and nothing more.
How can you disable that?
If I’m reading the post correctly, they’ve announced it but the feature hasn’t been rolled out yet, so you won’t be able to opt out until they send you a “welcome to” e-mail.
…which worries me since GMail “welcome to” e-mails tend to be withheld until you log in via the web UI rather than IMAP… which I only do when I need to turn off a new feature I know is now available.
(GMail and Google Talk are literally the only Google services I log into anymore and, if I can ever find time to set up a proper mail system on my VPS, that’ll be reduced to just Google Talk since their decision to un-federate locks me into it.)
Edited 2014-01-09 22:29 UTC
Why the hell would you only be using IMAP!?!?! Do you dislike most of features of GMail that make it stand out?
The only feature of Gmail I like is its filters, which are much more flexible then what you get with other webmail services. Gmail’s webui is slow, too fragile on poor connections and too fancy. It only supports top-posting, mangles long lines and does horrible things to quoted text. Its “unread” counters count threads, not messages. It uses left/right arrows for navigation between messages, which are otherwise arranged vertically. And its basic HTML version unexplicably doesn’t work with lynx. I can’t imagine any possible feature that could outweight these drawbacks.
You can setup filters on your IMAP client.
Well, if you read the actual google announcement, instead of the Verge’s highly inflammatory take on it:
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/reach-people-you-know-more-ea…
Then it’s actually pretty easy to control who can and can’t send you email. Took me almost 10 seconds to find the setting and change it to match my preferences.
In fact, it’s much easier than ranting about it, but apparently not everyone agrees.
At least it seems to have three safeguards to prevent it from becoming a real major annoyance:
1) You can opt-out
2) Mails from people not on your circles go to the “social” tab, not your inbox.
3) People not on your circles can’t send you more that one email this way unless you replied to the first one.
You can opt-out out of google+ spam instead of google asking you what you want
It only pollutes one tab of your inbox. I don’t have those googletabs so what happens then?
So the only way it can become a hassle is if there is more than one google+ account.
I really hate how google feels the need to force their new services on people. I signed up for Gtalk and GMail. That is what i want from them, if things keep going this way i will be using my own personal domain for email more and more.
If Gtalk keeps removing features like they keep saying they will, and Gmail keep turning into a social network rather then an email service, i don’t need a google account any more.
Next level of integration will be – posting your private emails on Google+
Just to show them to everyone!
I think I’ll set up my own, private email server once again soon.
As the post above you indicates, we must gather some facts before commenting.
G+ is presently a lot easier than Facebook to ditch, both in social terms (not leaving any significant contacts or event calendars behind) and in technical ones: it’s, like, four clicks, and seems to take effect immediately.
But Google is still letting their overcompensatory obsession with it ruin their other services. First the flagship search by removing +mandatory terms in favor of some nebulous, unimplemented social function. Then turning YouTube comments into a G+ plugin. This last one will only really bring my impotent rage to a boil if not having a G+ page fails to protect me from the ill-advised directory listing.
OSAlert is usually on Google’s side until something like this happens, but this is what you get with Google. It’s why all that wonderful beer is free. You are the product, information is the fodder, advertisers are the customer. They want unfettered, transferrable access to your personal information just as they do to books, videos, music, and patents. So Google doesn’t understand petty human notions of privacy, ownership, and etiquette. No news there.
Obviously, the author is not a g+ user.
Unless you have a business that requires Google’s services, you don’t have to divulge your personal information to them.
If they don’t think your G+ profile has your actual drivers-license / national ID / passport name, they will lock your G+, sometimes everything on your Google account.
So as part of the YouTube conversion, many people were locked out of their accounts when someone got annoyed and clicked on “violates name policy”.
You need G+ to review anything on Google Play now.
I’m slowly moving away from Google. They demand my driver’s license, then give or let the NSA have everything, then force everything into public or onto G+ or whatever, and Takeout is seriously broken (I had to burn over 100G bandwidth to try to get my YouTubes off because it would keep dying at 99.5%).
They’ve ruined maps on both the app (no, i’m on my way to work and need to find X on the way, not the one 5 miles back) and web.
Why do companies tend to become senile so quickly?
And Tom Johnson is bad name?!?!
this is what happens when you’re attached to the nipple of an advertising company.
It’s funny looking at the comments from folks justifying what is really a shitty move.
You’re OA. If that feature will be implemented, you can’t see people’s names on your To/CC when typing if they are not in your circles. In short, you won’t be spammed by any random guys from the internet. In fact, if you put a person in your circle, you agree that you will communicate that person via feeds, and now email. Anyway, you can block anyone among your circle friends if you wish. If you are not a g+ user, then I understand your frustration.
Edited 2014-01-10 04:08 UTC
People end up in your cicrles even if you do not add them. All that is needed is for instance thath they have commented on youtube on the same video as you to end up in your circles.
Really?
I don’t know about youtube, but in G+, you need to add people in your circle to see feeds from them. That is why, Google+ is a ghost town the first time you sign up and go there.
Sorry gotta throw a flag, bullshit on the field. I have a bunch of people from India in my circles…do I KNOW anybody in India? Ever been to India? NOPE, but since anybody can add you to your circles I have to assume they saw me on /. and decided they like my posts or something and added me.
So sorry but anybody can add you to THEIR circles in a couple of seconds and you have NO control over that. This is just one of the reasons why even though I liked G+ when it first started I’m now using it less and less, they won’t use common sense or let it grow naturally, they are just gonna keep trying to “be the new FB” until the thing is a useless spam ridden mess.
Well my BullShit-O-Meter is off the scale, because you are raging about something that you just glanced at and have no idea. You being in someone’s circles does not add them to any of your circles.
Edited 2014-01-12 00:42 UTC
Wow…did you not even bother to read the article? here let me break it down for you and explain why this is a problem since you seem to not understand how it works, okay?
Joe adds me to HIS circle, now I don’t know Joe, never met Joe, wouldn’t spit on Joe if he were on fire…okay? But none of that matters because Joe can email anybody in HIS circles and HE ADDED ME, whether I wanted to be added to or not.
NOW do you understand why its a problem? I’ve been personally added to a good thousand plus circles by people whom I 1.- Don’t know, 2.- never spoke to, 3.- never asked to be added to their circles, but because I am in their circles I’ll be getting junk from them now…gee, thanks Google.
I also know how to use G+, that includes the block feature. Let alone you’ll be able to disable the feature.
So yeah… My BullShit-O-Meter is still high on the grounds of baseless panic of an under-informed over-opinionated post.
For me google minus was so bad and intrusive i ended up deleting my entire google account. It was not only because of google minus, it was just the last straw that broke the camels back.
I no longer use any google product at all, even added google’s domainnames to my blocklists.
That means, no Android Phones, no Google Search, no google ad services/syndication to your sites, no gmail, no youtube to watch videos, no ChromeOS, no cyanogenmod, Remove Firefox default page, no google chrome browser, you have to block any sites that feeds on Google services or ads by installing your script ‘Google services blocker’ etc.
Yes, I agree, we can still live without google.
Really?
No, not really, only to other Google users. Granted maybe it should be off by default but it’s not like it’s hard to disable right away or when you notice unsolicited emails.
First world problem.
That’s pretty much the same as what happens on Facebook or other social network, where you can send messages to people you know their name and if the right boxes are checked a notification will be emailed. Well, it was almost the same on G+ before: you receive a message on G+ and a notification about in your inbox, receiving the notification or the message itself is about the same.
On top of that, the emails arriving in your inbox will be processed by the same spam filters, and the Gmail spam filters are pretty good: for me it even marks as spam a bunch of useless notifications from G+, so I don’t expect a flood of unwanted junk in my inbox.
OSAlert is getting worse and worse. Rant after rant of the same old subjects about patents and how Microsoft is doomed and Google is worse than Hitler. Meanwhile there’s zero original content and only reposts from proper tech sites followed by Thom bitching like a little girl. I’m one small step away from giving up on this site.
BTW, I don’t mind this feature in Gmail, I think it’s quite useful.
You know, saying that you are “one small step away from giving up on this site” is very close to dictionary definition of “bitching like a little girl“. At least much closer then everything Thom does.
Just turned that off. Come on Google? When are you going to realize most don’t want to use G+. It should be opt-in only.
Everyone should cc the google execs on every mail… if they want to now what it’s like to get spam form people you don’t know, they will be able to see when several million people cc them
the fact that it’s trying to become your online identity. All of the google services get tied into one. You can’t hook up a non-gmail address with it. You can’t even change which gmail address you use with it. It’s now the same account you have on youtube. It’s what you use with Android. Etc. While I might like many of Google’s individual services, I don’t want them to be interconnected, and for most of them, I don’t want them to have any clue what my real name is, what my address is, etc. Whereas Google seems to want to basically tie everything together for you in one account.
And since non-Google services can use your Google account as your account for them as well, Google is essentially trying to make it so that you have one account for the whole internet. And I guess that that makes it easier to track what you’re up to (which helps them targeted with advertising, which is their main revenue stream), but it sucks for the consumer. I don’t want one account for the whole internet. I don’t want everything I do online to be tied to everything else that I do online. In most cases, I want to be as anonymous is possible. Sure, with enough metadata, all of that can be tied together anyway (especially by someone like the NSA), but why make that easier for them – especially when it’s making easier for most anyone to tie all of your stuff together rather than just large corporations or governments that already do too much tracking.
So, while G+ may be fine in and of itself, I don’t at all like how Google is tying it into everything else that they do.
I agree. Google merging all its services under one account is not what i signed up for when i got gmail year ago.
Recently i went through all my Google account data and purged all my search results, deleted my Youtube channel, and cleared all my history for anything I could. Does Google still keep a copy somewhere? Probably…
But I am working on a master plan to remove Google from my life where possible
Duckduckgo for search, and if i have to use Google make sure to log out.
BBM is starting to replace Gtalk, i only wish there was a desktop client
A personal domain with self hosted email is what i use for important, personal email messages. I think Google will slowly turn into a spam account, just like what happened with my Hotmail account.
I am not a social media kind of guy. I closed/deleted my Facebook account years ago, and now the only network i use is reddit. Why reddit? Because it allows for some anonymity.
To be honest, I’m getting to a point where i would rather pay someone 20$ a year for a secure, mail only service online which i know is secure, and not data mined, then get free email from Google.
It is expected. Create a company with a variety of services, why won’t you integrate them all?
We are not sure, only google engineers do.
Yes. It is possible.
Tried, duckduckgo, but it fall short of my expectations.
Hoping your friends will jump on board. This is the same reason I can’t give up Facebook because of friends/families.
Its good to have a personal domain with a personal mail server.
If you have nothing to hide, google is fine, unless you start working for an intelligence agency or something against the law.
Count me in. I can host your domain & server here in my country your domain might end up with a .ph TLD. But we are strong U.S. ally, that would make you think twice before accepting my service.
Edited 2014-01-11 07:59 UTC
Sorry for offtopic, but:
These guys are *very* responsive to feature requests. You’d do a service to yourself and every other ddg user if you take time to file requests for features you’re missing.
Here’s a link to delete G+ and your public profile without deleting Gmail and other services:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/downgrade/
Love Google or hate them, at least they do make it easy to break free from the service. Considering I haven’t even gone on Google+ since I gave up on Android, I’m tempted to go ahead and back up my important G+ posts, then pull the delete trigger.
Seriously, if you don’t like it, you should just stop using Google services full stop.
Google+ IS the new Google, everyone at Google goes on telling us this. Finally, everything Google has been doing are becoming integrated, rather than a bunch of random services that have nothing in common.
This is good, it means Google is going to be even more useful to everyone.
If you don’t want technology to be useful, you should just stop using it.
There’s a difference between sensible integration and attempting to force an artificial halo effect. The latter approach hasn’t worked very well for Microsoft and their attempts to cram Metro down everyone’s throats, I can’t see how it’s going work any better for Google+.
In what ways does it make Google’s services more useful? Personally, the integration with G+ has caused nothing but annoyances for, especially as it relates to youTube. E.g. if you have/manage a youtube channel, then G+ is unavoidable – unless you’re OK with your channel page displaying the default generic head-and-shoulders silhouette, overlaid on top of your banner image. The way it’s implemented seems particularly anti-feature-esque: instead of allowing you to upload the profile photo directly from the youtube account settings, you have to switch over to the completely separate Google+ interface.
In my opinion, that should barely even qualify as integration – it’s “integration” to the same extent that OSAlert is “integrated” with Gravatar. The difference being that my expectations are *little* higher with Google, given that OSAlert doesn’t also own/control Gravatar & isn’t a technology company with thousands of developers, billions of dollars to spend, etc.
It’s also worth noting that I could have just taken the lazy route by simply pointing out that since “everyone” is an absolute, the existence of even one person who doesn’t find the changes useful makes your statement factually incorrect.
False dichotomy, that suggests that technology cannot be “useful” without that type of integration. I see that as being the laziest approach to making pieces of technology work together – integration is easy when everything is built by the same vendor with end-to-end control over the specific implementations. I think that true, vendor-neutral interoperability is much more impressive – and substantially more useful in the long-term, because formally-defined, publicly-available standards and protocols can be implemented (and improved) by anyone.
Anybody who hasn’t figured out you set yourself up for this kind of problem when using Google+, Facebook, or other social networks is a little slow on the uptake.