Tag: gmail

The Amazing POS That’s the Free Mail Google offers

Warning: this snarky rant has some profanity.

Well, I should have known.

I’d been using Gmail for years. It started sliding down hill a few years ago. To save it, I went to Inbox.

Mistake.

Four years later, and a year of PERSONAL frustration for me, frustration that included random shifting of mail into different places. WaPo’s news letter will be in one place on one day, somewhere else the next.

Delete an email? Not under this POS. Delete may work. It might not. The emails show up again and again, driving me crazy as I remembered already reading that mail and deleting it, sometimes THREE TIMES IN ONE DAY.

Earlier this year, Google announced they’re dropping Inbox. Does that mean they fucking improved Gmail?

Not fucking likely.

Being Google, it still works like crap. However, they’ve managed to add several infuriating features. One particularly pisses me off. Each time I delete an email or change a tab — hell, anytime I do anything in Gmail, a small offer comes up:

Gmail Desktop

 

Nothing stops this zombie question. Can’t be turned off. It just asks me again, and again. Hide? Fat fucking chance. It comes right back up after I do something. Click the X? No, that shit doesn’t help, either. Yes, it offers a brief respite, but nothing more. It’s always there, obsequiously asking me if I want to use their fucking feature.

As Rake would say, “Oh, fuckity fuck, fuck.”

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New Gmail A’comin’

It’s been a while. Are you ready for a rant?

Then you’ve come to the right place.

A new version of Gmail is coming. That has some factions of the net wet with excitement. “Have you noticed some new features in your Gmail?” Their words glow, as if this is really exciting.

I yawn. I spit. I curse.

Google has demonstrated a pattern of leaping out with new things that cause people to go, “Oh! Look what Google has done!” Meanwhile, old products and concepts that they brought out that caused people to go, “Oh! Look what Google has done!”, languish.

The Google publishing effort was one of those things for me. Google apparently desired to be like Amazon and publish! I investigated publishing on there to discover it was already gone.

Google Plus is another wanna be like some other company. In this case, it’s Facebook. I follow people and they follow me, but it’s like we’re walking in a circle in a living room.

Introductory rant over, I encounter issues on Gmail. Slow loading is one aggravation. Another is that the deleted emails return like the ghosts of this morning’s mail. Aggravating, yes. I already read this, did that, went there, deleted this, WTF, Google?

Getting help has proven impossible. Searches and scans deliver no tangible results. Most answers assume I’m on a Droid or smart phone and that it has to do with the mail settings. Fucking not applicable, okay? Other responses found on Google take me to Hotmail and Outlook issues. Everything else suggested has been tested. The problem still exists. Damn exasperating, it is.

So, excited about the new and improved Gmail? Fuck no. Still waiting for them to fix the previous edition.

Rant over. Back to the coffee.

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Alphabet Issues

Time for a Sunday rant. I have good reason for it. I know; everyone who rants say they have good reasons for their rant. Let me state my case, and then you can decide.

Alphabet Inc. is trying to gaslight me.

Alphabet Inc. was created as a holding company for Google and its multi-tentacled endeavors. Google wants to be everything for us, substitutes for television, Netflix, Amazon, a dominant world force that we can trust. But the delta between what they promise and what’s delivered grows every day.

The three primary Google products I use are Gmail, Chrome, and the calendar. (I also sometimes use Google search, but it’s so damn commercialized, delivering the same results as different entries, that it’s become better to go with other search engines. They’re not much better, though. *Where have all the good searches gone?*) They’re three products that have been around for enough time for them to stabilize and cross that chasm from being bleeding edge to cash cow. When a product reaches the cash cow stage, it’s expected to be reliable and free from significant bugs.

It ain’t so with Chrome and Gmail.

I use the Inbox app to manage my Gmail. I write “manage” because that’s what they use to describe it. Inbox manages my mail as well as a toddler manages the bath water. Emails that have been read and deleted consistently haunt my inbox as unread, causing the frustration and irritation of wading through the past several days worth of mail along with today’s deliveries.

This is where the gaslighting comes in. Gaslighting is an old expression about conning people and confusing them about reality. “Didn’t I already do that?” they ask in old movies.

The villian laughs. “No, dear, you said you were going to. Honestly, were is your mind, my precious?”

That’s how it is with Gmail. “Didn’t I already read that?” I ask myself as I peruse the Inbox. “Oh, God, I thought I answered that yesterday.” I certainly meant to answer it. Where is my head?

Well, hell, it’s not my head, it’s Alphabet Inc. and their Gmail product. I have read, answered, and deleted these emails. Alphabet is just putting them back in.

Thinking it might be Inbox instead, I used Gmail without Inbox, as an experiment.

Nope; same results.

Don’t get me started on what’s going on with Chrome. It is very effective for administering my daily dose of first world blues and frustration, and is a wonderful impediment to having a good mood as I surf the net.

I would switch from Gmail, but our email addresses have their tentacles in every aspect of our lives. Extricating ourselves is a long and complicated process. It’s getting as involved as doing taxes in America or determining if it’s a catch in the NFL.

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Gmail

Don’t you hate it when your Gmail goes astray, and has the same emails that you’ve already read and deleted in your inbox again?

Yeah. Get your act together, Google. This is already past the sell-by date.

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