Google makes emails more dynamic with AMP for Email
Google today officially launched AMP for Email, its effort to turn emails from static documents into dynamic, web page-like experiences. AMP for Email is coming to Gmail, but other major email providers like Yahoo Mail (which shares its parent company with TechCrunch), Outlook and Mail.ru will also support AMP emails.
[...] With AMP for Email, those messages become interactive. That means you'll be able to RSVP to an event right from the message, fill out a questionnaire, browse through a store's inventory or respond to a comment — all without leaving your web-based email client.
Some of the companies that already support this new format are Booking.com, Despegar, Doodle, Ecwid, Freshworks, Nexxt, OYO Rooms, Pinterest, and redBus. If you regularly get emails from these companies, then chances are you'll receive an interactive email from them in the coming weeks.
[...] [Not] everybody is going to like this (including our own Devin Coldewey).
Also at The Verge, 9to5Google, and Engadget:
As you might imagine, Google is determined to keep this secure. It reviews senders before they're allowed to send AMP-based email, and relatively few will support it out of the gate (including Twilio Sendgrid, Litmus and SparkPost).
Previously: Google Bringing Accelerated Mobile Pages to Email
Related: Kill Google AMP Before It Kills the Web
Google Attempting to Standardize Features of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Google AMP Can Go To Hell
Google Moving to Relinquish Control Over Accelerated Mobile Pages
Related Stories
There's been a good deal of ongoing discussion about Google AMP – Accelerated Mobile Pages.
Quite a few high-profile web developers have this year weighted in with criticism and some, following a Google conference dedicated to AMP, have cautioned users about diving in with both feet.
These, in my view, don't go far enough in stating the problem and I feel this needs to be said very clearly: Google's AMP is bad – bad in a potentially web-destroying way. Google AMP is bad news for how the web is built, it's bad news for publishers of credible online content, and it's bad news for consumers of that content. Google AMP is only good for one party: Google. Google, and possibly, purveyors of fake news.
[...] What it is, is a way for Google to obfuscate your website, usurp your content and remove any lingering notions of personal credibility from the web.
If that appeals to you, here's what you need to do. First, get rid of all your HTML and render your content in a subset of HTML that Google has approved along with a few tags it invented. Because what do those pesky standards boards know? Trust Google, it knows what it's doing. And if you don't, consider yourself not part of the future of search results.
Why a subset of HTML you ask? Well, mostly because web developers suck at their jobs and have loaded the web with a ton of JavaScript no one wants. Can't fault Google for wanting to change that. That part I can support. The less JavaScript the better.
So far AMP actually sounds appealing. Except that, hilariously, to create an AMP page you have to load a, wait for it, yes a JavaScript file from Google. Pinboard founder Maciej Cegłowski already recreated the Google AMP demo page without the Google AMP JavaScript and, unsurprisingly, it's faster than Google's version.
-- submitted from IRC
Google wants you to be able to book a flight without exiting an email:
Google is bringing its Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) capabilities to email today through a developer preview for Gmail. The feature, called AMP for Email, will allow developers to make emails "more interactive and engaging." Google envisions the feature to be beneficial to users because developers can embed widgets in emails that are constantly up-to-date and include actionable functions that work without leaving your inbox. Google's existing AMP webpages are an emerging standard for webpages that load radically faster than regular mobile pages.
AMP for Email is open-source so developers can freely play around with the capabilities and use them to their advantage. Companies developing features for AMP for Email include Pinterest, Booking.com, and Doodle. Google says the AMP for Email feature will allow you to do things like RSVP to events, browse and interact with content, or fill out forms without leaving an email. For example, Google says if a contractor wants to schedule a meeting with you but isn't able to see your calendar, they'll contact you about availability. With AMP for Email, you could respond interactively through a form without ever leaving the email client.
Some observers believe AMP allows more effective phishing attempts. One serious flaw, noted by tech writer Kyle Chayka, is that disreputable parties who misuse AMP (as well as Facebook's similar Instant Articles) enable junk websites to share many of the same visual cues and features found on legitimate sites. "All publishers end up looking more similar than different. That makes separating the real from the fake even harder," said Chayka.
Also at Google and TechCrunch.
Google promises publishers an alternative to AMP
Google's AMP project is not uncontroversial. Users often love it because it makes mobile sites load almost instantly. Publishers often hate it because they feel like they are giving Google too much control in return for better placement on its search pages. Now Google proposes to bring some of the lessons it learned from AMP to the web as a whole. Ideally, this means that users will profit from Google's efforts and see faster non-AMP sites across the web (and not just in their search engines).
Publishers, however, will once again have to adopt a whole new set of standards for their sites, but with this, Google is also giving them a new path to be included in the increasingly important Top Stories carousel on its mobile search results pages.
"Based on what we learned from AMP, we now feel ready to take the next step and work to support more instant-loading content not based on AMP technology in areas of Google Search designed for this, like the Top Stories carousel," AMP tech lead Malte Ubl writes today. "This content will need to follow a set of future web standards and meet a set of objective performance and user experience criteria to be eligible."
Also at Search Engine Land and The Verge.
Related: Kill Google AMP Before It Kills the Web
Google Acquires Relay Media to Convert Ordinary Web Pages to AMP Pages
Google Bringing Accelerated Mobile Pages to Email
Web consultant Barry Adams has written a blog post about the problem with Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) and how to fight against it being shoehorned into the WWW.
Let’s talk about Accelerated Mobile Pages, or AMP for short. AMP is a Google pet project that purports to be “an open-source initiative aiming to make the web better for all”. While there is a lot of emphasis on the official AMP site about its open source nature, the fact is that over 90% of contributions to this project come from Google employees, and it was initiated by Google. So let’s be real: AMP is a Google project.
Google is also the reason AMP sees any kind of adoption at all. Basically, Google has forced websites – specifically news publishers – to create AMP versions of their articles. For publishers, AMP is not optional; without AMP, a publisher’s articles will be extremely unlikely to appear in the Top Stories carousel on mobile search in Google.
And due to the popularity of mobile search compared to desktop search, visibility in Google’s mobile search results is a must for publishers that want to survive in this era of diminishing revenue and fierce online competition for eyeballs.
If publishers had a choice, they’d ignore AMP entirely. It already takes a lot of resources to keep a news site running smoothly and performing well. AMP adds the extra burden of creating separate AMP versions of articles, and keeping these articles compliant with the ever-evolving standard.
So AMP is being kept alive artificially. AMP survives not because of its merits as a project, but because Google forces websites to either adopt AMP or forego large amounts of potential traffic.
And Google is not satisfied with that. No, Google wants more from AMP. A lot more.
AMP is also purported to throw in an 8-second delay to punish those that do not toe the line.
Earlier on SN:
Google Attempting to Standardize Features of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) (2018)
Kill Google AMP Before It Kills the Web (2017)
Google may be relinquishing control of its controversial Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project:
The project has been led by Malte Ubl, a senior staff engineer working on Google's Javascript infrastructure projects, who has until now held effective unilateral control over the project.
In the wake of all of this criticism, the AMP project announced today that it would reform its governance, replacing Ubl as the exclusive tech lead with a technical steering committee comprised of companies invested in the success in the project. Notably, the project's intention has an "...end goal of not having any company sit on more than a third of the seats." In addition, the project will create an advisory board and working groups to shepherd the project's work.
The project is also expected to move to a foundation in the future. These days, there are a number of places such a project could potentially reside, including the Apache Software Foundation and the Mozilla Foundation.
The AMP Contributor Summit 2018 will take place at Google in Mountain View, California on September 25 and 26, 2018.
Previously: Kill Google AMP Before It Kills the Web
Google Acquires Relay Media to Convert Ordinary Web Pages to AMP Pages
Google Bringing Accelerated Mobile Pages to Email
Google Attempting to Standardize Features of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Google AMP Can Go To Hell
(Score: 5, Insightful) by TheGratefulNet on Wednesday March 27 2019, @05:39PM (16 children)
executable stuff in email?
no thanks.
never. not even once.
I turn off all images in email since that can be used against you (tracking). do I really want executable code in my mail?
NO FUCKING WAY.
google, you really are the house of losers, these days. when did we reach peak-google, btw? they lost their minds at least 5 years ago.
break up that company. they are out of control and getting worse by the year.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @05:46PM (1 child)
no shit
i already get emails with & & embedded in it. i dont have images or html enabled either in email.
why do people put up with this
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday March 27 2019, @10:25PM
Sometimes, we don't get a choice.
Businesses say "It's my way or the highway."
Most of us will simply click "I agree" to anything.
Instead of thinking "I really don't want the thing that much."
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @06:07PM (5 children)
break up that company. they are out of control and getting worse by the year.
Didn't know they had a monopoly on email... One thing I know about gmail, I get what I pay for.
There are email clients and browsers that just download text, right? Anybody tried using Links?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @08:00PM (4 children)
They're getting pretty close. Soon they could collude with the few other large providers and flush as spam any mail from sources outside that oligarchy. Already my mail tends to get deposited into Gmail user's spam folder. Then recently I was surprised how many universities around the world had signed up with Micro$oft's shitty service, and the registration emails from our conference submissions system was just outright blocked by M$, not even put into user's spam folders. The unsuspecting users would never have known what was going on, but our people had happened to be at a conference together with some of the people who tried to register but weren't getting account info, and we could check up on the process in person.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @08:13PM (2 children)
Sounds like people should quit using gmail then... As long as Google can't cut off your internet connection, you have nothing to worry about.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @09:02PM (1 child)
Note that I said M$ was worse than gmail - M$ just bounced mail to valid recipients, without input from the recipients themselves.
Now how are you going to avoid them, if you need to collaborate with users who are either clueless to use these services, or had their organizations abandon their own email systems and migrate the lot to the oligarchs?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28 2019, @04:06AM
Oh well, looks like you gotta reach out a little. There are still alternatives. There is no monopoly outside of service provision. Work on that angle and everything else will fall into place.
I have to ask, were you alive before there was gmail? Was there even life before gmail?
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday March 28 2019, @04:01AM
I have an ebay account with a specific search notification set up, so I get occasional emails from them.
I use Thunderbird in plain text mode, and starting a few months ago, there is no plain text section in them anymore, the emails are just html.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @06:08PM
They lost their minds around the time they turned their search into "find as you type" nonsense (since dropped again). So, a lot longer than 5 years ago, try 15. You could argue they never lost their mind, they never quite possessed one but were not in the position to really show off their lack of mind until the dreaded onset of the nu-web (2.0).
(Score: 4, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Wednesday March 27 2019, @06:50PM (3 children)
I want to mod you up beyond +5. My initial reaction two sentences in: no effin way.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by canopic jug on Wednesday March 27 2019, @06:59PM (2 children)
No choice for those using web mail. Notice that Google has been doing everything it can to eliminate IMAPS clients? If they get enough control over their portion of the market, they will be able to write their own specifications to replace the established standards. They are big enough that, when they decide to, everyone else will have to play ball. They'll have enough control soon and make their move then. A premature grab would blow it for them so until they can pull the trap, they're just ratcheting up the incompatibilities with e-mail in general.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday March 27 2019, @07:15PM (1 child)
Emulation FTW! We can fake anything...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @11:25PM
But once we're faking everything, will anyone remember what reality used to be?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday March 27 2019, @07:33PM (1 child)
We reached peak-google just before they added tabs to the Google Search page circa 2001, or at the very latest when they added the navigation bar in 2007. I just want a dumb search page that doesn't load things unnecessarily. 50% of the reason I jumped on the duckduckgo.com bandwagon was their simple interface, with the other 50% being their privacy policy. The reason google became the monster it is, was because all the other search pages had bling.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28 2019, @12:11PM
I've made the shift from duckduckgo to startpage. I also use Ecosia, because I want to "OMG! plant a tree while you search!", but the results are shit results from Bing.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday March 27 2019, @10:45PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday March 27 2019, @05:39PM (3 children)
Somehow I don't think this can end well. A well is very deep, that's where it will end.
What's next? Emails that can include executable content? (JavaScript is already that, but I'm thinking native OS executables.)
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @05:46PM
The web browser is the native OS.
All the cool desktop apps are just wrappers of Chrome running JavaScript.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by TheGratefulNet on Wednesday March 27 2019, @05:46PM
google serves one master: its business model.
this is the only reaon for them doing this kind of crap. no user ever asked for this and no organization really wants this.
google wants this.
fuck google.
(I wonder: can we fund a project that puts 'moles' into google as employees, with the sole goal of causing harm to bad standards like this? I am pretty sure the government has hired moles to get is dirty work done on the sly; wouldn't it be cool if we had those tools to our disposal? there are a lot of evil projects that should be nuked. well, I can dream, can't I?)
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @08:55PM
Now that M$ is using Google's rendering engine maybe Google can license ActiveX from M$ and make it a "web standard" (that is, supported only in Chrome and copypasta). Sounds like it'd be right up their alley.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @05:44PM (2 children)
Something I always missed in Email spam was dynamics. Those spam mails are so much more boring than the advertisements that plaster web sites.
I guess those dynamic emails also provide much better tracking ability. I always was concerned that companies might not track me efficiently enough.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28 2019, @12:09AM (1 child)
dancing baloney
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28 2019, @04:48AM
FTFY or at least citation added https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_pigs [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @05:53PM (1 child)
... for now. I guess I'm going back to Tbird for my mail reader.
(Score: 2) by GlennC on Thursday March 28 2019, @12:19AM
Some of us never left it.
Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday March 27 2019, @05:54PM (2 children)
So...this allows Google to track all of these emails, even if they don't touch any gmail addresses, right? And lets them see if you've opened it or not, and collect metrics like how long you looked at it and where your mouse was moving at the time...because it all gets routed through their own cache servers.
What happens to those of us who block Google at the firewall? Assuming Thunderbird would actually attempt to open these someday...I kinda hope they don't...
AMP in general is supposed to be at least partially open, with other providers allowed to create their own AMP caches, yet according to TFS Google is limiting who is allowed to send these mails, so that would seem to indicate that AMP for email is restricted to only Google cache servers? Sounds like EEE to me...
(Score: 2) by progo on Wednesday March 27 2019, @06:31PM (1 child)
My understanding is that professional developers ignored it because it looked like a proprietary lock-in gambit.
HTML 4 with no other capabilities -- that's all the accelerated mobile pages I need. If you need emails that lead to actions, hyperlink to a web service. That's what web services are for.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday March 27 2019, @06:45PM
As they should...
But according to the Wiki page at least, Cloudflare has an AMP cache as well. And it sounds like anyone could build their own in theory. So if Google is controlling who can use this AMP for email stuff, then there must be some additional lock-in here. Potentially the implementation of this isn't open, and Google may be contractually obligating the services that support it to only use Google caches....perhaps instead of the usual "...BUT WITH A COMPUTER!" idiocy, Google claims some IP on AMP "...BUT THROUGH EMAIL!"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bob_super on Wednesday March 27 2019, @06:02PM
Everyone with a clue says : NO.
Google cares about the >98% without a clue
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Wednesday March 27 2019, @06:26PM (1 child)
I just synced my gmail with thunderbird. Gotta love Gb internet, IMAP is very slow.....
Nonetheless, Thunderbird does not display HTML unless you allow it , so I'm *hoping* that this AMP junk will get filtered.
However, there are uses for this technology - document editing (their blog highlighted this) is probably the only *useful* one - but I'll remain cynical until we find out otherwise...
Anyone else have more insight into +ve uses?
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday March 27 2019, @06:49PM
Even if you allowed Thunderbird to display the HTML, I'm pretty sure it STILL wouldn't be able to display this stuff. The HTML that is allowed in email is pretty restrictive right now, so it wouldn't allow all the Javascript and other crap that would be required for AMP. Thunderbird would likely need to make some changes to their rendering engine in order to allow this through. So keep an eye on the patch notes for future updates...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ledow on Wednesday March 27 2019, @06:31PM (6 children)
"That means you'll be able to RSVP to an event right from the message, fill out a questionnaire, browse through a store's inventory or respond to a comment — all without leaving your web-based email client."
The web-based email client... that's running in a browser... and is more than capable of opening any website you link to in an email... and more than capable of doing all those things...
But, obviously, without the glory of "holy shit, that's yet another vulnerability, XSS flaw, claim-of-fraudulent-origin, etc. problem we didn't think about!".
P.S. how's that gonna work when I use IMAP to collect my email?
It's literally the worst idea I can think of, and if it becomes standard I will just switch my domain forwarding again to flip back to my own damn mailserver without that kind of crap.
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Wednesday March 27 2019, @06:45PM (3 children)
if this ever really takes off and becomes popular, I would expect to see proxy sites that will strip this SHIT from the stream and deliver pure static text-only emails to those who understand that email NEEDS to be secure and trustable.
I already block images and jscript. and I refuse to use my phone to read emails that are not from known sources or friends. (is there any android email client that will NOT auto-open and run non-text emails? I have not found one yet; would love to dump k9mail if there is such a thing as secure old-school email readers for android).
tbird is how I deal with email while at home; it won't run crap or display images unless I say so, and that's the only way I can trust email clients.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by urza9814 on Wednesday March 27 2019, @06:54PM
Is the problem with K9 mail that it does auto-open stuff for you, or is the problem just that you don't like the UI?
I use "K9 Material", which IIRC is basically K9 with a skin. It does use the HTML version of messages, but it won't display images or run any code by default.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Thursday March 28 2019, @03:46AM (1 child)
1) Install Termux, then
2) Install alpine
Can't get much more old school than that. Granted I can't say for sure how well this will work as I haven't used Termux that much for more than quick SSH sessions when I don't have access to a real computer, but I don't see why it wouldn't work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28 2019, @10:41AM
Care to point out where one can get a native android copy of alpine?
my g.fu (which could be defective, I've had issues recently which I'm putting down to script fuckwittery blocking I'm doing) isn't showing one anywhere....sure, I can ssh from termux into another machine and run it from there (been there, done that...a lot), but that ain't what was asked for by the other poster.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Apparition on Wednesday March 27 2019, @07:19PM
Silly goose. IMAP? That is so early aughts. Everyone uses webmail now! It is so much better for advert.... Err... I mean, our customers! You can even make your e-mail messages look so pretty with pink handwriting fonts and everything! Here, let's disable the IMAP ports so you will have to use our webmail. There, isn't that better?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday March 27 2019, @10:42PM
What's wrong with POP3 or even UUCP? (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @09:01PM
look at the example image
it's a video demo of a pinterest email in which the user navigates some pinterest subpages within the email
this is HORRIFYING and I would block and posddsibly unsub whatever managed to get something like this onto my screen
and this is their prototype example to demo the best case! that's like having racist results topmost in an example of a search service... "suckers and fools, come hither"
UGH
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @09:03PM (2 children)
oops - see last AC post - example image at: https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/13/amp-for-email-is-a-terrible-idea/ [techcrunch.com] which is a brilliant analysis, Soylentilworthy.
hmm, why won't SN let me post?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 27 2019, @09:10PM
can someone give like, 'editor points' to whoever in the sub-to-frontpage chain decided to include the snippet with this link in the summary btw? because that is gold and better than every other ref so choosing to excerpt it is A+ deserves recognition and encouragement high5 3 etc for saving from the drudge of worse ideas on the issue. That writer's metaphors are solid clear and correct, gold gold gold.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28 2019, @01:22PM
From that article:
Well, Web pages were originally meant to be on the same side of the moat as email: To say things. And most of the security issues that we have with the web are caused by the fact that it was later moved over to the other side, starting with JavaScript.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday March 27 2019, @10:56PM (1 child)
I don't do EMAIL. But my son, Don Jr. is a big fan of the EMAIL. Although, he gets into a lot of trouble with that. And I'm hearing from so many people that EMAIL is the future. That there's going to be big money in EMAIL. Because the kids now, they're EMAILing all the time. And they're growing up, very quickly. They don't send telegram, they EMAIL. They don't talk on the phone, they EMAIL. They don't write letters, they EMAIL. The EMAIL, for our young people, is the cool new thing. Something that Bill/Microsoft realized before anybody. You want to make an appointment with a young person, you don't put it in your appointment book. Your At-A-Glance, does anyone remember those? Possibly I'm the only one that remembers. Because, it's all digital now. Microsoft Digital. The EMAIL goes. And bing, bing, bing, your meeting is set up.
Microsoft EMAIL is the best by far. As everyone knows. And that's something nobody ever thought would change. But, look at W.W.W. Used to be, that was all Microsoft. Nobody thought it would change. But, Google changed it. And they're almost taking over W.W.W. And sometimes you go to a W.W.W., it says "designed for Microsoft." But, it looks terrible. And it doesn't "click" the way it's supposed to, why? Because you don't have the Microsoft digital, that's why. You have Google cyber -- and it was a long time before you even knew. They copied it almost perfectly. Looks almost as good, works almost as good -- almost the same -- for less money. They make the money back on the other end, the commercials. They have your report cards from when you were a kid, they show a different commercial if you had a lot of tardies versus, if you were always on time. Things like that.
And now Google is getting into EMAIL. Totally changing it into, now it's a Google thing, you can't use your Microsoft anymore. You throw away your Microsoft, you get on Google for your EMAIL and it's a whole other thing that you've never seen in your entire life. Very exciting and I hope they remembered us over 25 year olds. So many companies forget because, frankly, the under 25s are the most profitable. Big money saver for us if they make the EMAIL super easy for us. Because then we can fire our beautiful young secretaries. If we want to, right? I'll tell you, maybe I won't fire mine. I mean, I love money as much as anybody. But I also love an incredible set of curves!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28 2019, @12:13AM
I have a nice set of French Curves I could send you.
(Score: 2) by DavePolaschek on Thursday March 28 2019, @01:38PM
What's that saying about "If you're not paying for the service, you're the product, not the customer." ?
A bunch of fairly smart friends kept telling me how great gmail is, "And it's free!"
I'm pretty happy to pay for my email. Not especially happy that my provider is working on JMAP [fastmail.blog], since "JSON and HTTP as the basis of JMAP was always a key point," but I can live with that as long as they don't yoink IMAP out from under me.