You’re not imagining things. Shortly before 2 p.m. ET on Friday, Gmail service (along with Gchat and Google Hangouts) went down, leaving millions of Americans staring at their computers and phones and wondering how in the world they were going to survive the remaining hours of the work week without complaining over Gchat to Mark in accounting about how stupid their new boss is. UPDATE: As of 2:25 p.m., Gmail service is slowly returning to users. We appear to have made it through this brief national crisis. [More]
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If You Don’t Want A Google+ Stranger You’ve Never Met To Email You, Opt Out Now
By 1.10.14
If you’re a Gmail user who likes to keep tight control of your inbox, with nary a missive gone unread, you probably noticed an announcement from Google last night waving the carrot of: “Contact more people you know.” Sounds great! But what it really means is that anyone on Google+ can email you, even if they don’t have your email address. [More]
Why It May Not Be A Bad Thing That Gmail Will Automatically Display Images In Messages
By 12.12.13
If you have a Gmail account, you’re more than familiar with opening a commercial e-mail that looks like a strange wireframe with no images. Then you click “Display images below” and the blanks get filled in and (hopefully) it all makes much more sense. Google announced today that it will now automatically load these images, which is a move that has its pros and cons. [More]
Google Defends Scanning Users’ Emails Because Humans Aren’t Actually Reading Anything
By 9.5.13
Google’s attorneys are having their say in court documents as part of the months-long battle over whether or not it’s okay for Google to read users’ private emails. The company is defending itself against a class action lawsuit filed in May that alleged the company “unlawfully opens up reads, and acquires the content of people’s private email messages.” [More]
Newegg, Gap Beg Customers Not To Relegate Them To Gmail’s ‘Promotions’ Tab
By 8.16.13
Even though some early studies have showed that Gmail’s recent effort to put all of our marketing e-mails in one folder for us hasn’t really affected response rates for the businesses that blast us with e-mails, some companies are desperate to persuade us to keep them in our inboxes. Desperate enough to walk us through changing our e-mail preferences. [More]
Gmail’s Tabbed Layout: Won’t Someone Think Of The Marketers?!
By 8.15.13
Back in May, Gmail introduced a new way to sort our inboxes, automatically assigning messages to different tabs. The default setting sticks marketing emails into a “promotions” folder that you can ignore entirely if you want to. Seems like a great idea…unless you’re the person sending out those e-mails. [More]
Google: Of Course We’re Going To See What’s In Emails Sent To Gmail Addresses, Don’t Be Silly
By 8.15.13
Raise your hand if you use Gmail. Now look around at your pals, who are ostensibly reading this with you and are perhaps one of 425 million Gmail users. Anyone sending email to those people apparently have no “reasonable expectation” that those communications are confidential, according to a court filing submitted by Google. [More]
What Does It Look Like When Google Hands Your Email Data Over To The Government?
By 7.8.13
When Google looks at your email data, some might picture a scenario out of a romantic comedy starring Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grantjackman. You know, a bunch of employees hovered around a computer screen, laughing and pointing: “Oh god, she emailed him again two minutes later? And she promised she wasn’t crazy? This is good stuff.” The reality is a lot less juicy, but still worth knowing about. [More]
You Can Now E-Mail Your Friends Money Through Gmail
By 5.16.13
While Google has made a big to-do about its new subscription music service, it has allowed a more interesting new wrinkle go virtually unmentioned, as yesterday the company integrated its Google Wallet payment system into Gmail, allowing users to send money to each other via e-mail. [More]
Google Introduces Dead Man’s Switch For Your Accounts
By 4.12.13
More than a decade ago, I had an online friend who abruptly disappeared, not answering e-mails or showing up on any of her favorite sites. Did she lock herself out of her accounts? Did her parents cancel their dialup? Did something happen to her? I never found out, and never would. What if you could prevent that? What if you could send a notice out to all of your contacts after you don’t log in to your accounts for a set period, and “will” your data to someone else? There are workarounds to do this, but now such a feature is built in to Google. [More]
Gmail Decides That Gmail Messages Are Spam
By 1.15.13
Checking his spam folder, Richard was a little surprised at the reason that this mail service, Gmail, gave for tossing one message into the junk pile. How did they determine that he probably didn’t want this message? Well, because the return address was Gmail.com, and “[they’ve] found that lots of messages from gmail.com are spam.” [More]
Gmail Briefly Goes Down, Everyone Proceeds To Freak Out On Social Media As Per Usual
By 12.10.12
It seems that noon is the magical time chosen by the Gmail elves to abruptly shut things down and throw everyone who uses it into a social media tizzy. We at Consumerist were right there with other Gmail users back during the Great Gmail Shutdown Of April 2012 when the site also crashed around noon ET, and today was like a giant flashback. Everyone make it back in once piece? [More]
The Google Algorithm Has Become Self-Aware and Self-Hating
By 10.5.12
Reader golddog has been noticing some unflagged messages/false positives coming from Gmail’s spam filter, but noticed something in his spam box that really, really shouldn’t have been there. It was a message from Google itself, promoting a Google product for sale. The Gmail account that golddog uses on his Android devices flagged this message, naturally, as spam. [More]
Google Apparently Wants To Get Sued Again, Now Including Gmail Content In Search Results
By 8.8.12
Because Google didn’t learn anything from the Google Buzz privacy debacle, the company has now decided to begin testing the integration of users’ Gmail content into general search results. [More]
It Took Half An Hour For Hackers To Totally Shred Tech Journalist's Digital Life
By 8.7.12
Hackers wanted access to technology journalist Mat Honan’s Twitter account. It doesn’t just have 16,000 or so followers, but was tied to Gizmodo’s account, allowing for exponentially more mischief and, above all, lulz. So how did they get access to his account and destroy most of his digital life in the process? Knowledge of how different companies confirm customer identities and how their password retrieval systems work are all that a determined person needs to get into your life and mess everything up. The weakest links in this rather insecure chain? Apple and Amazon. [More]
Brief Gmail Outage Shows Us All How Dependent We Are On One Company
By 4.17.12
Some time around noon ET today (some say it was earlier; Google says it was later), many Gmail users were unable to access their accounts and instead received a message reading “Temporary Error (500).” As to be expected, the world came perilously close to being engulfed in rioting, looting and other fun stuff. [More]
Google Continues Free Voice Calls To U.S. & Canada Through 2012
By 12.14.11
If you use the “Call Phone” function in Gmail’s Chat menu to chat with your phone pals in the U.S. or Canada — or if you’re looking for a free way of doing so — Google has announced it will continue to offer this service for free through the upcoming calendar year. [More]
Google To Yank Gmail BlackBerry App
By 11.11.11
In what appears to be a not-so-subtle nudge to get BlackBerry owners who use Gmail to switch to Android phones, Google announced it’s going to yank the BlackBerry Gmail app away Nov. 22. Those who already own the app can continue using it, but new BlackBerry owners won’t be able to download it after that date. [More]
