I used to believe “Don’t be evil.” I think for a while, Google did, too. They were the good guys with the best search. Now they’re just a terrible company that happens to own the roads.

It started with a simple promise: finding things. In the early web, we had choices. AltaVista. Lycos. WebCrawler. I was an AltaVista guy. A friend swore by Lycos. We’d argue about it. It was a frontier, and we were exploring it with different maps.

Then Google’s map became the only one that mattered. It was just better. More up to date. We all switched. We didn’t know we were helping them build an authoritarian empire.

I’m not here to recite Google’s history. I’m here to talk about how they broke one of the internet’s most basic tools: email.

I fell for Gmail, just like everyone else. I was juggling a janky Hotmail account and jumped at the chance to get a clean address with my name. When people muttered about Google being evil, I shrugged. The service was free and worked. What was the harm?

The harm was slow. My relationship with Google soured through a thousand paper cuts. It went from love, to love-hate, to the pure, simmering disdain I have today.

---

Their greatest sin isn’t their search engine. It’s how they weaponized email.

They used their market dominance to steer the entire email industry into a corner. They implemented aggressive spam filtering that, combined with their market dominance, became the de facto standard. If Google's systems flagged your server, you were effectively blocked from reaching a huge portion of email users.

Suddenly, your ability to send an email wasn’t just about following the technical rules of the internet. It was about whether Google approved of you.

You are not authorized because Google does not say you are.

That’s why it’s a nightmare to run your own email server today. That’s why good, simple, self-hosted email is so rare. Google built a wall around the garden and convinced everyone the outside world was a dangerous slum.

I'm going to get technical here for a second but it is important.

The email protocol remained open, but Google's interpretation of anti-spam measures became so dominant that running your own server now means passing their tests. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC weren't Google inventions, but their enforcement of these standards, combined with their opaque reputation scoring, made self-hosting nearly impossible for individuals.

For clarity, spam was a real problem that needed solving. But instead of solutions that kept email decentralized, Google built a system where they became the arbiter. Their scale meant their rules became everyone's rules.

They are the homeowners association with absolute power.

You weren't just fighting spam anymore, you were fighting for Google's approval.

Email should be simple. It was designed to be. But Google made it one of the most complicated systems to run, not because of technology, but because of politics.

They didn’t just build a better product. They broke the system for everyone else. And we all let them do it because it was convenient.

---

Well, screw them.

I’m tired of capitulating because it’s easier. I'm tired of opening up an email client and seeing ads, why the hell did that become normal?

Today, I’m setting up my own web server to move everything off the crappy host I’ve been stuck with for far too long, the same one that’s been handling my personal email. I went with them because they were cheap. They screwed up last night, and that was it. I’m done.

Once the web’s sorted, I’m spinning up my own mail server. No middlemen. No gatekeepers.

There are still paths for people who want to take control back. I’ll document every step, and when it’s running, I’ll open it up for others who want out of Google’s grip.

I’m getting off Gmail.

No, it’s not easy.

But I’m done dealing with their bullshit.

None of us should.

« Previous Entry | Next Entry »