It was the main introduction to email for a lot of Australians, they’ve been using it as is for 15-20 years.
It’s more than just one generation that uses it, I know people in their thirties who use theirs via the Gmail app as with any long-term email their is no need to change address.
I remember only signing up to Gmail because it felt new and techy.
It used to be quite a big deal, back in the day. The other day I read a really old thread on some local forum here in NL, and it said that you couldn’t sign up with an “anonymous” email address, such as hotmail or gmail. Only provider-issued email addresses were accepted there so “they had an idea who they were dealing with”. Times really did change a lot.
Users will keep their exisiting (sic) email addresses on this service, and would get it free for the first year. After that, there will be options of paying for a service, or an ad-based free service after that.
So, what’s the problem, exactly? Just take the ad-based free service. Gmail, Yahoo, etc. are ad-based free services too. Nobody is forcing them to change anything.
People who use the default email their ISP gives them don’t like change. The new service will probably have a different login screen and that’s going to upset aunty Ethel and uncle ron. And then a different colour background. It’s the worst thing that anyone could ever do to them
An older family member of mine rang yesterday asking about what to do after they read the announcement.
I have been telling them for years to change to a proper provider but they weren’t interested. I told them this would eventually happen, but the change wasnt worth the hassle for them.
Now the change is forced and its just increased the stress.
Im hoping the prospect of only being a year for free then ad based means I can just get them onto fastmail or something that I can administer.
Sure, but the core complaint of the article – that folks are forced to changed ALL their e-mail based authentication to a new address – is without merit.
Yeah, my mom has been using AOL.com since the 90s. When the dedicated client went away, I pointed her at mail.aol.com and she was fine. She’s still using it today.
Anyone who had a bookmark set to their webmail years ago will need a younger person to fix it. Same with anyone who had Outlook, Thunderbird, whatever configured for them will have to start using webmail. If someone doesn’t have younger family in the area they will be fucked. My own mother gets thrown way off by the slightest changes.
I’m not apologizing for boomers never investing in actually learning how computers work (for some, they’ve had decades of time). Just illustrating some of the hurdles.
My father was a mechanical engineer with fucking patents. I’m convinced he could have learned much more than he did. He just relinquished any notion that he could and that then played out. How many times did I tell him to click on the Apple menu only to have him ask (yet again), “What’s that?”
i am not a boomer and i am also pissed when firefox upgrade decides to unilaterally change the installed theme to something that looks like shit and i can’t find the old one. so i kinda do understand aunty ethel.
Visual Studio Code did this somewhat recently, but had the foresight to let you switch back to the old theme in a notification when first opening it after the update. I ended up sticking with the new theme since it was nice, but I know plenty of people who stuck with the old one.
I used to see this a lot with Facebook. Every time they altered the design people would kick up a fuss and I never understood why, the new design always looked far better.
Nowadays of course I don’t use Facebook but will occasionally have to sign in to look up the details of a business or something. The design has of course changed and I can’t find a damn thing on it. So I’m finally on board with the masses.
I can understand the pain, though. Moving accounts to a new email is not a fun process. Especially if someone has an email for years, decades even, that’s a lot of stuff that could be registered with that email. And trying to save emails isn’t necessarily straightforward. Migration, if it’s even available, isn’t foolproof or easy, either.
While I’ve grown up with the Internet, I think I’ve only changed my main email like 3 times over ~30yrs. The last time I did it was over a decade ago, to Gmail from my family’s then ISP-based email. I think I’m way overdue to do it again, at least moving my important accounts like banking and government stuff to a new email address, but it’s just so time consuming.
And I say all this as a tech person. I work in IT. For someone who’s not particularly tech savvy, forget about it.
I’m about the same. Last switch was yahoo to Gmail and now I’m in the process of switching from Gmail to Proton Mail. The most difficult part was the mental switch - which email you start giving out when you sign up. Second was migrating services. I made it a point for a while each time I logged into something knew I would switch the primary email. Its been a long process!
YSK: Aunty Ethel isn’t with Uncle Ron anymore. She’s with Herman now. They fell out over her planting sunflowers in the yard instead of begonias. Ron smashed her garden gnome in anger and that was it for them.
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