Why I don't want Gmail as my primary Google Account address

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:32:11 GMT

For years I've had a Google Account. It has a number of my email addresses associated with it, but the one I exposed as the primary address was my main contact address (currently 2010@denny.me - last year, 2009@denny.me - and so on).

I have never used Gmail. When it first came out, I didn't sign up because they wouldn't let me have a 5 letter username (denny). Since then I've not needed it, because for years I've been running my own server, hosting my own domains, and my email all lives there.

When I got my Android phone, suddenly I was forced to sign up for a Gmail account. Why I need an email account from a particular supplier to make the Android Market work, I do not know - the only reason I can think of is a really shitty bit of coding at their end. It doesn't even make sense as a data-harvesting technique, because they already own the market - they don't need to harvest the other end of the emails it sends out.

Maybe they're just using Android as an excuse to drive up Gmail penetration among geeks who've been avoiding it over privacy concerns or whatever. In which case, a hearty FUCK YOU to Google.

Anyway, so I had to sign up for Gmail. As 'dennymeta', because they still don't allow five-letter usernames. At this point, the Gmail address took over my Google Account. It declared itself to be my primary email address, and removed the option I used to have which let me set any of my linked addresses as the primary one.

Why is this bad? Well, (a) it's just fucking annoying. I happen to like owning the domain denny.me, I don't want dennyblah@gmail.com plastered all over any service I use - it's not my fucking email address. It's a shitty generic webmail account that I was forced to sign up for against my will if I wanted my Android phone to work properly. FUCK YOU GOOGLE.

(b) It fucks up my really neat spam avoidance technique of changing my email address every year. dennymeta at gmail is always going to be there, as long as I keep the bloody Google account anyway. That means if spammers harvest it, they're going to be able to make use of it year after year after year, instead of losing me after 12 months maximum as with my current system.

Why would they be able to harvest it though? Surely as long as I don't post it anywhere public, then everything is fine? Well, no. Because Google itself exposes the address, routinely. What's reminded me of this today is a friend sent me an invite to a Google Calendar event. And so an invite turns up with dozens of email addresses in the To: field, including my dennymeta at gmail address. Which (b) exposes it to any virus/trojan that is on any Windows machine that receives that invite, and (a) ISN'T MY FUCKING EMAIL ADDRESS. So now anyone who got that invite who wants to contact me in future, is likely to send email to an address I don't fucking use.

Bastards.

Edited to add: I've just remembered another thing that's a massive fucking cheek on the part of Google too. People keep pointing out to me that you can set your (unwanted) Gmail to 'forward' all your email to an email account you actually use. Well, that's great except for (a) it's not my fucking email address, I didn't want it, I shouldn't have to pander to it, (b) it means when the spambots get hold of it, I've given them a route into my real inbox, and (c) (being my actual point here) when they forward your email to you, they still keep a copy of it on the Gmail servers. Which, frankly, seems a bit fucking rude to me.

All that said, I think my main objection is simply branding, for want of a better word. I have a nice personal vanity domain, which I'm quite fond of. I don't want Google rebranding me as 'a gmail user'. If they let me set my own domain as the primary address, and therefore as the address that gets exposed by things like calendar invites, then I'd be less pissed off about the compulsory Gmail registration and data-hoarding that I had to buy into when I got an Android phone.

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Why I don't want Gmail as my primary Google Account address