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Microsoft Privacy The Internet Windows

Microsoft Improves Gmail Experience For Windows 10 Insiders, But There Are Privacy Concerns (betanews.com) 70

Posted by msmash from the potentially-controversial dept.
Reader BrianFagioli writes: Today, Microsoft announced a new Gmail experience for Windows 10. While only available for Windows Insiders as of today, it uses the same concept as the Outlook mobile app, but for the Mail and Calendar apps. Microsoft will provide you with an arguably improved experience as long as you are OK with storing all of your Gmail messages in Microsoft's cloud. What types of features will the new experience offer? Things such as tracking packages, getting updated on your favorite sports teams, and a focused inbox. "To power these new features, we'll ask your permission to sync a copy of your email, calendar and contacts to the Microsoft Cloud. This will allow new features to light up, and changes to update back and forth with Gmail -- such as creation, edit or deletion of emails, calendar events and contacts. But your experience in Gmail.com or apps from Google will not change in any way."
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Microsoft Improves Gmail Experience For Windows 10 Insiders, But There Are Privacy Concerns More

Microsoft Improves Gmail Experience For Windows 10 Insiders, But There Are Privacy Concerns

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  • No more "BetaNews" submissions, please! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Slashdot editors, can you please stop putting these "BetaNews" submissions on the front page?

    These submissions are by far some of the worst ones that end up on the front page.

    "BetaNews" is linked to from a submission almost every day! [slashdot.org] Hell, it was linked to twice on March 31, and from three submissions on March 25!

    If want wanted to read "BetaNews" articles, which we don't, we would go directly to that site instead of coming to Slashdot!

    Please stop putting mediocre content from "BetaNews" on the Slashdot fro

    • Slashdot editors, can you please stop putting these "BetaNews" submissions on the front page?

      These submissions are by far some of the worst ones that end up on the front page.

      "BetaNews" is linked to from a submission almost every day! [slashdot.org] Hell, it was linked to twice on March 31, and from three submissions on March 25!

      If want wanted to read "BetaNews" articles, which we don't, we would go directly to that site instead of coming to Slashdot!

      Please stop putting mediocre content from "BetaNews" on the Slashdot front page, especially when it appears to be the authors of the articles who are submitting them here!

      Please, no more "BetaNews" at Slashdot!

      I agree, but you missed the opportunity to call out "Reader BrianFagioli".

  • To power these new features, we'll ask your permission to sync a copy of your email, calendar and contacts to the Microsoft Cloud.

    So they're going to copy your data from one cloud to another.

    When will the madness stop?

    Clouds... apps.... hosts... files.... must resist madn....... MOO!!!!

    • To power these new features, we'll ask your permission to sync a copy of your email, calendar and contacts to the Microsoft Cloud.

      So they're going to copy your data from one cloud to another.

      When will the madness stop?

      Hopefully before Joni Mitchell can look at both sides [jonimitchell.com], 'cause she doesn't really know clouds at all.

      • Microsoft may have Paved Paradise and Made it a Parking Lot; but I would've mentioned Judy Collins' rather than Joni Mitchell - Mitchell wrote it, but Collins released the first recording.

  • Microsoft Has An Odd Obsession With The Cloud... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dryriver ( 1010635 ) on Friday April 21, 2017 @05:42PM (#54279497)
    Yes, I get it. Satya Nadella is from Microsoft's Cloud Division so all things MS/Windows 10 have to go "cloud" now and of course all your dataz haz to bee in ze Maikrozoft Klaud az zoon az pozzible. But here's my question: If Windows 10 as an OS cannot be trusted with very basic Privacy - phoning home all the time and such - why on earth would I put all my Gmails in the Microsoft Cloud? If I cannot trust your OS sitting on my own harddrive, why would I trust your Cloud sitting on your servers somewhere? Can you trust Google more than Microsoft? I don't know the answer to that. All I know is - if Windows 10 isn't private, your Cloud service probably isn't very private either. My 2 Cents.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Dracos ( 107777 )

      This isn't even about cloud, this is about capturing user data so MS can mine it. MS is desperate for user data which is why they bought Skype, LinkedIn, and to a lesser degree MineCraft.

      I guarantee gmail content will be used to feed ads to the desktop. That's their goal.

      • Re:Microsoft Has An Odd Obsession With The Cloud.. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by dryriver ( 1010635 ) on Friday April 21, 2017 @06:00PM (#54279569)
        And I suspect that Windows as an OS is dying slowly, to be replaced by Android/iOS powered computing devices in the next 5 years. So Microsoft desperately needs a new "Windows" like platform - this time it is the Microsoft Cloud. They are trying desperately to shift all your shit into the Cloud, so you become DEPENDENT on using the Cloud. Once Microsoft has you in the Cloud, they will push SAAS - Software As A Service - on you hard. There won't be any significant "software" sitting on your harddrive anymore. Just little front-end "Apps" - essentially just GUIs - that connect to a cloud server back end. Of course you will have to "rent" those apps just like you have to with Adobe/Autodesk software. This means that you will have to provide things like credit card data to Microsoft, which of course Microsoft will datamine and sell to Big Data companies for a lot of money. Its "1984", just that this time, 1984 happens "in the Cloud".

        • What I don't get is why Google doesn't bring more of its apps to Windows. While I realize Chrome is a platform for Google apps, I'd love to have a Windows version of the actual GMail app for my Windows tablet, rather than the pretty shitty built-in Windows Mail app.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          I don't think Windows as an OS is just dying, I think in their arrogant stupidity M$ are killing it. They seem to have this whole destructive management circle jerk going on, where the customers are stupid, gullible idiots who will accept any exploitation what so ever and who are not entitled to any privacy what so ever and ever worse, all small and medium businesses should have their proprietary secrets opened up to M$ for exploitation.

          Think how badly M$ has performed, they had a massive lead over Google

      • I haven't seen any full blown desktop apps yet

    • It's simple, really: Miscreant-o-soft understands that the average computer user is not very smart, and couldn't really understand the issues at hand even if you sat them down and spent as much time as your cared to explaining it to them. However, since Miscreant-o-soft is giving them something (ostensibly) worth hundreds of dollars for FREE (i.e., Windows 10), and since Miscreant-o-soft is telling them it's SAFER and MORE SECURE, the average sheep with a computer is going to believe them, not weird geeky c

  • Those who don't object to gmail won't object to this, and MS eats a share of Google's gmail lunch. I'm surprised it took them this long. Not that I'll be using this or anything, but I admire this move from the surveillance as a service perspective.

    • I always knew that SAAS sounded kind of "surveillancy". =) Of course if the real product is YOU, then it should be called YAAS - YOU As A Service. 10 more years of this and nobody will know who is the product, who is the service a who is the server anymore. =)
  • Remember what a great man said sometime back. "Fool me once shame on you, Fool me twice, .. no you can't fool me."

  • Is it Google sanctioned? (Score:3)

    by HalAtWork ( 926717 ) on Friday April 21, 2017 @05:58PM (#54279555)

    Or will you get cut off when Google changes something on their end?

    • It is probably using the same specification that allows any application to serve up Gmail and Calendar.

    • Or will you get cut off when Google changes something on their end?

      At the very least you "should" get an email telling you of changes, where you get to ya or na it.

  • Letting one corporate giant rifle through your personal email is bad enough. Letting two of them? Why? "I have a hole in my head. Let me improve it by drilling another hole in the head"!!!! How can that be an improvement?

    • You don't understand, everyone loves the cloud. CIOs love the cloud. In the past you wouldn't get fired for chosing IBM, now you won't get fired for cloud. So what does Microsoft do? Not one cloud but two clouds. A cloud within a cloud. A cloudception. We've created our data lakes which caused some localised fog computing and pushed all that up to the cloud. It only makes sense to add some more clouds otherwise we could never get the data out. You need clouds over clouds to get data rain, and then the logic

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      Letting one corporate giant rifle through your personal email is bad enough. Letting two of them? Why? "I have a hole in my head. Let me improve it by drilling another hole in the head"!!!! How can that be an improvement?

      More like if you don't care that the patio door is open, opening your bedroom window doesn't make much of a difference. Your data is as secure as the least secure place you keep them. If that's "in the cloud", well you don't care much if the thief uses the door or the window. If you keep your data in three vaults, it's still pretty secure same as one vault. If you keep your data in three clouds, it's still pretty insecure same as one cloud. It's the people thinking well I share my data with Google but at le

  • What exactly is wrong with just using IMAP & SMTP? We don't need "apps" for any of this.

    • Because there's nothing I love better than entering in SMTP and IMAP commands into a Telnet window to retrieve email!

      • That is because you assume that "Apps" are the same as "Applications" or "Programs". That isn't really the case: "Apps" come from the mobile space and are usually touch optimized dumbed down versions. Often they are just fronts for web applications, instead of full native applications. Applications or programs like Thunderbird are not "Apps", they stand on their own and talk SMTP and IMAP and are compatible with all servers that speak these open protocols. That is inherently superior than proprietary "Ap
  • Dear MS,

    I'd go through great lengths to not having anything to do with you.
    The day you bought hotmail I jumped.
    Do you really think I'd hand you over control to my email?
    Stop sniffing glue!

    Sincerely
  • Its in the top-right corner of my browserand IT KNOW THAT I AM HERE SHITTING ON IT. Microsoft has my Gmail's... They know EVERYTHING about me... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH... 1984 - 1984 - 1984 - 1984....

  • "Microsoft Improves Gmail Experience For Windows 10 Insiders..."

    Uh-oh.

    I've had enough experience with Microsoft's 'improvements' to know that it's going to be a huge clusterfuck of usability and privacy problems.

  • This is asking for headaches and issues because you're forcing all of your mail and calendar/contact data to get stored TWICE and synced properly and rapidly between both entities consistently, at all times. Twice the risk of something going wrong with 2 major points of failure in the mix.

  • It's bizarre to me that so many commenters seem to trust Google more than Microsoft. I get not trusting either of them. I don't understand trusting Google.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You know what's really bizarre? The ignorance of people like you that think Microsoft is to be trusted.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%29#/media/File:Prism_slide_5.jpg

      In fact, Microsoft was the very first company to sign up.

      According to The Guardian, NSA had access to chats and emails on Hotmail.com, Skype, because Microsoft had “developed a surveillance capability to deal” with the interception of chats, and “[f]or Prism collection against Microsoft email servic

  • 'nuff said.

  • I use Autoruns to disable Microsoft Windows mail then bring a shortcut to the desktop for Forte Agent (from a different drive).
    I've done this since at least NT/Win98, I've never lost any mail, and already setup. And I still have a Hotmail.com account.

  • I've been using Outlook at work for years. The experience is hardly a selling point to lure me away from GMail! I so wish my company would switch to GMail for Business, it's so much easier and more intuitive to use. Not to mention, Outlook stinks at search.

    For all those who think Edge is the best browser, you should probably sign up for this new Microsoft GMail service. For the rest of us, not so much.

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