Google will discontinue the Basic HTML version of its Gmail service in January 2024.
It’s unclear when Google made the decision to end Basic HTML support – news of which can be found in this support page titled “Use the latest version of Gmail in your browser.” Archive.org’s last capture of the page comes from late 2022, and Google’s own cache has not coughed up info that would identify the date of the change.
The Register asked Google when the decision to end Basic HTML was made, and why.
A spokesperson sent us the following statement:
“The Gmail Basic HTML views are previous versions of Gmail that were replaced by their modern successors 10+ years ago and do not include full Gmail feature functionality.”
Google suggests that not including “full Gmail feature functionality” is the point of the Basic HTML offering. When your correspondent loaded it, Google delivered a warning that it is “designed for slower connections and legacy browsers.”
Intriguingly, when we used Chrome’s Inspect>Network tool to test the HTML page’s load time, it came in at 1200 milliseconds. Full fat Gmail loaded in 700 milliseconds – but then kept loading elements for almost a minute before settling down.
The decision has been criticized by Pratik Patel, who describes himself on Mastodon as “a blind technologist … who finds himself championing #accessibility for fun and necessity.”
“I know many #blind people who use GMail’s HTML view. Not only will they be confused but will be unhappy,” he wrote.
Patel also noted that Google has made Basic HTML view harder to find in recent months – a change he understands now that the feature has been cancelled.
Google is infamous for discontinuing services that – for whatever reasons – don’t meet its goals. Over the years it has killed off favorites like its RSS reader, flops like Wave, projects like Google Code that lost to rival offerings, and invasive ad tech that its peers rejected.
But the Big G has also kept some offerings alive after user uprisings. In 2022, for example, it persisted with the free G Suite legacy edition after fielding many complaints from users who felt they were promised the service would be available in perpetuity.
Google insists it is “committed to making accessibility a core consideration” and lists many accessibility features in Gmail – among them screen reader support and hands-free email.
This made me realize I’m still too dependable on Google’s Gmail, using it in so many places…
I should make work of the complete transfer to thrustworthier locations I have been postponing for so long… All the work this will give me though… 😨
Protonmail might be the easiest to transfer everything to. You can transfer contacts and emails I believe.
I really don’t understand why people love Proton so much. It’s really expensive, requires a non standard client and in the end you’re still using it to communicate via one of the least secure protocols ever with vast majority of people not using Proton.
It’s the other things that come with it that make the price worth it. Like the VPN, password manager, easy built in email aliases (key word easy built in), and drive storage. I paid for several of those solutions separately until combining them into a cheaper and more secure platform.
What’s the total monthly cost for all these services in a package? “Worth” is different to everyone, but I suspect your definition is very different from mine considering I host my email with purely mail for $10/year and use bitwarden for another $10/year.
More than a just money though - I’m very hesitant to switch my calendar and contacts management to proprietary software hosted by company in a different country.
As the saying goes “If you’re not paying for the product you are the product.”
I’ve been using Fastmail for years now. Worth every penny. Doesn’t even come with “extras” other than a little webdav storage space.
Most email providers have free tiers. Try them!Find the one that works best for you. Pay for that.
Running email server only costs them ~$10/year/user. If you use too much, they will pass the costs to you. These guys aren’t trying to become next Gmail. They are just offering great service at reasonable price that covers their expenses and their staff’s time.
+1 for purelymail. It just works, and is everything I need and nothing I don’t. And so cheap.
This, for example I love Proton Pass so far. I completely replaced my Bitwarden with Proton Pass. It (Proton Pass) has built-in 2FA authenticator, password generator, Firefox extension, and email generator to hide my email address.
Not happy with Proton Calendar (pretty basic) or Proton Drive (doesn’t support auto-sync, yet) but I’m patiently waiting for them.
ProtonMail has a free version which is enough for many. Every email you send or receive in Gmail is being collected as data by Google and i don’t want to give my personal data to Google
I’m not defending Google. They are an evil fucking company, but are you not sending any emails to Google either? My point is Proton is charging you for something that makes no difference since your email comes from non Proton servers and goes to non Proton servers most of the time.
And Proton’s free offering is really not useful to most people. Maybe as a short term trial, but certainly not a replacement for main inbox.
Again, we’re not just talking about email. Things like email aliases and other features are what people mainly stick with Proton for. Nobody knows my real email. They all get an instantly generated alias that I can revoke at any time. Plus if I get spam, I will know who leaked my email. Most people do not actually send many personal emails. It’s a secure platform with many benefits.
Correct, aliases are one of the best built-in features. Unlimited aliases costs covers a decent part of the subscription
You just convinced me to get protonmail. Now I gotta learn of its functions and stuff. It will make my month if you’re able to forward emails from gmail, and reply using the same @gmail handle.
You mean aliases that every other email provider has? Even yahoo has had them for years.
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If you are referring to ProtonMail encryption, i think it’s primarily about encryption at rest, so that nobody except you (not even Proton) can read your emails. Unlike other email providers (like Gmail) where the emails could be easily accessed by the email providers whenever they want/need to (like data for ads or legal orders from government etc). While not at rest (i.e., sending/receiving emails), emails between Proton and Gmail are on TLS unless it changed in recent years. If the email is password protected in which case Gmail cannot read the email until you open it with the password
Gmail is the exception because almost 100% of Google’s profit is from ads. Not that other providers of free email service aren’t parsing your emails for AI training or other reasons, but I can’t think of a single paid provider that accesses your email at rest.
skiff is also a good option
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I’d love two email, can you have that in the official app? I’m on some basic (paid) VPN plan of Proton and have an “unsoiled” email address there already :-)
Some alternatives to consider are Protonmail, Tutanota and mailbox.org. I recently migrated some accounts to Tutanota and some others to mailbox.org (mostly accounts that I needed IMAP/SMTP access to) and have enjoyed both, quirks withstanding. It’s a lot of work to migrate, but it feels oddly cleansing.
If you want to get fancy, you can introduce something like AnonAddy(Addy.io)/SimpleLogin and use email aliases for everything. They add another layer of protection for spam and breaches, and also allow for some advanced mailbox filtering. Also, once it’s in an aliasing service, it’s super easy to migrate between email providers (just a check box to choose a different mailbox).
I moved from Gmail recently. Since you need to go around updating all your sites to your new email address anyway it’s worth signing up for an alias service. Personally I went with my own domain hosted on SimpleLogin. I moved all my sites to aliases before moving away from Gmail. It then took less than a minute to update all my aliases to point to my new mailbox provider (Proton). The only site that knows about my new email address is SimpleLogin. I don’t plan on giving out my proton email address to anyone else. If someone needs to email me they’ll get their own alias to send to!
I have my own domain but have been doing my email thru gmail - when i go to check from my webmail the amount of spam is insane. Is there good alternatives that do decent anti-spam. (Been a long time since I checked)
Ditch that email address.
Create a new domain (preferred option) or use one provided by an alias provider (like SimpleLogin). Move all your sites to their own alias. At this point you should be getting no spam at all. If you do though you’ll know which site it came from as they have their own alias. You can simply disable that alias and no more spam.
You don’t need a spam filter anymore!
Interesting but extreme idea! I guess I could have my own alias’ as well. I have used gmails + thing quite a bit. They just make it so darn convenient lol.
I’ve used that in the past until sites stated my email address was invalid because it had a + in it.
Proton owns simple login ( I think ) and any paid plan gives you access to it.
You can just get simple login as well without proton. You can even send emails from the simple login emails so your real email stays Hidden.
I’m sure there are other similar tools out there.
Not any plan. I’m on Mail Plus and that doesn’t include SimpleLogin.
I signed up for SimpleLogin prior to ProtonMail. I don’t need the extra stuff in the Unlimited package.
Correct! Just double checked and th faq says this: you’re subscribed to a Proton Unlimited, Proton for Business, Proton Family, or Proton Visionary (legacy) plan, you’ll receive SimpleLogin Premium for free
I’ll have to look into Proton, thanks!
There’s alternatives like tutanota for email as well which a pretty good reputation.
There used to be a subreddit with some guides.
Mailbox.org is an option as well I think?
Have a look around and se which one you like pricing wise.
Some people do proton. Others mix and match and grab tutanota and a von elsewhere.
Protonmail with simplelogin is very seamless. If you have proton unlimited you get simplelogin premium for free and with their other services with protonvpn I think it’s worth the price. Black friday is coming up so those prices will go on sale soon too.
Why not switch over progressively? Each time I notice a service I’m logging into was registered using my gmail account, I change it (if I’m free).
I’m moving to Proton. Still a couple things that Proton is missing before I can delete my Google account, but I doubt it will be much longer before they’re implemented.
I’m on proton and in the same boat, but the wait could be a while. They’re very focused on expanding their product portfolio, and less focused on making the existing products sing.
This made me realize I’m still too dependable on Google’s Gmail, using it in so many places
I stopped using Gmail for anything outside Google a few years ago. They can track and monitor and analyze that as much as they like because all they see is their own e-mails.
I used to turn off ad-tracking relentlessly, until they decided to then instead start showing me gay apps. And you can call me wrong on it - even though I have no problem for anybody being what they are - I, as a straight male, still feel uncomfortable if apps start opening gay videos for grindr and alike in public transportation and at work. This is the day I started agreeing to them making it… In the end it doesn’t matter if you agree to use it or not, you can be sure the tracking part still happens either way so they’ll have the necessary info to be ready if you ever change your mind (or misclick). Even your Android records snippets of surrounding conversations to turn it into text and store it in your ad profile,…
Just pay someone (or do it yourself) to host your emails.
I have my own domains and can do whatever I please.I just used Bitwarden to transfer all my online accounts to Proton Mail. Granted it was from Tutanota, but I did it before from Gmail to Tutanota.
The new transfer took me my mornings for like two weeks. Glad to have it done.
any opinions on Infomaniak (ik.me)?
Shame, now it won’t be possible to access Gmail from the Nintendo DS Browser.
Bro you used that too
Can you catch me up to speed?
Back in the day a lot of us didn’t have smart phones or computers. But we did have consoles with Internet.
Nintendo Wii had a browser too. Tits in their 480p glory.
Let’s be honest, Gmail, being a Google service, was condemned to have an awful UI which can’t work without loading megabytes of JS into your browser.
The good news are that they still support mail clients, which everyone should be using except for those occasions you’re working from a device you do not own.
The bad news are that Gmail still analyzes your emails in the server side, and uses them to serve you tracking ads and train AI models. So maybe switching providers altogether is a better option for those who have a choice.
Honestly, I think Gmail’s web client is pretty great. It actually has tons of power user features I found very handy in the past (like support for scripting).
I agree. Gmail is great as a desktop client if always open in a browser tab.
Which is probably what they want and what their most loyal users want.
Gmail’s UI is awful unless you are coming from the Outlook webmail client … then it’s freaking amazing.
The default Microsoft mail client I use at work is slower and has less features than the BBS email I used 30 years ago…
have you seen yahoo yet
Or AOL? Bleh.
So maybe switching providers altogether is a better option for those who have a choice
Genuinely curious, how would it not be possible for a person to switch to another provider? Are people really so tied to gmail that they feel it’s impossible to leave?
I have had my Gmail account for 20 years (since the days of needed an invite). I have 100s of accounts where I have used the id. It’s just not possible to change my email id everywhere. I imagine this would be the case for many people.
We’ve had an identical experience. It’s sad to see the enshitification of GMail.
The question is if you still actively use those 100s of accounts. Out of all the things i’ve ever signed up with, I maybe only use a dozen of the services at most. Most of the accounts I created during childhood and teenage years on random websites I will never ever touch or think about again, couldn’t care less if I lose them. Theres like 10-15 accounts that I would need to swap emails to in order to continue on my digital life as normal.
I can vouch for myself and say that I do have hundreds of accounts that are tied to my Gmail. Changing my email would be worse than changing my cell number I’ve used for over 20 years lol
Not really gmails fault this tho, this would be true of any mail provider you’d use for this time spand. That has more to do with how userprofiles on the internet works.
I think most are tied to gmail because of android, browser sync, oauth logins, long time gmail usage (making it hard to migrate), school/work using Google workspace, competitors are unheard of eg. tutanota/protonmail, most people trust gmail account over others (my friend thought my @pm.me account was a spam account) and mainly because gmail just works.
In certain companies, people’s corporate email could be through Gmail (or whatever they’ve name their email services for businesses).
For me Gmail’s killer feature is the spam Blocker. Other email services never get it right, and block to much or to little…
Gmail is slow as fuck on Firefox. And the design also sucks. Just copy outlook like decent email services do.
I don’t really see the accessibility angle with this. Just use an email client built with accessibility in mind. It’s not like Gmail is only available via the web. E-Mail clients have been a thing for longer than browsers.
That’s fine if you haven’t used Gmail for years as a blind person and have tons of archived emails. I don’t see a reason for discontinuing it. I can’t believe it takes a huge amount of effort to maintain.
An additional frontend always brings in the question of “will this backend change break the other frontend?” It’s not so much the maintenence itself, but it may be holding back the main web interface.
I admit I am totally out of my element here, but why can’t you keep updating the main interface and leave the HTML interface virtually as-is? What have they added to Gmail that could not either be replicated or just ignored on the HTML level? Aren’t the protocols still the same? I don’t understand how new code on the front end would make that stop working unless it was a complete overhaul, but I admit I could easily be missing something.
The old HTML and new fancy interfaces both depend on a backend, presumably the same one. But if they want to change anything on the backend, they risk breaking any interface that uses it. So if they ignore it, it’ll probably end up broken.
Interesting. Thanks.
That depends on how they have set everything up. In an ideal world the HTML page just gets its information more or less directly from the mail protocols you’d use with a separate client as well. But speaking from experience the tech is never set up ideally. Not even at billion dollar companies.
Of course, it’s also very likely that they just want to kill the simple interface because they can track more stuff in the JavaScript one.
Stab in the dark here: HTML email is an attack vector that is under constant innovation by those who wish to exploit it. This likely leads to a not insignificant amount of investment by Google just to keep a step ahead of attackers.
This is true of many types of software but most software doesn’t provide a user friendly route to being easily exploited by malicious third parties. In this case that is rendering HTML from unknown sources.
That said, I still agree with your point. Google are a leader in the email space and any serious email service should be providing accessible ways of reading emails in all supported formats if they want to continue to be taken seriously.
The attack vector thing was certainly not an angle I thought about. Thanks.
It’s not like Gmail is only available via the web.
But that’s also their goal. It was about a year ago they killed the ability to use “lesssecureapps”? Now I have to create a new authorization key every ~2 weeks if I want getmail to keep working.
I don’t. I use K-9 btw and it works flawlessly.
But I don’t want to change my mail client, I just need something to replace fetchmail/getmail… I have too many procmail, msmtp, and mutt rules :(
Accessibility is horrible without JS. You should be modifying ARIA tags heavily as the user interacts with the page. I tried to write pages with no JS and realized the needs of the a11y group heavily outweighs the noScript group.
I agree. I really do feel for these people, but with a provider as accessibility friendly as Google, it’s really no different than any other set of people losing a specific brand of service.
I had Outlook already, then created a proton email, and it came in handy when I decided to stop using Gmail. Now I don’t even need to do anything, I have already change email service.
How much work is it to move to proton from gmail for someone who is only mediocre at technology?
The main trouble is the same with switching any email service really.
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You need to update your email everywhere…everywhere… this usually means keeping the old email account alive perpetually just in case you find some old account you didn’t (or can’t) update.
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You need to back up all your old emails. This is usually easy on things like Outlook or Thunderbird or anything similar.
Use an email alias service and you’ll never need to change your email address on sites again in the future. You can change to a new mailbox provider in the future and update all your aliases to point to your new email address within a minute.
so mail forwarding?
Yes, but also no. When I reply to an email my mailbox address is not exposed. The email appears to have come from the alias.
That’s a great solution but still takes a bit to switch to initially. I’m just talking about the switchover, after that using an alias service or having your email on your own domain helps save a lot of pain later.
Yep. It takes a long time to go around updating all your sites. I’ve had lots of sites where I have to contact them to change my email address as you can’t do it yourself. Even instances where it just can’t be done so I’ve asked for account deletion instead. Still, never again now.
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I can sympathise with the problem, but are people not writing down somewhere which sevices they’re logged into with Google? I’m sure there’s a bit in the settings where you can see it, now I think.
Google lists the sites you use single sign on for, but it doesn’t keep track of how many sites list your Gmail account as your recovery email, or the sites where you had to create an account that uses your email as your username.
If you’re lucky all those accounts aren’t important, but there’s always a chance you’ll forget one that matters and if youve canceled your Gmail account you’d be screwed if you need to recover that random account.
So you’re basically stuck keeping Gmail alive for a few years even after you’ve stopped using it just in case you forgot some accounts.
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Actually it’s pretty easy. You can import from gmail much more than just mails but also setup fowarding new gmail mails to proton.
I don’t know to be true, when I did the change I didn’t many things to transfer. Proton has an article of how to switch, which looks easy and no need to export files etc. Also proton has a calendar too. https://proton.me/support/switch-from-gmail-to-proton
The main reason I cannot get rid of GMail entirely is OAuth. There’s no good alternatives.
Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive. You can just stop using Gmail and still maintain a Google account to use with oauth providers.
There’s also the privacy concern as well.
I’ve seen many ignorant comments thinking Gmail is only for email. Google is our company’s identity provider. We’re locked in tight.
Certain States allow you to attach your Gmail to your literal identity. Allowing quick authorization to sensitive information. It’s interesting in concept, but dystopian in application. At least in the United States. Alphabet and the federal government shaking hands is somewhat unsettling.
It’d be great if the federal government invested in proprietary capital instead of just dumping money into Private Corp. I guess that’s capitalism for you, but that’s just getting off topic now.
While I agree with nearly all of this, have you ever used any proprietary government software? It’s the fucking worst.
More importantly, it’s another service that users have to sign up for and maintain a password for. Gmail auth is easy because I already have it.
I usually give login with github/discord/mastodon a priority but if they are not available I just fallback to google
+1 for Proton Mail. The other day I have switched to Proton (from another mail provider in Germany) and love it so far. I can even use a language to customise my filter [1], how cool that is!
Not in a million year that I will come back to Gmail.
That’s fine. Thunderbird is excellent, and the Mail app on my phone is lightweight.
Browser UI is irrelevant to me, and I plan to make more Google services irrelevant to myself. That’s what happens when you continue to kill off services like this.
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Sorry but there are so much more things you have a way bigger impact on climate than website requires a little bit JavaScript.
Sad news. They take away your freedom one step at a time.
Good news I’m migrating away from gmail
What are the options you’re looking at?
Proton!
Join a public access unix server, most of them are free to join and offer email. sdf.org is the oldest and most well known pubnix however many newer ones have popped up forming the tildeverse I personally have had excellent experience with https://tilde.team
If you get your own Webspace it comes with email.
But what email interface is better than Gmail? I’m literally using my own email address pop3’d into Gmail for the UI
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I’ve moved to Posteo for the time being
I’m self-hosted. It would be nerve wracking if email wasn’t an anachronism.
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Self hosting email is an anachronism. You basically can’t do it anymore, none of the big providers will agree to federate
I don’t really understand the outrage. The status quo is that companies didnt support it for years. So 99.9% won’t notice any change.
But a mail CLIENT is a Web App not a static documents site. If Wikipedia would require JS I would kind of understand it from a technical point.
But big corporation tries to reduce cost by shutting down scarcely used old service happens monthly.
Honestly I didn’t even know it was still supported and would have assume they dropped it years ago. You can still use non-web clients so it’s not a huge deal. You can also use a less modern style email host if you prefer.
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Is Lynx POP or IMAP compatable? If so, thats done already.
Lynx is a Webbrowser for terminals.
Derp. I was thinking about Mutt and just got my wires crossed.
but each and every email client supports Gmail regardless
Hope that never try to shutdown IMAP.
Eventually they’ll want to force you to use chrome browser.
nah, as long gmail is compatible with e-mail protocol in general, they have no reason to
Email is a collection of different protocols: SMTP, IMAP, POP are all different protocols that serve different purposes. Oversimplifying a bit, but - SMTP is used to exchange messages between mail servers. IMAP and POP are used to synchronize mail between a mail server and a mail client.
In other words, they absolutely can shut down IMAP and POP but still send/receive for gmail.com addresses. The main reason reason they wouldn’t do this is that their larger clients on Google Workspace need that functionality, but it’s the type of thing you might imagine them taking away from the unpaid version of Gmail to nudge companies over to Workspace.
I heard gmail via imap is bordeline unusable when you have lots if labels.
The last time I used the html version was in the Quest 2 browser. Apperently it can’t handle anything else.
Awesome to see Google embrace plaintext email! /j
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My connection is trash. I need HTML Gmail to load it at all in a reasonable amount of time.
same here. have always used the basic ui.
it’s basically just a imap client with a few googlized aspects like labels that mimic folders and some non-ui dependent features (imports and filters, etc).
nixing basic html gmail is just another piece of the maximize monetization puzzle. these users weren’t getting the “full” google experience with all the ad-driven “features” and script-driven tracking of the “full” web client.
Yeah, Google said basically exactly that in their statement:
“The Gmail Basic HTML views are previous versions of Gmail that were replaced by their modern successors 10+ years ago and do not include full Gmail feature functionality”
Full Gmail feature, meaning full Gmail analytics and tracking.
I understand you, I’ve been in your position
But to Google you are the smallest %, so small that it’s not even worth maintaining the code
I don’t necessarily think they are right, but it is that way
why not use a lightweight mail client like k9mail?
I’ve already moved to Thunderbird on PC.
I usually don’t check email on mobile, but I can try it.
it does the job and afaik was acquired by Mozilla and will in fact be rebranded to Thunderbird at some point
Run pine over ssh. It’s insane, but it IS low bandwidth.
It’s not about the browser. If you have a really slow connection, normal Gmail doesn’t even load, but HTML Gmail may run very well. They shouldn’t have discontinued it.
Playing devils advocate for a bit, wouldn’t the people worrying about keeping network traffic to a minimum be better off with a proper mail client anyway?
For rhat you need a personal computer. But the people who don’t have a faster internet connection may not have one, sometimes not even a smartphone.
Maybe I’m missing something obvious, but I’m having a hard time thinking of something that could reasonably have slow internet, is not a PC or smartphone, and also modern enough to handle current encryption standards.
A computer at a public library is the closest I’ve come, but I can’t imagine those having such slow connections.
I said personal computer or smartphone. They use friends/family devices. So can’t install apps every time they use.
People in impoverished countries with shitty internet and devices would like to have a word.
why be fair to google? they’re literally a trillion dollar company
So they shouldn’t try to monetise as much as they can? I don’t get your point
