I genuinely fear the future of email. Email is still the only piece of communication you can own, from top to bottom, from running the service to owning the domain[^1] it runs on. You were able to send anyone email, regardless of rank, location, social status.
Google (and recently, Outlook) is taking all of it away. It's putting mail from people not on your contact list in spam[^3]; it's by default blaclisting IPs within certain range[^2]; now it's bringing it's own format as well.
Is this embrace, extend, extinguish, Google style?
[^1]: let's not get into the problem of DNS never really being owned, only rented, for now
[^2]: https://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Microsoft_Blacklist/en
[^3]: only experienced it, friends did as well, but I don't have proof.
Google (and recently, Outlook) is taking all of it away. It's putting mail from people not on your contact list in spam[^3]; it's by default blaclisting IPs within certain range[^2]; now it's bringing it's own format as well.
Is this embrace, extend, extinguish, Google style?
[^1]: let's not get into the problem of DNS never really being owned, only rented, for now
[^2]: https://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Microsoft_Blacklist/en
[^3]: only experienced it, friends did as well, but I don't have proof.