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.
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
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!
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.
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,…
Shame, now it won’t be possible to access Gmail from the Nintendo DS Browser.
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).
Gmail’s UI is awful unless you are coming from the Outlook webmail client … then it’s freaking amazing.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
+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.
