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Is Google blocking third party GMail notifiers?
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
Slashdot has already reported it. And now users on some forums
have started complaining about it. Google is apparently blocking
access to its GMail service by third party applications like GMail
notifiers and clients. Some of these free applications let user
access GMail accounts from their e-mail applications. This apparently
does not benefit Google in anyway because the primary way Google
earns from GMail is through the ads that are displayed on the web
interfaces inside mail views in GMail. Google itself released its
own version of GMail Notifier recently.
People have slammed this move from Google if in fact this is true
claiming that they have the right to choose the client they want
to check their mails. But the fact is that GMail is a free service
that is maintained by Google and supported by ads on the web interface.
And they perhaps have every right to protect that aspect of this
wonderful mail service. Also, since it is still in Beta phase, you
cannot really blame Google for taking any drastic step because they
clearly say that GMail is not supposed to be used for mission critical
purposes as it still has bugs.
Similar sort of a situation already exists in the IM Market where
Yahoo! Messenger and AOL are constantly in war with third party
applications like Trillian and Gaim which let users use multiple
IM protocols from a single interface.
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