My SIL and other friends of hers have gotten emails saying they should flip to Yahoo, so far I have not ever gotten such an email, but by Googling “is xfinity email moving to yahoo?” it appears totally optional, I told her to just ignore it… That’s my plan, don’t need to add to any confusions! Looks like it began in 2025, odd I never saw anything…
Sound right?? Or wrong?
Just curious: why does anyone use an email service provided by an ISP (XFinity, Comcast, Optimum, Verizon, etc.) or or some other service (Yahoo, Hotmail, Microsoft, Apple, etc.), instead of just Google Gmail?
Becasue not everyone in the world thinks like you.
It is not hard to see somebody at Yahoo sending or causing to be sent such an email. It sounds like SIL, etc. interprete the email as “Must” instead of “Should” and you are of the few in the event the email is not a fraud, the email is a “Could”
Their loss! Got a more substantive answer? Mine is that all those other services give people email accounts “for free” in an attempt to lock them into a closed ecosystem, which ultimately proves to be inflexible and limiting, and at risk of becoming unsupported.
And that is exactly the reason I will not use gmail except as a backup. Google killed a NewsFeed reader when they did not like the revenue provided. If you think for a minute Google would not do the same thing with Gmail - lets get together and talk about a bridge I selling shares in.
I may not be any safter with my Apple @iCloud.com email, but I choose believe I am.
Verizon decided it would no longer support email services. Users were told to move either to AOL or Yahoo!, or their accounts were simply deleted if they hadn’t moved by the deadline.
Not that that would have been inconvenient, of course.
(Here’s a list of those who have taken a similar path: Comcast, Cox, Spectrum, AT&T, and lots of others which hoped to rope in customers with (what was then called) “sticky” apps.
Of course Apple has never dropped support for a feature people had grown dependent on. < /sarcasm >
As for Google and Usenet newsgroups, that was sort of a niche facility for older internet pioneer “nerds” like me back in the Unix days. Sure, I used news readers back in those fledgling times and was slightly miffed when google took it over and then canned support, but I got over it. 
Apparently you can still use these groups, but I haven’t investigated. See below.
In contrast, Email is universally used by almost everyone.
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Never have relied on, trusted gmail, they were initially a headache to set up back in Entourage days, and in Outlook, as well, wasn’t reliable… At one time with pacbell.net, we relied on that, they blew it off, went to att.net, seemed OK, but once we signed in with comcast.net things were stable, but we had to dig out all the connections we had back in pacbell.net, change them, a royal PITA… Way, way back, I guess it ws aol.com, those accounts were lost along the way as well.. Meantime, icloud,com, mac.com, me.com, have been solid, as has comcast.net, rare outages. I can still get at my old pacbell.net account via yahoo, used to be able to clean out DW’s pacbell.net account once in a while, but lately, it doesn’t let me in, with no at&t services, I can hardly call in to support, so I don’t bother. I log into yahoo for a few email Groups once of more interest that today, but i also use their financial page to watch stocks, and the news related… Hotmail, it was always just a spammers dream, never used it, other that a filter item in my Outlook Rules to delete them all…
AOL to local BBS setups, to today’s Apple, Comcast, a pretty log road… And still occasional mysteries to sort out… Latest is SIL’s desktop & iPhone aren’t syncing, likely a setting , but she’s been too busy for me to dive in deeper…
One more reason to avoid Google & gmail, is their willingness to fold into renaming the Gulf, Lake Ontario at the whim of this current idiot with a sharpie…
Onward…
Yes. I think Google intends to keep Gmail around.
Google is building Gemini AI.
All the Google apps are incorporated into that comprehensive effort:
Maps, Gmail, docs, Fitbit/g-Health, G-finance, etc.
Gmail is the interface between an account holder and “external” info: bank statements, health care test results, etc
Do I trust Google? Uh… No.
But I don’t see Google getting rid of Gmail.
ralph
My email address was established when I used dial-up with the local phone company. I think I was on DSL when AT&T swallowed them up. My email address still has the defunct phone company’s domain. AT&T’s mail is now through Yahoo. I am very happy with the Yahoo/AT&T web interface, where I have messages going back to 2006. I also have a gmail account, mostly used when I don’t want to be bothered by those few I give it to. I use the gmail web interface too, and I find it very poor compared to the functionality I get from Yahoo/AT&T.
So my first reason is continuity of my email address, and the second is my strong preference for the functionality I have with Yahoo/AT&T.
Good reasons! …
This email service debate thread ironically related to using a site’s discussion boards… for many years… thinking it will be curated or archived somehow if necessary to be moved or changed and then, poof gone no soup for you.
FC
