Google is removing the basic HTML view from Gmail, starting in January of 2024. Here is their page about it. In case you’re not familiar with what that looks like, here is an example.
This is the view you’re probably familiar with.
This is the HTML view. Now, I’m not terribly interested in showing the internet my email but the way the emails appear is the same.
Now here is the interesting thing. Loading the “standard” view of Gmail makes over 200 requests. I’m sure it needs to as this view loads your calendar, tasks, etc. However, those requests add up to over 6mb, and that’s before you even open an email. By comparison, the HTML view loads in 531ms on my home Wi-Fi.
A couple of other things I don’t love about the standard view. In those requests, I’m seeing multiple post requests from play.google.com and mail-ads.google.com. So that’s just sending data to Google for ads. The HTML view does not make such requests, which I imagine is why they’re shutting it down.
I’m not against ads. If you’re using a service and not paying for it, you’re paying for it somewhere. I also understand that many folks don’t care about ad tracking. They’re fine with it. So maybe none of this matters to them.
I do care about it. I’ve been on the web long enough to know that we’ve overshot our target. The internet has increasingly become an ad business before anything else. Again, not against ads. I will happily watch an ad before a YouTube video. I’m not paying for the content, so I get it. That’s fine.
I set up email forwarding to my own email domain which I’ve set up through iCloud and am accessing via Thunderbird. Sometimes the “old way” is the better way if the trade offs aren’t there for you. I can’t recall the last time I ever purchased something off an online ad. Maybe ever. The ad tracking isn’t serving me so I’ll use an alternative.
It’s Sunday, so go Colts.