Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Google kind of owns the internet. Say you build a web site and you start to have people sign up to your mailing list. And a lot of people use gmail. So you have a few 1000 gmail address. Then you send your customers that sign up to get your emails, emails. Then one day google might just think your emails are spam and send them to the persons spam folder. Now you can't even communicate with your own costumers that gave you permissions to send them mail. Making it even tougher for a smaller guy to even build there own online business. How else can you reach out to your customers?
[edited by: tedster at 6:14 pm (utc) on Aug. 15, 2009]
I do understand the concern over Google's massive reach - I think many of us are wary in that area.
I will say this, with regard to email spam - Gmail is one of the best at handling spam well. I work with quite a few sites who use a mass email newsletter of some kind, and there seems to be more delivery problems with other online providers (especially Yahoo).
Anyone doing their own bulk email does need to take strong precautions so that true spammers can't use your mailserver in a parasite fashion, however. That can get you banned from gmail - and it might just possibly impact your website's ranking if it continues over the long run.
Google kind of owns the internet.
You forgot the half that Facebook owns. :-)
