They’ve done it. They’ve crossed the line. They removed search from maps, but I was okay. They removed it from YouTube channels. I put up with it. Now I find out they’ve removed SMS from Gmail for the United States. No announcements, no warnings, not even a help guide to explain when you search Google for an explanation. Nothing.
The only thing keeping me there was my email address, but I guess that’s going to have to go. They aren’t hurting for money. They are a search engine and can easily handle search. They just don’t care about their customers anymore.
I’m tired of putting up with them. Their service isn’t free. They get to datamine me. They make money off me. Or at least, they used to.
Oddly enough, it seems I’ll be going back to Yahoo. They still provide SMS, and I still have my old email address there that I can dust off and try to use again. Yip, I’m going back to the very place that Gmail got me to leave.
Naw, that was just their ads, which was just a reason to adblock them. Plus I found out the owner of TVTropes was a douche and kinda deserved it. And, as I said, the quality of Gmail kept me using them.
Also, I may not be going back to Yahoo, as their spam filter seems to suck. But I absolutely need the ability to text people from a keyboard. It’s how I keep in touch with quite a few people.
BTW, where you been? Was the (outdated) snark too good to resist or something?
Can’t you text anyone from a keyboard by sending an email to their phone? My phone has an email address and I send myself photos from the computer all the time.
I’m not at a computer so I can’t test it, but a lot of the time Google just changes the way certain features are used and doesn’t really remove them. You can always use Google Voice instead of Gmail. I had to set my mom up with it since she only has a landline and it works great for texting. If you have an Android phone there are certain apps that allow you to text from your computer using your phone number. There may be similar ways to do this with other phones but I don’t know since I primarily deal with Android.
I know it’s frustrating to have to learn a new way of doing something, but it can definitely be done. Do you need to text from your computer because you don’t have a cell phone or your plan doesn’t allow for it, or do you just prefer typing on an actual keyboard instead of a phone screen?
I thought you were very belatedly complaining about them getting rid of the 46645 text service. It was good for poor people like me. I just email 5558675301@vtext.com or whatever if I need to do this. This will be different depending on provider. But since they don’t share numbers, you could probably just spam them all if you don’t know which company they use.
That no longer works. There is a a chat section in the lower left part of the Gmail window. Previously you could enter phone numbers to send SMS (text) messages to someone’s phone.
Luckily you can still send/receive SMS messages through Google Voice, so sign up for that (it’s not terribly easy but bear with it) and then under Settings, Voicemail and Text enable "Text Forwarding Forward text messages to my email: "
You can send/receive SMS messages from http://voice.google.com but enabling that Forwarding option will also send replies to your Gmail inbox, and you can reply to them from there.
Annoying and mot as nice as chat integrated with Gmail Chat, but Google giveth, Google taketh away.
I use Google Voice to SMS my Applephobic loved ones (you can shove your $20/mo. texting plan sideways up your ass, AT&T) but I have a suspicion that you may not want to get too attached to it either. They haven’t fixed any bugs or otherwise updated the GV iPhone app in like, forever, and I keep seeing rumors that they’re going to get rid of the service or absorb it into “Google Hangouts,” whatever the weeping Christ that is.
