Gizmodo recommends Windows Phone to escape Google’s evil clutches

January 25, 2012 | By Surur

medium_2e6a352b01e4c0913179af4bf30e6b5c With Google recently making sweeping privacy changes which will mean they can get even better at selling you to their advertisers, some people have been re-evaluating the bevy of Google services which they are using.

Included with the wide variety of substitutes they also recommend worried users replace their Google listening and location device, also called an Android phone, with a Windows Phone 7 handset.

They note:

It’s tough to get out of your contract if you’re locked in on an Android phone. But if you’re up for an upgrade some time soon, and you want to sidestep Google’s info-grab, you should take a long hard look at Windows Phone. Yes, there’s the iPhone. That’s really great. But Windows Phone is a totally fresh take on phones, and if you’re going to be an Android expat, you should take a dip in the totally-new-and-different pool before trudging back to familiar waters like iOS.

Of course we can recommend a Windows Phone to just about anyone, even with the limitations, simply based on the satisfaction rate. We suggest however if you are going to jump into a Windows Phone you might as well chuck your Gmail for Windows Live Mail and nestle into the comfortable Microsoft ecosystem, which is actually pretty completely also.

See Gizmodo’s other recommendations here.

About Surur

Site Admin and Windows Phone enthusiast, he has been using Windows Mobile devices since before they were called PocketPC’s. He is currently sporting a HTC 7 Trophy.

Tagged google, windows phone 7.5

Chris

It is sno nice to see all these guys coming around to WP7
Anonymous

gizmodo has always been fair in their reporting of microsoft stuff, unlike engadget.

Anonymous

Engadget isn’t nearly as biased anymore as they used to be. They’re actually becoming pretty decent nowadays regarding Microsoft – It’s just that most of their editors still see the silhouette of a piece of fruit as a sign from above.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001039271971 Martyn Metalous

Would agree, there was a point where every Microsoft headline was a joke to them. They are better but I have moved on to “The Verge”, a much better site and more balanced approach to tech.

Anonymous

I’ve stopped using a LOT of my Google services, but I won’t give up my GMail soon.
There’s one very easy reason for that: it simply is considered to be the most professional one.

When two equally qualified, equally skilled people apply for the same job – one using Live Mail, the other Gmail – The Gmail user is more likely to be hired.

Yahoo, Hotmail, Live and others simply aren’t being taken serious anymore.

Emi Cyberschreiber

wow from all the comments i never thought i would find such a stupid one…

but yeah! maybe thats why i dont find a job, for using hotmail! righttttt
oh wait… yeah i do have a job and i bet when i applied there was alot of people from alot of email services like gmail, Hotmail and yahoo….

only because YOU consider its the “most professional one” it doesn’t mean that’s what it is…
i dont even care what’s your job about but in my case, and alot of cases i know, hotmail, gmail or yahoo or aol, or whatever… it doesnt matter… if you get what they want you get the job… i know alot of people who didn’t get Jobs because they just didn’t have what companies were looking for, it happened to me. and im sure it wasnt because im using hotmail, or they were using hotmail or yahoo.. or they didn’t get the job for using gmail.

seriously, retarded comments will be retarded comments.

Anonymous

It’s not my own opinion, it’s a fact.

A friend of mine helps people find new jobs for a living, and his years of work in the field have simply shown it to be true: people using Gmail over other free services get a higher response rate from the companies they apply, and get a new job sooner.

Also, judging by your illiteracy, I’m not surprised they didn’t pick you.

Anonymous

you are a fuckin idiot
Anonymous

Actually, none of them are considered professional. You need your own domain for that. Hotmail and Yahoo addresses imply that you’ve been around longer than gmail, but, that’s about it.

I get people trying to sell me their services quite often. If they give me a freemail address they’re already one strike down…

Anonymous

I’ve considered switching from Gmail to Hotmail, but I just can’t do it. Why?
- Archiving. No comparable feature in Hotmail.
- Google Voice. Inbound/Outbound *phone* calls right from my Inbox, Voicemails + Transcripts, Screen Voicemails, Unlimited Text, etc.
- Beautiful UI. I really, really love the new UI and UX.
- Priority Inbox. Can’t live without it.
- Minimal Ads. No graphical ads.
- 2-Step Authentication. Awesome security feature.
- Picasa integration. I use Picasa to backup my photos with paid storage. Very convenient and easy.

I don’t see Hotmail catching up anytime soon, unfortunately.

http://twitter.com/counterblow the person

you actually use the web interface? I avoid all webmail interfaces like the plague.

Anonymous

Yes, for all of the aforementioned reasons above, and I prefer the webmail interface of Gmail over any desktop email app regardless.

Though it’d be nice if Windows had a Sparrow-equivalent email app – it’s a lovely app on OS X Lion and plays perfectly with Gmail.
http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/6G3ZZJCHOLYP3S5CRCIHQ7WDSE MVIM

I use it because I hate the one-location folder arrangement of Outlook and other desktop mail clients. I love how labels work and I wish there was a desktop client that understood them.

Anonymous

Ah yes, I forgot to mention Labels. Labels are so much better than Folders.

http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/6G3ZZJCHOLYP3S5CRCIHQ7WDSE MVIM

As much as I can’t stand Google, Google Voice and Gmail are the two services I still can’t manage to drop. I have a Hotmail account, but their 3rd party EAS support sucks (no image/HTML email support except on Windows Phone). Though Google’s is bad too since they don’t translate flags into stars, as they do with IMAP. I have a feeling Skype is going to become Microsoft’s answer to Google Voice, but as of today there just isn’t a replacement for GV.
http://www.mainstreetchatham.com/ JimmyFal

The Hotmail connector for Outlook has no equal. Unless your name is Thurrott, and he has too many toys anyway. You can archive in Outlook. And it integrates flawlessly with OUR phone. I suppose if you like Android then you should stick with GEverything.

I’d rather chew on broken glass then use a web interface. Did it all last winter while traveling and it robbed the crap out of my productivity. Plus your boy Schmidt looks like the the villain on a james bond movie set, because HE IS A VILLAIN. No ads, Live Photogallery kicks ass, at this point it’s really not about catching up, it’s about preferences. Gmail isn’t hot shit, it’s really just lukewarm diahrea.

Anonymous

I have no desire to use Outlook anymore. It’s bloated and not for me, and I’d rather save the disk space on my 128GB SSD for more useful programs. In fact, I’d rather chew on broken glass than use Outlook.

Just because I hate Outlook doesn’t mean I like Android. I prefer Windows Phone, but I’m not giving up the awesomeness of Gmail just because Hotmail works better with my phone.

Like you said, it’s about preferences. I PREFER Gmail because, TO ME, it is infinitely better than Hotmail and other email services. Hotmail is decent, but it’s no Gmail. Live Photo Gallery is pretty nice (and I use it), but Picasa is better (again, TO ME) because it provides an incredibly easy way for me to backup my 50+GB of photos and I like the interface.

Anyways, Hotmail is not competitive with Gmail because it doesn’t offer any of the features that I listed above.

Anonymous

Do you belong to any corporation (employed by) that uses an exchange server?

Anonymous

My company of 50+ employees used Exchange for several years, but we decided to make the switch to Google Apps a little over a year ago and haven’t looked back since. Nobody in the company uses Outlook anymore (even though they could if they wanted to); we all use the Google Apps suite of web apps and LOVE it.

Google Docs has been amazing for simultaneous collaboration on documents and spreadsheets, but we still use Excel for heavy duty work since it’s still the best, by far, for spreadsheets.

Anonymous

I have the opposite experience. I use both Gmail and Hotmail and I tried to rely on Gmail more but I can’t give up some of the hotmail features. So now I just use Gmail to go Gchat from work with my one friend who refuses to use Facebook. Otherwise, Hotmail facebook chat works with everyone else.

- Maybe I’m just dumb, but Gmail doesnt seem to let me have the email titles on one side, and a reading pane on the other.
- Hotmail has sweep which I love love love
- Hotmail you can right click on emails to reply or forward.
- The graphic ad on the right doesn’t bother me with my wide screen monitor and I actually prefer it to the text based ads spattered around Gmail which takes me an extra brain cycle to realize they are not emails.
- I really love the Hotmail Quick views for Shipping Labels or Office Documents.

https://profiles.google.com/christopher.gull/ CG

I just changed my (negative) opinion about Gizmodo. GIZMODO, I’M BACK!!
Anonymous

I use yahoo mail, and also use the yahoo messenger. Yahoo is really nice for email, although the spam protection and filter could be better, but as long as you don’t go to any fishy sites, the spam email should be very limited since yahoo mails are pretty low profile for spammers it seems. I can really really recommend the yahoo messenger also, it’s really nice.

A tip is if you want to stay anonymous, is that when you sign in to mail and then comment on a yahoo news topic, people on your messenger can know what you said on that site because they’re “friended”, so don’t comment on the yahoo news site with your log-in if you don’t like messenger friends to know what you said on there.

Anonymous

WOW I did not know!! I mean about the messanger comment thing. I HATE people knowing what I post on and comment on that are my friends and relatives. It’s why I can’t stand Facebook now. I used to be able to watch Dancing with the Stars and then go to the DWTS Facebook page and comment in secret, now everyone knows when I post on DWTS wall. I can’t stand it! Yahoo Messanger was the Shiznit back in the day though. MS and Yahoo really had social networking before it really was social networking. I remember you could customize the YM app with your own images before the redesign. It also has THE BEST emoticons. The :p face was by far my favorite and I remember they had Ken, Ryu and Chun Li. :p LOL! Ahhhhhhh the old days of the internet!

Anonymous

And the Universe implodes….
TriAxis

I don’t use any Google services anymore. I even have a hacked Nook Color with Android on it. I changed the browser and search launcher to search Bing and launch the Bing app respectively.
As for Gmail, I cannot stand how it never deletes emails. I’m sure there is a way, but whenever I used to setup my Gmail accounts. It would download 4000 old emails. At least Hotmail emails delete when I delete them.
http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/6G3ZZJCHOLYP3S5CRCIHQ7WDSE MVIM

Giz has actually been pretty fair to Windows Phone for a while now. Unlike another popular tech blog/news site *cough*en*cough*gadget.

Anonymous

engadget sucks. they just aggregate news from other sites. they dont have exclusive insider info anymore. they are owned by AOL,and everything on the site is designed to sell ads. Gizmodo on the other hand is awesome. They dont lie down to anybody. They got my respect with the whole iphone 4 thing. They pull pranks like the tv remote thing. They speak their mind and are not corporate shills.
Anonymous

I’d say that CNet and ZDnet are the worst.

Anonymous

I had to stop reading ZDnet after some blatantly false articles by so called experts. One headline was “Windows 8 is coming, prepare to upgrade your hardware”. Because you know how much of a resource hob Windows 7 was compared to Vista and Windows 8 will be even worse /s.

Anonymous

WOW! I am shocked! Gizmodo? That must’ve been very hard for them to suggest.

http://twitter.com/houkoholic houkoholic

not really, since the fallout with Apple with the whole iPhone 4 prototype incident it’s not like they can recommend Apple is it? Plus Apple don’t have a lot of the services that Google/Microsoft has such as email etc, Microsoft is the only real alternative.

Anonymous

Wow, Google is getting hit hard lately, from at least two angles on the consumer side. And now from both the reporting/analytical side, and from the political/ethical side. They may have opened too many fronts, a mistake not uncommon amongst others that have considered themselves unfallable in the past, both distant and recent. (see how I avoided Godwin’s law, up until this point?). Too bad Google continues along a less tactful route.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001039271971 Martyn Metalous

It amazes me that folks want free stuff then go nuts when they realise how its paid for.

Do we all work for free or for charity? No we work to make money for a better life.

I have avoided Googles services for a couple of years now, because of privacy concerns, I use Bing, I have a WP7, I use facebook, I even struggle with Bing Maps.

I will never use Googles services because of how they make money, glad people are starting to wake up, although a little late