In addition to consumer accounts, Gmail is the commercial mail provider of choice for 5 million businesses, making it the largest mail service in the world. This is no small issue: With 425 million users as of June 2012, Gmail has almost as many users as the next two largest services - Hotmail and Yahoo! – combined.
Months ago, Google tightened up its filtering algorithms and ever since Gmail users have been complaining about its too aggressive filtering. Unless you invariably use webmail, and religiously check its junk folder, I can almost guarantee you are missing emails that no one would ever think are spam.
Unlike your kitchen sink, your desktop spam filter is almost certainly the second (or even third) system disposal for email. Both will also suck down the occasional thing you do want, like a misplaced ring, or an email from a friend who uses exclamation points like a kid eats candy and doesn’t know enough not to capitalize every other word.Īnd, from time to time, both need attention. Spam filters and kitchen sinks have some things in common.īoth suck down the waste you don’t want.
