With its own version out, Google cracks down third party applications

First Slashdot reported it and then I got a message on the Opera forums that some users of alternative GMail clients have stopped receiving notifications from the alternative GMail notifiers that populated the market before Google launched its own GMail notifier.

People have slammed this move from Google if in fact this is true claiming that they have the right to choose the client they want to check their mails. But the fact is that GMail is a free service that is maintained by Google and supported by ads on the web interface. And they perhaps have every right to protect that aspect of this wonderful mail service. Also, since it is still in Beta phase, you cannot really blame Google for taking any drastic step because they clearly say that GMail is not supposed to be used for mission critical purposes as it still has bugs.

We already have similar situation in the Instant Messenger Market where all Yahoo! and AOL are famous for tempering with their logon protocols pretty regularly to make third party applications unable to use their services. Seems like GMail is on the same road. They would change login protocols and the third party applications would have to keep up with them.

Or maybe this is just a fluke.

As for my opinion? Here is what I wrote on the Opera forums:

I use the Google’s edition and really would not mind Google blocking third parties out. They need to earn money dude from adsense. And that can only happen if people check GMail on the web browser! It’s almost like blocking ads and use sites that depend upon revenues from ads. And almost like real hijacking apple’s iPod.

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