Gmail Creeps Me Out.

I finally got around to switching from hotmail to gmail a couple of months or so ago.  The layout is different, and you have to learn gmail's way of navigating.  It took me a long time to find my contact list, and even to figure out how to log off.  My kids used to play a video game called "Super Mario Brothers."  Yeah, OK, I played it, too.  It was a good game.  There were ways you could get points, but you had to know where the hidden sources were.  Gmail is like that.  They hide stuff, and you have to find it.

So here was my first really unnerving experience with gmail.  I was sending someone an e-mail about something, and I guess I sort of waxed a bit existential in describing my emotional investment in whatever it was.  I said "I have attached myself to..."  When I finished the e-mail, and pressed "Send," a notice appeared advising me that I had said "I have attached...," but there was no attachment.  Wasn't there something I wanted to attach?  WTF!  Get out of my business!  Really?  Gmail is "reading" my e-mail and making paternalistic suggestions for how and what I communicate?

Then, there was the time I sent Janey Anderson an e-mail, and I went to include Bob.  But apparently, the cursor was slightly off center, and instead of adding Bob, I added Barbara Kuhl, whose name is next to Bob's on my list of Bs.  I think the list, again a gross intrusion, is in order of frequency that I send, not normal and expected alphabetical order.  So a note popped up, asking me if I meant Bob instead of Barbara.  Shut up!  It appears gmail also tracks the frequency of combinations of recipients?

Well of course I meant Bob instead of Barbara, though I could have been arranging a crochet circle with the girls, and meant Barbara and not Bob.  I was not one bit appreciative.  This is an offense.  And when I admitted the mistake, which gmail corrected automatically when I clicked yes (!!!), it then asked me if I would like to add Gary Kuhl, Supreme Dorvil, and Chuck Ross.

This is essentially criminal.  It's true that I write a certain kind of e-mail that goes to that configuration of people, but this wasn't it, dammit!  And since I agreed not to include Barbara, who is also part of that configuration, why am I then offered Gary, Supreme, and Chuck anyway?

Can't gmail mind its own business? 

A friend of mine recently got a Mac laptop.  She happens to be a published author and a one-time college English professor.  When she recently sent me an e-mail which included the word "brake," her program, which is not gmail, took the liberty of "correcting" the spelling to break.  But she meant brake.  It was about her car.  And another e-mail from her included the word naivete.  Look, she happens to speak French, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with naivete.  But her program liked naivety better, so it imposed that instead.  I told her it was a good thing they didn't insist on nativity.

This is very demoralizing.  I can't bring myself to go back to hotmail, but I won't say I haven't had passing thoughts about it.