<rant>

...or maybe they've seen a surge since they started detecting mobile phone browsers.

I, for one, have seen a massive drop in my enjoyment of GMail since they launched the mobile service.

My Nokia 9300i is perfectly capable of showing GMail in all its basic HTML glory. So I wasn't pleased when the mobile GMail was first launched (since it defaults to idiot-phone mode), but at least I had a link at the bottom of the page to force it back to HTML.

Imagine my displeasure when that link disappeared. Now, I can only view the crippled mobile edition on my phone. No in-line images, and only about five lines of text per page.

I *KNOW* I'm not paying for it. But what on earth persuaded them to take away my ability to decide how to view the service? All that's needed is an addition to the cookie that stores my credentials that says 'hey, this guy wants to view in basic HTML mode'

And don't get me started on the GMail mobile client - it's just a crippled Opera Mini that shows the same useless interface in a different wrapper.

Gah!

</rant>

I didn't know I could do this until I read about it here a few months ago, so Google should be giving El Reg a cut. Sadly I'm unable to recover the cost of accidentally downloading the satellite view from Google Maps