April 03, 2004

Why Would I Use GMail? I Can't Think of a Reason.

Google says this about GMail:

  • Search, don't sort.
    Use Google search to find the exact message you want, no matter when it was sent or received.

    My Response: Eudora does this fine. Search OR sort. My choice.

  • Don't throw anything away.
    1000 megabytes of free storage so you'll never need to delete another message.

    My response: I save everything that's not spam. I have tens of thousands of emails going back years and years. It's all instantly searchable. It works great.

  • Keep it all in context. Each message is grouped with all its replies and displayed as a conversation.

    My response: I've been advocating email as conversations for years. Glad to see this meme coming to the forefront. However, this is not enough to get me to use Gmail.

  • No pop-up ads. No banners.
    You see only relevant text ads and links to related web pages of interest.

    My response: I get this now with my paid Eudora. No AdWords text ads, no popups, no HTML. Email simply is useless in a web browser except when you're on the road, or at a conference using non-secure WiFi and you need to check your mail through an https connection. I just don't care.

In fact, the only reason I will use Gmail is to keep an eye on it as a technology product. I've no interest from a user standpoint. Gmail will be the new Hotmail. Big whoop.

Posted by brian at April 3, 2004 12:08 AM

Comments

I don't think Gmail is targeted to people like us, Brian. Like you said, it's a great replacement for Hotmail and Yahoo Mail.

Posted by: Andy Baio at April 3, 2004 01:19 PM

I have fewer qualms about Gmail hosting my email than I do about HotMail, because HotMail's owner's mantra is certainly not "Don't be evil" as 60 Minutes assured us Google's is. On the other hand, why _are_ they offering to host 1 GB of email? Because when Microsoft eventually buys Google "all your email are belong to MS."

Posted by: kevin at April 5, 2004 04:13 PM

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