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Gmail Commentary and Responses
Phil Windley writes "In his inimitable style, Tim O'Reilly tells us why GMail matters. The piece is entitled, 'The Fuss About GMail' but that doesn't begin to properly identify the real meat of what Tim's saying. Tim does discuss some of the privacy concerns on GMail and why he's not concerned, but he also breaks new ground on why GMail is not just another free email system. For example, Tim talks about how GMail might herald an era of large centralized computing and calls for APIs to allow GMail content to be move back and forth between it and other systems." Reader chris mansley writes "Google is quietly responding all the flak being given to their new email service. They have added a statement to quell the growing list of concerns. No more keeping email forever is at the top of the list. The reviews have been sparse on details and screenshots, but now Google is providing a sneak peek here and here." The only thing I didn't like about Gmail was their apparent intention to keep your mail forever, regardless of your wishes. Since they've now clarified that they don't plan to do that, it doesn't seem like there's much of a problem any more. Yahoo and MSN already link your searches on their respective engines with your account profiles on their respective free email services, and no one seems to care (maybe because no one uses MSN or Yahoo as a search engine these days, but still).
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
A good review can be found at http://jogin.com/weblog/archives/2004/04/15/juice
The big thing with GMail apart from its space, is google's name behind the search feature. A proper search function really appears to be lacking in pretty much every major email client out there, once you get into large volumes of mail (which if you are reading this, you probably are) searching the mail takes serious amounts of time.
One existing, non-web, alternative is Bloomba which has a *great* search function, even on high volumes. My email client is already indexing well in excess of 10K messages (folders cap out at displaying >5K, I have two of those) so I dont have a real count), and searches all take less than a second.
paul reinheimer
You are assuming that google is so stupid they would be unable to determine what is a joe job and what is a legitimate link.
You assume that Google has psychics working for them. A Joe Job and true spam are indistinguishable from one another. A Joe Job consists of spam that is sent out just like all other spam, the only difference is the target of the links.
For example, Bill has a website www.BuyBillsWidgets.com and he's doing fairly well.
Jack has a website that sells a similar widget www.BuyJacksWidgets.com and he isn't doing quite as well as Bill.
Jack enlists a spammer to send out 500k emails that link to www.BuyBillsWidgets.com. Google has no way of knowing who commissioned the sending of the spam. With your system Bill will be punished by the downranking of his page because Jack Joe Jobbed him.
Not even Google has the ability to determine the purpose of spam.
I guess maybe you need to learn what a Joe Job is.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Unless you manually clean them (Or have your browser set to automatically clean them), the cookie actually expires on Jan. 17, 2038.
There's a tin-foil type site called Google Watch with a bunch of information about Google.
As I said in the grand-parent, I'm a larger-than-average fan of Google, so I believe most of the claims on the site are a bunch of paranoid rantings, but they do raise legitimate points about possibilities.
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
Also see Google watch watch .
Basically the google watch guy is just pissed off that google didn't give him the page rank he thought he deserved. I've read google-watch and most of it is FUD
.sig
This is a web site that claims the cookie expires in 2038 because of pending 'brain implants.'
Surely it couldn't be because they're using a large number of 32-bit UNIX-like systems, and that there's the UNIX epoch in all UNIX-like OSes on 32-bit systems is 2038.
I mean, that'd just be kha-raaaaaaazie!1! It's obvious that they set the cookie to 2036 so they could steal our Precious Bodily Fluids. Where's the tin foil? Where?
Err. Yah. Yah, at that point I think it's safe to say anything on the site can be honestly diregarded as bunk. Or at best poorly writen SciFi. Either way, it's relationship with reality is on the rocks, and reality is already calling it's mother and a divorce laywer.
Gmail doesn't block attachments other than executables (like the 30 .pif viruses you get every day).
Non-executables (zip, jpg, doc, html, gif, pdf, etc.) are accepted just fine, and the per-message limit is 10 megs.
Kevin Fox