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Google's Sergey Brin Talks on Gmail's Future
de la mettrie writes "Sergey Brin of Google has been discussing the future of GMail in a recent eWeek article. He says that the ongoing beta test will likely take about six months, and that the implementation of mail forwarding, POP access, mail encryption and even RSS feeds is being considered."
you can always reach him at sergey_brin@hotmail.com
Je t'aime Stéphanie
already slashdotted, here's the text:
Steve Gillmor
Sergey Brin
Gillmor
Brin
Gillmor
Brin
Gillmor
Brin
Gillmor
Brin
Gillmor
Brin
Gillmor
Brin
Trolling is a art,
They also mention various privacy concerns. The only thing they ever meant by not guaranteeing immediate deletion has to do with proper backups. I think the geek/media bridge failed yet again and something was blown out of proportion. I can't wait to see that you're using 99% of your available 1gb for email tho.
:(){
I really hope they implement support for GnuPG in an easy manner. As it is, having a public key doesn't mean much for email, since people sending you email need to do the work for you to receive encrypted email, and you can't send encrypted email unless the other person has a key. GMail could go a long way towards making GnuPG prolific...
Sounds like a media cooldown period more than a beta testing period.
What are they building a space shuttle?
No, they're building a massive, wide area distributed email system with vast amounts of storage. I doubt they'd want to tarnish their name, especially with an IPO pending, by going live with a buggy system. If you can shave a few months off that, I'm sure you could have a good career at Google.
Trolling is a art,
Having a 1GB mailbox is useless if you use POP to get your mail... They should provide IMAP access.
OK, after reading the article, I see that they are also planning to offer imap, but still, pop makes no sense to me for a webmail.
Knowing Google, they're probably doing one or more of the following:
*Getting usibility information from the beta testers.
*Assessing their ad-placement algorithms.
*Trying to see how the email will work on their distributed systems.
*Hashing through privacy concerns, see if there are ways to alleviate them.
And I'm sure there's more that others could think of that they'd be testing...
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
Is it possible to delete messages, or does everything continue to reside in AllMail?
Oh, no, no, that was just poor wording on our part. It's just that we make a variety of backups, and we can't guarantee instantaneous deletion. Stuff that's on tapes, and those are offline--we eventually delete it, but we can't guarantee an instantaneous deletion.
The question would be whether or not somebody could feel confident that if they wanted to delete something that it would eventually be deleted.
Yes, eventually it will be deleted.
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
I am lucky enough to have an early account at Gmail. Before I had it, I was the screenshots and I was not impressed, but once I tried it out... it is amazing. This will be one of the biggest things to hit the internet. It simply works, it doesn't have any flashy ads to bother you, and it's FAST! Not to mention the "conversation" style e-mailing, and everything being so dynamic. Now if they only make a Google Messenger, we're all set!
I have seen several reviews of Google's user interface (here, here, and here), as well as google's screenshots of the inbox and conversation view. and it seems that a lot of them are really unique, especially in a web application. Apparently it "autocompletes" from your address book. It looks like Google will be raising the bar of the standard for web applications. I sure hope they open up an API for accesing it. (as well as POP / IMAP access).
Google's backend is more complex then you think.
Google's beta tests for search, groups, Froogle all took closer to a year.
Assuming that they have completed internal testing six months is a very very long period to do beta tests.
The problem with internal testing is that you can never account for the wide variety of things that users will do to your site. Your QA team may come up with a great set of tests, but for every functional part of your site, your users will be able to make it break in a dozen different ways.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Well, Gmail requires that your username be a minimum of 6 characters, so that actually rules out a number of common first names.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
They're playing for big stakes, and a lot of things have to go right. Since they're offering 1GB, and are doubtless counting on the user not being able to use up all of that immediately, their rate throttling measures had better be really good. If spammers/warez doodz find a way to exploit the system and automate the client interface, then google will probably have to retract their offer, which will be enormous bad publicity. And few people have realized it, but gmail is actually a whole desktop email app written in javascript. Several hundred KB of javascript. Or atleast a cross between webmail and a desktop app. Such attempts have never worked in the past. (I remember some horrors like html editors written in java on web hosting sites, before the dot.bust). But google thinks they're on to something here. Indeed, beta testers have reported that after a few days of using gmail they find it to be a whole new paradigm and don't want to go back to the folder based approach. So there's a lot of testing that google have to do, since they're breaking new ground. Google's known for not releasing stuff until they're really sure they've ironed out the wrinkles.
No, they're building a product that they hope will dislodge MSN Hotmail from its dominant position. Hotmail gets at least 145 million visitors per month, and Microsoft poured money into Hotmail for eight years before it became profitable.
Microsoft can afford to pour money down a hole until something becomes profitable. Google can't. So Google has to get it right the first time and make Gmail a much better product right out of the gate in order to combat Microsoft's built-in advantages as the owner of the OS and the browser that most people use.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Give me a break. Good software companies spend time to test their product: user testing, functionality testing. Google is very careful to test features before the roll out to the world. Given the size and breadth of the GMail product, this isn't that long.
It makes me think of The Simpsons episode where Moe turns his bar into a family restaurant, and he buys a surplus Navy deepfryer that he says can flash fry a buffalo in 40 seconds. Home responds, "Forty seconds? But I want it now."
I expect that if you want to use such a thing, it will be worth the wait.
I've read beta testers' weblogs and seen all the cool screenshots, but there's one thing I still can't figure out: how did Google pick the beta testers? Were they just friends of certain Google employees, or was there some place that you could apply to be a considered for beta testing?
I made a PHP/MySQL library that prevents SQL injection & makes coding easier!
I have to wait six months to get an account :(
Nyah nyah! I have one! :-p It's actually not too tough to get an account. You just have to be acquainted with someone at Google. If you're on Orkut, it shouldn't be a problem to find someone who's less than a few degrees of separation from you who works at Google.
Also, six months is hardly a long time for a beta test. This is an absolutely enormous task they're undertaking. It's not like they're just installing IMP on a server or something. Gmail is also still very far from being ready for public consumption. I send bug reports and feature requests in constantly for things that are IMHO absolutely necessary for a full email experience.
Dear Mr. Brin, now that we're providing webmail services, don't you feel that a Google Messenger should be in order?
Given the bright minds over there, I have to wonder. Unfortunately for me, I don't think I'd qualify for even a junior janitor trainee position at their offices (I think he's doing particle physics research in his spare time).
People want something free (a GB of free mailbox space in this case) at someone else's expense and then criticises about the possible tradeoffs involved? If you want content privacy, you shouldn't be using a free web account to begin with.
ahh... being a beta tester... I do indeed feel sorry for you. I really enjoy the features that have been previously spoken of, and the "conversation" feature is especially nice. Just wait it out... it's definitely worth it!
Game Overdrive - Gaming News
I'm beginning to feel uncomfortable with the amount of clout they have and their new 'commercial' outlook on things.
If - as someone remarked - google goes public that is not the same as google being owned by th e public. It simply means that there will be that much more pressure on them to make cash. Buying stock in an IPO is not to be equated with supporting that company, it simply gives them cash to pursue their business in return for a small piece of the pie.
It would be nice if there was a public - not for profit - alternative to google.
MP3 Search Engine
you realize that if google wrings spam's neck in their implementation successfully (somehow), then they will:
1. have every single user on the internet signing up
2. singlehandedly save email itself from progressively encroaching social irrelevancy
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I mean,
My email provider offers pop3, imap, 12 mb storage (well, that's not much, if you pay, you get more), email forwarding etc. (some stuff I don't use, like sms when you get email). Of course, all for free and quite reliable for 3 years now.
So why always Hotmail?
I don't need a signature.
I've written a few thoughts on my initial impressions of Gmail. Not much that hasn't been said before, but hey, it's another data point.
In summary - WHOA, keyboard shortcuts!
Of course they're not the same. What's your point? They're both client side web programming languages, and that's all that matters for my example.
theortically:
1) RAR file
2) Split into 29.9 MB segments
3) Write scripts that interface with Gmail
4) Register 15 accounts
5) Free Storage.
Also, they limit attachement size, but do they limit body size? would it be possible to UUencode the whole thing and stick it as the message text?
Let's make a difference
the policy was dicated by our legal department, not IT or the user community.
as a general rule with reguards to email, as long as you have an established policy that states what is kept and for how long, one is safe from anybody who asks for stuff that is older than the retention policy. (but if you are caught changing that policy as a reaction to a request, one is in deep trouble).
There are exceptions, mostly in the financial industry (all written communications must be kept for 3 years, that includes email, im, etc, etc). Those rules do not apply to us (we have our own list of things that we must keep, but none of them are in email).
In my opinion, the privacy concerns people have about GMail are vastly overrated. Don't get me wrong, I'm just as privacy/rights obsessed as the next Slashdotter...but there isn't very much wrong with GMail. Go to Google, will you? Type something into the search box, let's say "books." No reason why, just a random word. On the right side of the screen, what do you see? Under the heading "sponsored links", you see adds for Amazon and the like. Things which paid to get in on the "books" search. Do people complain about this? No! But, I hear you cry, GMail is looking into my personal words! They can context-ad my searches, but not my email! And why not? From everything I've seen, it's been said that no person will EVER read what you've written/been sent. If that's true, then how is your privacy invaded? It's not! Pure code scanning your email and showing ads is not an invasion of privacy. But, I hear you cry, if they start with that, they may end up reading our email by hand/searching it for use other than anonymous advertising/whatever? So? So could Hotmail. So could Yahoo. We trust them not to actually read our mail. We have to trust Google too; we all know the lesson of Ken Thompson's "Reflection on Trusting Trust"...we have to trust any mail service at some point. My point? I'll trust them not to actually read them. Anonymous ad fetching? That's OK.
I'm working on my own web-mail (link in sig) with anything I can think of applied to it. It's very much functional and easy to use.
Google looks to be doing the same thing. They're not just emulating what's already out there but going way above and beyond. They've already got all the basic features that people expect implemented and a few toys. 6 Months gives them plenty of time to go further to give people that last push they needed to move over to GMail vs whatever they're currently using.
One can expect that MS is already at work figuring out a battle plan to counter this. Or maybe they're just expecting GMail to fail financially because they think they're overselling themselves into debt.
MS knows how much it costs to run their service which offers significantly less and has a number of caps in place. Not just storage but also the number of e-mails you can send per day. Hotmail is also ad supported.
I can imagine that MS has something cooking but they're not going to do anything until they see what happens to Google. If Google becomes too popular they may be forced to sell premium accounts that have the extra bells and whistles.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
It isn't just the happy grin he exhibits in every picture, though that is annoying. No, I consider Sergey evil because:
a) he has my dream job
b) he defined what my dream job would be
c) he thought of cool stuff before me
d) he has more stuff than me
I don't mind Bill Gates much despite his money because his company and his ideas are mundane and never very exciting. Oh sure, I'd like to have a mountain fortress with helipads and scuba tunnels, and I guess it would have been OK if I'd come up with the Windows oses, but really I could take or leave it.
Ditto Linus Torvalds. He has the opposite problem. He has neat ideas, but, no offense Linus (I know he is reading this), not exactly a dream job. I am only mildly envious of him. Larry Ellison I am also slightly envious of because of his crazy samurai stuff but due to his crazy samurai brain I don't think I'd want to be him.
No, as far as being others goes, I'll take Sergey Brin and his unique name and mysterious heritage and brilliant smile and rugged good looks and cool job and money.
That bastard.
Yes, I know that it is a beta system, but for really crucial business email, I keep a flat file where I copy and paste emails for local backup (but, I almost never bother to do this).
Setting up Gmail was trivial - just forwarded email from my domain name. It is a little strange using a web based email system but because it uses a Mozilla plugin it is really more like a fat client. I find that the convenience of getting my email from any computer I am using outweighs any hassles of a web interface.
Oddly enough, I don't use the search capability very often, but it does work well. I like the way threads are organized in "conversations" and a new email to a "conversation" moves the entire conversation to the top of the Inbox.
-Mark
Umm, its a complex app, but its definetly not IE only. The current list of supported browsers includes IE, of course, as well as Mozilla and Firefox (on Windows/Mac/Firefox), and Netscape too. The only browser support that is strangely absent is Safari, but they are working on it.
The difference between GMail and an application is that you can check it anywhere. I've used Hotmail and Yahoo Mail, and they both pale in comparison. I now have a GMail account, and its fantastic. Its well designed, very intuitive, and it works great.
Daniel
I signed up for my GMail account on yesterday and there certainly are VERY unobtrusive text ads (similar to the ones used on Google Search) on the right hand side of the page. Perhaps older GMail accounts don't have this though. Either way, they are extremely unobtrusive and don't effect the experience at all. I wish all of the email providers (like they'll be there long once GMail launches) would do this with their ads.
For anyone interested, I've posted a brief review of the GMail service in my blog. I'll be honest, this is a mindblowing service. Absolutely world-class all the way.
Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc.
"Quality Custom Software and IT Services"
Because Google is run by people who, not only love technology, but actually understand technology. These guys are technologists first and businesspeople second. They've created a geek playground, set their geeks free, and watched them play. The result of that play is what we love about Google.
That might all change once they go public. I hope that it doesn't but pouring buckets of money at people tends to oftentimes have a negative effect. I suppose we shall wait and see.
Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc.
"Quality Custom Software and IT Services"
Since 1990 IMAP had a "search unseen" feature (See http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1176.html which enabled clients to easily broaden and narrow searches easily (see Pine for a good implementation).
I currently have about 1GB across a few IMAP folders at my ISP; and can search the hole think quickly and efficiently using '90's technology.
I don't see the big deal.
I got an account through Blogger because I'm an active poster. http://crackhouse.blogspot.com. Here are some quick first impressions of Gmail. It really is a gig, I uploaded some MP3s without any problems, no pop access right now, it's very limited in the settings department compared to yahoo but it's still in beta so that's to be expected. I tried to send a 90MB file to myself as an attachment but it says that I'm limited to 10MB attachments :(
They have a system where you can flag messages as important with a star icon. It copies the message to the star folder for easy access to important messages. The default name format looks like this
firstname.lastname@gmail.com
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
The common inbred mortals that use Hotmail aren't going to bother switching over to Gmail. It's called laziness.
Heck, how long did it take for those inbreds to just start USING Google search ? WE THE NERDS had to change their start page to Google.com because they were still using the default MSN page. And then we had to teach them how to use a fricking SEARCH ENGINE.
Gmail is cool, but they won't steal many Hotmail users. They earn a whole bunch of new users though, as well as us geeks who typically run our own mail servers and/or pay a nominal fee for a true POP/IMAP account.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I have a gmail account. I set some other email accounts of mine to forward to it, a couple of which are heavy spam attractors (200 a day or so).
At the moment, gmail's spam filter isn't all that great allowing maybe 50% through. I figure this is probably because their filter hasn't had enough training yet, not enough users etc. And they make it easy to report the spam by just checking off the messages and clicking "Report As Spam".
So I'm not too bummed, but don't get your hopes up on gmail saving the world from spammers.
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