Gmail Adds Features

tommertron writes "Gmail rolled out a host of new features today. Big improvement in the contacts list, with the ability to search it and organize messages according to contact. Also, you can now forward all incoming gmail to any email account, but, according to Google, this feature is only 'free for now.' Does this mean gmail will start charging for some features? Meanwhile, Internet News is reporting that on Monday, some gmail accounts contained an Atom link for reading your email summaries in a news reader. Also meanwhile, my decrepit Hotmail account still hasn't given me that promised 250 megabytes ..."

Comments

Duh!

[(54)T-Dub]

Of course they are going to charge you to forward your email. Otherwise you could use their great spam filter and bandwidth without having to see their adds. And what do you expect from a Free email service. At least you can have some confidence that they won't sell your email address.

Queue bitching about targeted advertising.....

Re:Duh!

[0racle]

Then don't use gmail, or did you not think about that?

Re:Duh!

[foreverdisillusioned]

Maybe he's, you know, discussing his views on Gmail in a discussion forum FOR Gmail?

I, for one, am glad that there are people out there willing to share their security concerns, and I don't understand it they're told to shut up because it's an optional, free service. Free or not, we have a right to know and talk about these things.

Re:Duh!

[gmuslera]

Forwarding all your mail still needs you to have 1gb to store it in somewhere else. You will not have its search engine, its conversation mode, and even its labels (thing you can get thru imap, afaik). Gmail package is not just spam filter, 1gb capacity and so on, is all the features combined. Even the targetted ads is potentially a feature.

Using gmail just because its spam filter is like buying a Ferrari just because it looks nice. Is the whole engine that worths.

Does it work properly/completely with Opera yet?

[Propagandhi]

Opera is my browser of choice (I've found it to be more stable than Firefox, if not as full featured) and so far it hasn't been compatible with G-Mail. Does this upgrade improve support for my favorite browser?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I've used GMail for a while now...

[Sheetrock]

While its features are more iterative than revolutionary, I believe GMail is the logical next step in how we all do e-mail.

We are all inundated with e-mail nowadays. Semantic parsing and bayesian filtering are commonplace, but no conventional e-mail client allows automatic grouping by subject in quite the manner of GMail. I enjoy the ability to search messages rather than arbitrarily tossing them into folders to be forgotten. Indeed, e-mail has called out for intelligent grouping for some time now.

It opens up some fantastic marketing opportunities as well. Already they exploit this with the excellent GoogleAds along the side of the screen that have relevance to the e-mail one is perusing; however, with the gradual acceptance of commercial e-mail by people and by legislation I believe there is a great deal of future potential in selling/buying general profiles of e-mail accounts using this same data. As search engines and e-mail combine, the quality of the search interface becomes a mute point; the most interesting information is pushed to the user based on relevance to their online lives.

The only real concern is privacy, but I'll bet it's possible to sell really general-type information without violating any policies -- thus using advertising to continue to deliver the kinds of features users expect without costing them a dime. If only they could do something like this with online backup/recovery as well.

Re:I've used GMail for a while now...

[groomed]

Threading of messages has been around for decades. Searching is easy and fast on modern hardware. Storage is perhaps not quite a dime per GB yet but that day is not far off. Spam detection technology has improved by leaps and bounds over the past few years. The only benefit of gmail is that it's accessible anywhere you can access the WWW. That's cool, but personally I much prefer to SSH into my home machine.

I'm not trying to downplay the significance of gmail. It's a very nice application. Even if it wasn't, new sources of throw-away email accounts are always welcome. And it keeps Hotmail in check. But grandiose proclamations like "I believe GMail is the logical next step in how we all do e-mail", well, that's just liturgical bullshit.

Re:Too much fuss over gmail

[StevenHenderson]

so what does GMail have to offer others don't?

No new features?!?! How bout these:

1. Text-based ads instead of graphics or flash.
2. No taglines. Very nice if you want to send out professional emails.
3. Excellent spam filter.
4. FAST CSS (might be wrong about that) interface.
5. Google search built right into your email inbox, archive, etc.

I can go on if need be. You're nuts.

Re:Say it with me now: H T M L

[dragonman97]

No one should advocate HTML mail - this is just crap, and the best way to inject all sorts of junk into e-mail. If a message isn't getting to you clearly in plain text e-mail, then the sender really needs to take a writing class. I think this .sig sums it up: (credit: Matthew Keller) "No one ever says, 'I can't read that ASCII E-mail you sent me.'"

Re:don't be greedy

[Yakman]

I would say that with the amount of smart cookies working for Google, someone managed to write a script that takes a nicely commented and well written javascript file and removes whitespace, comments, shortens variable names and spits out the result. This means they can have a smaller download for end users and a maintainable source file for developers.

It wouldn't take too long for someone who really wanted it to "un-obfuscate" the source. At least the formatting part you could do via a script and then rename variables when you work out what they're for.

Re:Whither standards?

[Quantum Jim]

...surely combining the two formats (Atom and RSS) would be beneficial, lest we end up with another VHS/Beta or DVD+/-RW/RAM situation...

That's actually why Atom was first proposed. After Netscape lost control of the standard, RSS spintered into seven incompatible versions! Atom is an attempt to merge and stabilize the best of "Really Simple Syndication", "RDF Site Summary", and everything in between. The reason Google uses Atom, is because Blogger is a major sponser. Personally, I think Atom has an impressive design (although some is still a little clunky). Note that the final draft has yet to be published, as Atom isn't even 1.0 yet!