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The Webmail Wars
latif writes "Much of the excitement around Gmail has centered around its innovative
interface, but a pretty interface is hardly Gmail's biggest contribution.
Gmail's real contribution to webmail is its innovative business model. The new
business model is what's allowing Gmail to offer 1 GB storage quotas, and still have an expectation of making money. Of
course, Microsoft and Yahoo have noticed this too, and one can reasonably expect them to move
their webmail services to the new model. An interesting battle is shaping up
between the big three webmail providers, and my article "The Webmail Wars" analyzes
some possible scenarios and outcomes."
As I have previously mentioned on tech-recipes, I honestly don't see how there is a real war between these webmail services.
Gmail kills them all in spam blocking and space...
Plus, now... they have free pop as well.
The privacy issue is the only thing that has been preventing my complete switch over.
Give it another 2-3 years, and email will be dead anyways. Replaced by instant messaging-like services where you'll only get messages from the people you know. Best strategy to avoid spam anyways. So these battles are hardly of any relevance. And then, look at Yahoo, MSN and other major webmail providers... they have by now built their devoted "clientelle". How many people would move just because of mail space? Any of these places is an "integrated environment" where you get search, contacts, calendars, IMs etc... so the whole concept of "webmail wars" it totally overrated.
http://www.automatiq.se
Google: 1,000 MBytes
Hotmail: 250 MBytes
Yahoo: 100 Mbytes
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
Back in the days when HoTMaiL was the only webmail, it was good... Then MS bought them out and they turned to shit.
My webhost gives me e-mail addresses. I just use them. I do have a gmail addy and it's nice. XD;
Moll.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
But i wont ever get invited... hotmail on the other hand...
I just opened my hotmail account and noticed they upgraded my account to 250MB. Not that i will ever use that much but its not like i would ever use 1GB either. Hotmail works for me and i didnt need an "invite" to signup.
I still find webmail an interesting phenomenon. I know there are millions of users out there. And I myself find it quite handy when I'm traveling. Being able to hop on any computer, open up a browser, and check my mail is good. But...I still don't use it that much. I have a Yahoo account (I think), I may have done a Hotmail account way back in the day, and I have my Gmail account. But even with those, I use my other accounts MUCH more. I liken it to AOL...I don't fully understand why someone would use AOL when they can get a much less intrusive and cluttered way to get to the Internet, yet they have millions of users. Same goes with my thoughts on webmail...why would someone pay for Internet service and then opt to use Hotmail?
The only answers I can think of is to have a "safe" spot for addresses where you may end up getting a lot of spam. Or "secret" accounts. Or multiple accounts. And that's why I find these webmail wars fascinating...wars are being fought over this with the major players in the industry over something so seemingly unimportant (as say compared to OS wars, browser wars, etc)
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
The primary reason google 'scanning my email' doesnt concern me is that google has a reputation for being honest. That google has attained that reputation gains absolutely nothing for Yahoo (spammer, spam supporter) or MS (convicted monopolist)
I trust google several orders of magnitude further than I would trust Yahoo or MS. I would *never* use a hotmail or yahoomail account for anything other than a throwaway - yet I have in fact started using a gmail account for normal email.
Anyone who lists an @yahoo.com or @hotmail.com email address anywhere even remotely business-related is showing that they are 'part of the consumer herd' - an @gmail.com address, on the other hand, suggests an air of elitism.
If they follow this model, Im sure Yahoo and MS's ads will be flash and javascript popup ridden - Gmails ads are much less intrusive.
Google knew exactly what they are doing - they arent looking for mass market share of morons.
ignorance is bliss
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Google: 1,000 MBytes
It's actually 1,024 Mbytes (1 Gbyte), although Google displays 1,000 Mbytes. I don't really know why, perhaps to avoid confusing less-techie users.
In need of reliable and affordable server monitoring?
Don't forget. Yahoo! recently bought Oddpost, a webmail service that had an innovative interface long before Gmail.
gmail supporst non-western characters I just found out. Yahoo does not(despite the fact that yahoo.co.jp for example does). Something to think about in an increasingly interconnected world.
Monstar L
you want an invite? what's your e-mail?
I mean a lot of space to store your mail is good. Being a service provided by Google is also good. But
there are also things like an excellent spam filter and search feature. If gmail offered 100 mb instead of a gig - i'd still sign up because of the above.
Mail me at rastakid [at] gmail [dot] com and I'll invite you to Gmail so you can sign up for it today too!
In need of reliable and affordable server monitoring?
For me, the big difference is the use of text for the ads. Gmail advertising is not in your face. Hotmail advertising is obnoxious. Will MS and Yahoo get it? Can they sell toned-down ads to their customers (advertisers)?
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
There are many other factors too..
Due to the nature of hotmail and yahoo, and the lack of searching, even deleting 50 emails is difficult. Even worse, the spam detection on hotmail is very unreliable (about 50-75% accurate), meaning its very difficult to manage emails.
The 200megs storage limit on hotmail can hold about 4000 emails, and since its difficult to handle even 50, I'd hate to leave my inbox unattended for a week.
Overall, the reason gmail is succeeding isn't just the business plan, but the features make it more usable then hotmail or yahoo. In my opinion though, yahoo is still doing a much better job then hotmail, with its features.
Having a hotmail account has no real benefits (it has the smaller space, you can get a passport without a hotmail account, they tend to get very spammy, and theres no "hotmail groups" which needs a hotmail account to sign up) and because of all the email addresses, its very hard to end up with a remotely decent email on it. Gmail has started to suffer the same problem, but I severely doubt it will ever suffer it as bad as hotmail or yahoo (yahoo for instance has different domains such as auzy@yahoo.com will accept the same emails as auzy@yahoo.co.uk, but someone might not realise it and sign up for both with different ID's, halving the total domains).
Its not just about advertising, its about the usage. Everyone has a hotmail account they leave around for junk.. Which means that they are just gathering emails at the moment costing Microsoft in Bandwidth costs.
From Oddpost's Oddblog back in July:
"May we please pay you $75 for the simple privelege of watching you use Oddpost for about an hour and a half? Yahoo! is conducting an Oddpost usability study at their headquarters in Sunnyvale, CA."
Watch for Yahoo! mail changes coming soon...
But what exactly is 'innovative' about Googles interface? It looks like a bog standard webpage to me. Some people find its layout user friendly but thats not innovation.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Sure, email will change. It might not even be recognizable as email anymore. But there is still a need on the internet for some type of "mail" system, where both parties don't have to be online. Furthermore, there is still a need to contact people you might not know.
For instance, I had to recently contact a prof. at a university. He had no idea who I was, as we had never met or exchanged mail. Sad day for me if the new system only accepts mail from known people.
Think a little.
It seems like getting and giving GMail invites has become some kind of sick and twisted bizarre subculture too.
So, Google is using their software to match search keywords to ads on email to, and suddenly that's a "business model"? No of course not, it's a way to get more klick-throughs. It is an *improvement*. Nobody claimes a new "business model" because they have built a better mousetrap.
A business model is rather from where you get revenues, or how you are organised. I get my money from consulting, and the software I'm building is free. Microsoft charges for their software. THAT is different business models.
"The new business model is what's allowing Gmail to offer 1 GB storage quotas, and still have an expectation of making money."
Last I checked hard drives are less than $1/GB. I hardly think storage quotas are their biggest expense. The total compensation for the CEO is probably bigger than their entire cost of the gmail infrastructure.
Slashmail.org is an Open Source alternative that has more features and better functionality than the well-known email providers mentioned in this article. Slashmail.org is not free, but intended to compete with these competitors' paid subscriptions. Trial accounts are available for those interested in taking a look at the service. We offer unlimited storage, with both webmail and IMAPS access. We encourage feedback.
Slashmail.org "The Open Source Email Com
Sign up here: http://isnoop.net/gmailomatic.php
I know it works, as I just sent 3 invites to their email address, and within 10 minutes someone had already activated the first one. This is a really cool service, and since it's automated, it's easy.
http://www.fsckin.com/
Gmail ads can't be blocked as easily because they're part of the page. That's okay though because they're relevant and not annoying.
I remain disappointed with gmail.
It still won't open messages in a new window. Is it so unnatural to want to view the message index in one window and open the messages in new windows while retaining my view of the index? I mean, some of us can chew gum and walk at the same time.
On Yahoo, I can do this simply by middle clicking links. Not on gmail. Javascript and frames hell prevent it. As if that makes it "okay".
I still can't find an option to get a traditional chronological view of my inbox. Gmail only seems to provide their threaded view. Many times, that view is not optimal.
No folders. They do not support folders. Sure, they support filters. But I can't use a filter to put mail from a mailing list into a folder. This is good how? What alternative to folders are they providing?
No option to show full headers by default.
5% of the time, gmail says it is unavail when I try and login. A retry gets me in.
It is great as an inbox for registering accounts, etc. But aside for the benefit of the 1GB causing everyone else to raise their quotas, it ain't that great.
The author of the article neglected to mention another important advantage that Google has over its competition - google already had a thriving paid-for-advertising system ready (AdWords) ready to slot into Gmail. Yahoo has the Overture system, which although isn't anywhere near as big as AdWords would still be usable, but Microsoft has neither.
While it's not out of the question that Microsoft could develop their own systems to sell targetted ads based on keywords on their email services they wouldn't have the volume of advertisers for such a broad range of keywords as Google has, they would most likely have to swallow their pride and do a deal with either Google or Yahoo/Overture to deliver the targetted ads for any Gmail-cloned system.
Jolyon
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
Whenever I sign up a non-technical user for a web mail account (so I don't have re-setup Outlook and hear how they lost all their email everytime their hard drive crashes), I always sign them up for a Yahoo account. Hotmail just plain sucks because they open links in email in a frame. Come on now - they've had that "feature" in there for years. When are they going to get rid of it? I thought when MS modified IE so that it didn't accept cookies in a frame they would HAVE to do it but apparently they didn't agree with me. As a result, clicking on links contained within a Hotmail message is useless.
On the other hand, GMail is really nice. Part of the UI though I'm still up in the air as to whether it's more difficult for me to use because I'm not used to it or because it's just plain not better. For instance, I sent an email to approximately 40 people from my Gmail account and received a single response from just about all of them. Well all of those responses are lumped into a single unit called a conversation that I find very difficult to navigate/cleanup/etc. I know that's the point - that I'm never supposed to delete anything, but I think actually hitting that "ideal" might be counterproductive. So, I stick with Yahoo - especially since they added the ability to login using SSL. Can you believe for years you had to login with your password in plaintext!! And even now the "Standard" login is plaintext - you have to click on "Secure" mode to make sure nobody gets your login and password.
I'm a big tall mofo.
There is a way around this, and it's not very intuitive, I'll give you that.
Basically just label an email, then archive it. It wont show up in the inbox, and it only shows up when you click on the label on the left (just like regular folders, but you can have the same email in multiple folders without taking up more space) or click on view all mail. Viola, folders, abeit badly designed and clumbsy, but folders, nontheless.
http://www.fsckin.com/
Business model aside, isn't the market pretty well saturated? I have a university address which uses my real name and is my rl address. When I graduate I get a grad address which will probably take on the same functionality. I have a yahoo account which I've held for the last five years with which I sign up to things that I reasonably trust but don't want to use my real name for. In particular I use it for newsletters. Then I have a dozen or so throw away accounts created for just one purpose, or for companies I don't trust at all. I don't *need* another account, and I have no reason to switch. I have a Gmail account, but no use for it. Yes, the searching would be quite nice, and so would decent spam filtering, but it's not enough to sway me off the other two. Most novices online will use their service-provided address. Maybe Gmail will grab their webmail accounts when they spread out, but these are less likely to be primary addresses. Most people who've been around a few months already have plenty of email addresses, and from my experience it takes a heck of a good reason to change.
Gmail is still not ready. It's in its beta phase of development. You can't subcribe to it.
Half of what you say is right. But:
@gmail.com will not be a mark of the 'elite' for long. GMail is going for the mass market.
And the point is, it's not entirely Google culture -- it's that GMail's business model doesn't require distraction. Their model is based on ads being relevant. If other webmail providers come up with similar relevance technology, they may become as sleek and non-intrusive as GMail.
But you're right -- attitude matters. MS and Yahoo work by traditional techniques, i.e. dangling tasty candy to consumers, in order to deliver eyeballs to corporations. From the era of television.
Google, thankfully, has a different attitude. They're not trying to go against the nature of the web and make it more like TV. They're trying to draw more businesses into the internet way of doing things.
I have no affiliation other than being a happy customer.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
The same goes for attachments. Somehow index them and store them seperately.
For example, I was sent an Ashley Simpson 3mb attachment when that first came out, and I noticed 4 others on that message that had gmail accounts. How many other gmail users got that same attachment?
You missed the "Search Mail" button at the top of the Yahoo Mail page, FYI.
http://www.fsckin.com/
Anyway, that left me with a few spare gmail invites
Hopefully the folks that don't have one yet will see this before anyone else snaps them up.The biggest problem with the Gmail interface is that it uses so much JavaScript; it doesn't run at all on many handheld browsers. I think at least they need a simplified XHTML interface.
The POP feature also makes no sense to me; it basically begs you to download messages from their servers when their stated goal is to collect lots of mail. If they offered IMAP access instead, people could keep their messages on the server. They could even use IMAP for placing subtle adds (e.g., message "1" is always some kind of simple ad, but unlike spam or hotmail, there would always only be one advertising message).
An area where Gmail could really do something better is passwords: they really should offer one-time passwords for travelers. Right now, when traveling, there is a high chance with web-based mail that your password gets compromised.
In any case, for fairly little money, you can get large mailboxes with IMAP interfaces from other companies, and you get a lot more control over them than with Gmail. Currently, Gmail's "free" isn't good enough for me to save the money I get with a commercial provider.
GMX anybody? 1000 MB free space for e-mail, POP3 access and WebDav (Windows: Web Folder) access to use that gigabyte to store files you want to access everywhere?
It can hardly be vapourware if it's out there, being used - you know it exists, so to call it vapourware is wrong.
Seriously, though - if you want a Gmail invite, they're everywhere - probably Google's way of stopping people from selling them. Just ask around, email me if you're desperate (oberon@gmail.com) and try it out for yourself.
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
I'm not sure if you understand the definition of vaporware.
The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
"P0RN ADVERT MISFIRES"
Jillian Sexton's letter caused quite a stir when it arrived in her 8 year old cousins, Annis Cox's, mailbox yesterday. The original letter describing hot weather in the UK and Jillian's exasperation over not being allowed to spank her naughty pussy arrived intact. However the advertising that accompanied it was not suitable for 8 year olds. [fill in your favorite web based mail company] while looking into the matter suggests that a Microsoft product may responsible.
when its in perpetual beta, and 'normal humans' can't get an account?
how long has the beta been already? long enuf for M$ an Yoohoo to actually provide services, right?
Looks like they're sustaining heavy casualties in this leg of the war.
"Dear Google, We are from the US Dept of Homeland Security. We see that you are able to scan all users mail for keywords."
.....
You are ordered by the PATRIOT act under penalty of perjury to send all mail user accounts that contain results of the scan program that match the words below, to the Dept of Home Security. Holders of those addresses will be investigated for acts considered to be against the interest of the Government of the United States of America.
You are forbidden by the PATRIOT act to discuss this action with your shareholders, the public, or anyone else or face federal prosecution. Thank you for your co-operation"
bomb
terror
Osama
Democrat
Abortion
Immoral
porn
voting machines
rigged
Bush
protest
WTO
peaceful
US DEPT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Methane filled tuporware has what to do with email again?
My friend has gmail and loves it.
But she has to use Hotmail to email her aunt who works for a police station because their filter won't accept Gmail addresses. Don't even try to tell me this doesn't have something to do with Microsoft having their fingers in everything.
I have always contended that e-mail is a very private medium. When we run e-mail services for our clients, we do not examine the contents of their mailboxes ever. We control spam via RBLs and it has proven to be more effective and offer a much higher degree of privacy.
Likewise, the freebie web e-mail services are fine for goofing off, but I would never use such services for core communications. There is virtually no guarantee of privacy ever with any of those services. Their terms of service and privacy policies are spineless. At any time they can change their policy and there's no doubt they have archives of every message sent and received. I'm not assuming most people have mail content that needs to be kept highly-private, nor that anyone would necessarily be interested in the content, but it's the principal of the matter. I've always felt that e-mail is a sacred medium that should be respected.
As a result, I am among those who really don't care what Google, Hotmail, Yahoo or others do. I may occasionally use their service, but the core of my communication will never involve their systems. It just seems like a smart move. A company whoring its services will inevitably exploit the content that you generate through their network. It's not what any of us signed up for or agreed early on, but it's as much of their business model as anything else, so don't be naive and think you have any privacy whatsoever on these whore e-mail services. You don't.
Finally an article where this won't really be off topic, although it will get modded that way and my karma will go down even further
I have 3 gmail invites left
GETPKG - Package Management for Slackware
I was one of the "lucky" ones that had a 6 Mb Yahoo mail account (it was later trimmed down to... 4 Mb?) since I've had it for like 6 years.
6 years. But then Goggle comes and in a matter of days my account is upgraded to 100 Mb. They couldn't really afford to do that for the last 6 years, yet as soon as a competitor shows up they start offering upgrades.
Well, too bad, I'm going to Gmail and their targeted ads and I feel no remorse leaving behind Yahoo and their sucktastic advertising.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
Many Spamassassin users do not have the mastery of computers that is presumed by the spamassassin principle people. More and better basic users materials without the industry jargon is needed.
One down, countless more to go...
Note: This is a copy from my blog.
...) most likely Google will not allow that, but there appears to be a large market for it. Maybe one solution could be hashcash. The idea has been around for a long time, but if the email market adopted a system like this, I think it could have a substantial impact. Especially when computers become so powerful enough, that it takes minutes to bruteforce an email message to every hotmail account 15 characters in length or shorter. Hashcash could account for this by relying on strong, more complex hashing algorithms.
...
I have a few thoughts on this. One is the portability issue, but I'll get to that in a bit. Now the real light bulb that just went off is that Adam Smith is right once again. I think I have the business model of why spam will disappear without government REGULATION.
How does Gmail make money?
Generally speaking, Google places advertisement in your Inbox. If you click though the advertisement, they make money. Google is happy, the advertised website is happy, you are happy.
How do Spammers make money?
Generally speaking, Spammers place advertisements in your Inbox. If you click though or purchase their product, they make money. The Spammer is happy, the advertised website is happy, you are most likely unhappy and that is why you are buying Viagra.
Right now it costs about $20/month to send a spam messages to 5 million individuals. I would honestly guess that for most products, the amount of click through's is in the hundreds at most. My guess is that if that the click though rate was any higher, there would be a higher margin to rent the email list.
Wouldn't it be beneficial for spammers to target their audiences? Of course, but only if the cost wasn't prohibitive. That's where Google's AdWords comes in. Google's AdWords is an open cost model. I would say it works similar to bidding on an auction, ie. "How much are you willing to pay to have somebody click though to your website?"
Cost-per-clicks (CPC) range from $0.05 to $100.00. For a spammer, I would imagine they would be willing to spend $0.05 per click. At $20/month, that yields 400 visitors to their site. I am sure that number is very similar to their current marketing efforts (if not better.) With increased competition between email services, as the above Webmail War article mentioned, the cost will only be driven down lower, maybe even reach a point of only incurring a cost if an item is actually purchased. Other metrics for deciding a cost may be based off if a consumer asks an inquiry, or a consumer spends more then 1 minute on the website, etc. We have only seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to non-intrusive responsible advertising on the internet. I live in nyc, I am bombarded with advertisements on every street corner, every taxi and bus. We even have bike messengers in this two horse town with advertisements on their bikes.
Now the only problem would be the solicitation of illegal or inappropriate materials, (child porn, porn to youngsters, american eagle ads to hipsters,
Also, we will have to watch out for the next wave of attacks, SPIM. However, I envision one day we will all use Gim, Google's answer to Instant Messaging. I would envision AdWords being built directly into our instant messaging conversations. Ohh, you're heading to a party at Brad's house, and Brad lives 12 blocks away in downtown Philly? Well here is a link to 5 liquor stores between your apartment and Brad's house. Click though now and place your order online so it can be ready to be picked up on your walk over.
Back to the email portability factor, you know, like the cell phone number issues. A few years back, I had purchased my own domain name to host my email so I could have reliable service and keep an email address I would be happy with. But when I found out that Google was offering an emai
Because Google is selling ad-placement based on the results of this scan, it is not at all far-fetched to imagine that some customer of Google sues them for breach of contract/whatever for not placing their ad in the right place. Maybe the client claims Google placed a competitors ad. In any case, you can bet that the emails in question, and their contents, will be discoverable, because its obviously relevant to whether Google should have placed this company's ad.
Do you want random scum company and their lawyers poring over the contents of your emails?
Do they archive only mail sent *from* these accounts, or also mail sent *to* these accounts? If that's the case, do you avoid sending mail to people using Google, Hotmail, Yahoo addresses?
I am a strong gmail supporter, and I have my accounts and I am happy with them. YES, it's beta, but it's already quicker, cleaner and nicer than most free webmail services I know. And they keep implementing new features permanently. Their tech-team is great, they reply pretty fast to bug reports and problems, and altogether I must say I am satisfied. I already moved all my OLD traffic from the hotmail account to gmail and told everyone to mail me there. Now... as for yahoo! ... the matters are different. .com was slow. China has problems during the daytime. Their network is overloaded and everything going OUT of china ping basically bad, so even on my 12Mbit I go at 5K/s and consider myself happy. Anyways, the.com was slow, so i tried to log in through the cn.mail.yahoo.com portal, and woah, surprise, it's lightning fast. and after logging in, it suggest to transfer my account to the .cn servers. Which i did. It became fast also. BUT IT STAYED IN ENGLISH. now here comes the good part. cn.yahoo.com offers 1GB email already for the past 5 weeks. So does Japan (even 2GB for a small fee). And they do for free. Yahoo is tricky. it depends on the region. .tw yahoo offered only up to 10 megs until october. and .cn had 1gb already.
Ok, Hotmail sucks (its MSN, what'd you expect), but yahoo has localized servers everywhere. AND their service varies depending on which server you create your account (or which servers you tranfer your account to.
I relocated recently to Shanghai, China (again!) due to professional reasons. I logged in to my yahoo mial, but the
Yahoo also has a much lighter interface than hotmail (even though gmail's kicks the shi* out of yahoo!'s).
So anyways. I DO support gmail, but I will point out that other have been pulling along wth the storage, that their service is ALSO good and that they already have what google still does not: localized servers so people from everywhere get good access.
(All the latter info does NOt apply to MSN Hotmail...anyone surprised?!)
So now not only will my Hotmail account get lots of spam, I'll also get to see banner ads proclaiming the virtues of V|4gr4...
Having a hotmail account has no real benefits
Until a few days ago, I would have pointed to the ability to use hotmail through an API (letting me use hotmail in Outlook Express and through hotmail popper). But gmail has added now added POP support (although it's not yet enabled on my account), so I suppose the only advantage of hotmail is now obsolete.
It's a good thing, too, I was getting quite sick of using copy/paste to reply to an email that was forwarded to gmail while changing my from address to match the address that the mail was addressed to.
Slashmail costs money, so it's no direct alternative to ad-based webmail like gmail/hotmail. But how does this Slashmail service compare to Runbox?
i ew_wi.gif / inbox.jpg
http://www.runbox.com/
Can I use Slashmail with a POP client like Eudora to retrieve my messages without logging in to the webmail account itself? Or will I have to use this IMAP thing?
Slashmail is 13.95$ a year, while Runbox is 29.95$ (or 20$ yearly for 3 years). Both offer 30 days free trial.
Runbox inbox:
http://www.runbox.com/_img/login/screenshots/prev
Slashmail inbox:
http://download.slashmail.org/preview/screenshots
Fastmail has by far the greatest of all webmail interfaces.
and yes IMAP should be used everywhere. It's so much better. If fastmail bump'd up to even 100MB for free accounts I'd drop gmail in a heatbeat. It's hard to delete messages on gmail. unecessarily hard.
--
Another Extremely Happy Customer
the Wolfkin
Haven't they had that for years?
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Yahoo has let my have POP support for ages (though I understand it is not available to US subscribers for free)
Pls forgive my English. Don't you guys notice that Gmail only allows the registration by invitations? I doubt they are going to change that even if Gmail is no longer in beta mode. What does this registration model mean? That means that Gmail has collected precious data between their customers, not only the personal data for each person, but also the connections/relationship among the accounts. That is, their customer database is no longer purely flat, or rather the database is a tree-structured or probably even more complicated like a network. The connections might imply the relationship like families, friends, workmates, and people visiting the same forum and share the similar interests, and so on. The 1GB storage is just bait. Compared to the invaluable structured customer database, scanning the email content is nothing that big. People are worrying about the privacy thing regarding the content scanning. While the information about the connections is another privacy thing we exchange with Google for 1GB storage. Those Google guys are smart, and they will make good use of the precious data and make profit through advertisement or something else. So, the whole webmail war is a trap, or maybe it is proper to call it a smart email business model. Yahoo and Microsoft fall into the trap. Anyway Microsoft has extra money to burn for that. If we really don't care these privacy things, like me, we can enjoy the benefits from the webmail war.
Just remember that Gmail is not 1GB of storage. It is short by an entire 24 MB! [a gig is 1024 MB, very important...]
_
Free 27" Sony WEGA TV
My own mail servers (Postfix & Courier), running on my own server box. That server box also has Apache running, among other things, Squirrelmail.
I can access my email by either using a normal MUA and connecting via IMAPS (POP3 and insecure IMAP servers aren't running, only IMAPS) or by using any web browser and pointing it to my Squirrelmail installation. Squirrelmail also works beautifully with Links--I don't even have a CLI MUA installed on my machine, as if I've ever FUBARed X, Links+Squirrelmail makes a great mail client.
As for space, you think GMail is great for offering 1GB of space? My server has 73GB left on its hard drive, and I can always buy a second one if I wanted to.
And that's not even the best part. The best part is the unlimited aliases. The only people I give my real email address to are my friends (and my PGP key, as the address on that needs to stay the same). Every mailing list I'm on gets its own alias. Sites that require free registration get a junk@ or stuff@ alias--if I start to get spam through them, I can delete those aliases and create a new one. My contact information on my website gives another alias--if crawlers get that one and start spamming it, I'll just delete the alias, make a new one, and change it on the site.
I'm sorry, but GMail is way overrated. With my setup, I have the server under my control (not Google's), I have more space than I'll ever need, I have the choice of accessing it through either IMAPS or a really good webmail interface, and I have a damn good spam-control system. Is there any reason, besides looking ``k3wL'', to use GMail?
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I just wrote a bit of Sieve to automatically redirect a copy of every incoming message to my GMail account. That way I have the nice, familiar FastMail address and interface (plus IMAP+Thunderbird+EnigMail!) and a backup that I will probably never fill.
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..so this is what they call html.
Maybe they can code the best search engine in the world, but they still haven't figured out how to write proper html.
The google double standard is pretty big around here. They're anti-privacy dataminers. You can't deny that. Of course they're letting you use POP/IMAP as they've already mined your mail and created a demographic profile on you there are going to sell to anyone with enough money. We're seeing the emergence of cults in the form of brands and geeks sure as heck aren't immune. Criticizing google, the iPod, or Linux is asking for trouble regardless of the facts. I'm sure this will get modded as a "troll" also for pointing this out.
Yeah and you can only register from the US!
Pity would have like to try it out too. Mail me if this changes.
Well I was having a few teething problems with my Gmail account mesage threading a while back and out of interest, send a message to the gmail people and said they could look at my emails to see what the problem was. The reply I got back said:
"For your privacy, the Gmail Team cannot access your inbox or personal
Account Settings in situations other than those outlined in the Gmail
Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. We are happy to assist you with any
questions or problems you might have concerning Gmail, and ask that you
send us any specific details about this issue that can help us investigate
further.
Sincerely,
The Gmail Team"
The privacy policy does state:
"Google employees do not access the content of any mailboxes unless you specifically request them to do so (for example, if you are having technical difficulties accessing your account) or if required by law, to maintain our system, or to protect Google or the public. "
As I had thought I had said they could (although technically not requested them to) I was a little suprised they didn't, but pleasantly so.
Also I love gmail, nice clean interface, lots more space then my hotmail account (which is STILL only 2 Mb even though they claim to be upgrading) and I haven't had any spam through ever (although still only a few months old so probably that my email address hasn't got out yet).
As for the discussions about folders. You could just use labels as folders, however I like to have multiple labels on things, for example you could label emails from your friends, then label some of the same emails as humour.
radel (A) inet. net. nz
Yeah, but do you get a gig of space from Yahoo?
I don't see the big deal with all this hotmail ad stuff. If you have firefox with adblock it should take out the majority of the ads just leaving you with the interface. Don't get me wrong though, I would love a gmail account.
Cheers in advance. radel (A) inet. net. nz
We can support international signup. We just haven't written the cool, slick interface yet. Leave us a message here and we'll do the manual thing to get you set up.
Slashmail.org "The Open Source Email Com
spymac.com has free 1gb email! dont submit to the evil corporations!
You mean now I'll see ads for Viagra outside the e-mail as well as in it?
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
Someone else must have mentioned this also, but having not seen it in the first couple pages of replies...I'll say it again.
It ISN'T the storage amount that makes Gmail great. It is the method that Gmail does web-mail in the first place.
Gmail takes the hit off the server and puts most of the process of rendering pages on the browser itself. Their use of Javascript is brilliant. Something they likely learned from Mozilla.
Who cares if Hotmail adds 98MB more storage...their rendering time will still suck. Same with Yahoo and the others.
I got the gmail account because I was sick of cleaning out my junk folder (which counts towards your 2MB limit in hotmail).
Now that yahoo is up to 100MB and hotmail is up to 250MB, though, I'm laughing. I haven't cleaned up the junk folder, and the yahoo one is up to 2500 items! :)
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You are a male, and the original poster (who prefers folder over labels) is female. Reason: males possess better ability for abstractions.
Corollary: You use Linux, the original poster uses Mac.
why is it that we now have wannabe geek/nerds? what a moron, having to limit his thinking of a virtual filing cabinet to what one can do in reality!?! when I was in school I got beaten up for being a geek now these goddamn xbox fanboys who can "pwn" a few people on halo 2, or whatever the current game is, but are actually just as fucking brain-dead as the bullies who picked on them at school think they are fashionable as "geeks"!!! fuxake to be a geek you must be at least smarter than the average mofo! not just smell bad, avoid light and drooling over girls you'll never have!
Microsoft -sends- spam to the hotmail account that I have (for throwaway purposes, not that I seem to need it with gmail's spam filtering system) so that every time I infrequently check that account to see if some person or list doesn't know about my new account, there's another "important announcement" from hotmail. Which says exactly the same thing (in full flash glory) as all the other "important announcements".
I only ever recieved one unsolicited message from google, and that was the introduction that was in my inbox when I signed up.
So we should all open Hotmail accounts, post the addresses on Usenet and the WWW and log in only often enough to keep the account from being closed. Thus the evil empire will be brought to its knees!