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Yahoo! Mail Superior to Gmail ?
ynotme writes "In his column, Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal writes that the new Yahoo! Mail beta provides a superior webmail experience to Gmail. Some quotes: 'The new Yahoo Mail is far superior to Gmail. Yahoo more closely matches the desktop experience most serious email users have come to expect ... Gmail has none of these new, fluid, desktop-like features ... Google's engineers have decreed that familiar email practices are no longer useful, and have substituted approaches they prefer, arrogantly denying users any choice.'"
The new yahoo mail looks like outlook, but it's more annoying since it's isn't as useful (no newsgroups). I much prefer gmail, the interface is fluid, intuitive and comfortable, and it's oh so pretty! I don't think copying the look of e-mail software should be the next step for webmail.
Does Yahoo mail let you use an interface like gmails? Or do they 'arrogantly' deny us that choice?
So basically what they're saying is that Google is being innovative instead of being a trend follower?
If I remember correctly Gmail came out almost 2 years ago. What would be more surprising is if Yahoo mail did not have a better engineered GUI. In 6 months or less Gmail will be better than Yahoo and the cycle will begin again.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
but no one else delivered.
* A nice user interface that is very responsive.
* Web-based.
* Auto-complete/tab-completion of email addresses.
* Ability to search my email.
* Advanced sorting and rules. I can place my mail subscriptions into different labels and archive them for later.
* Reliability. Gmail is much more reliable than previous hosts. My mail is delivered and I receive my mail.
* Group email threads together.
* Mail filters.
* vi-like keyboard shortcuts.
You can also use any of your normal programs (thunderbird, outlook (shudder), etc) to access it Gmail.
/. were more than ads for one service/program/etc over another these days . . .)
Yahoo! mail does not have this feature.
So if you've always liked your Netscape Messenger . . . you can use it, with Gmail. You don't need to get used to using a web browser to read your email.
*shrug* Frankly, I use PINE, so I couldn't care less.
(Meanwhile I'd really appreciate it if the articles on
Does Yahoo mail have or plan to implement free secure POP access like gmail has?
-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley
I far prefer Google mail .Perhaps it is that I have become use to the interface .
I find it simple to use , it has ample storage , the interface is perfectly useable and takes little effort to learn .
The search functionality is also rather good and very useful .
"The new Yahoo Mail is far superior to Gmail. Yahoo more closely matches the desktop experience "
Though I must ask , Which desktop is he referring to , certainly not mine .
" Gmail, by contrast, is quirky and limited. Its only advantage is its massive free storage, which exceeds what most people will ever need."
Well I don't find google quirky , everything does what I would expect . That to me is not quirky
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
That goes beyond a product review. It sounds like he has some kind of grudge against google. Gmail isn't just missing a feature he wants, but it will never have the feature because google is run by arrogant bastards! Take that google! Feel the wrath of Walt!
I've been using Gmail for over a year now. Before that I'd used a variety of webmail programs including Yahoo and Hotmail. I've found that Gmail has some very nice features. Yahoo also includes some nice features. However, none of this inherently makes one service "better" than another. If Yahoo's interface and format is easy for me to use, then Yahoo is the "better" service. If Gmail is easier to use, than Gmail is "better". We can argue about who's better until the world ends. I perfer to pick the one that matches me and let every one else do as they will.
The author makes the accusation that google are 'arrogant' by throwing away common email metaphors, and one of them is the common 'folders' practise that just about every mail system except google uses.
However, I think Google's way of doing things is FAR better. Folders is great, it allows you to file your mail away in a flat or hierarchial organisation. however, it DOESNT easily let you file a mail in TWO locations, unless you make a copy of the mail, and that in itself is really awkward.
Applying labels, or some kind of keyword system, or however you want to call it, is in fact a far more natural and flexible way of doings things, and I fully intend to apply that idea to a few other projects I'm working on, where 'file away into nested folders' was the original way of doing things.
So... perhaps Google needs to play a little catchup, but Google's idea of 'labels' instead of 'folders' I think is far superior.
The author of the article, with his accusations of Google's "arrogance", is really letting his "must put google down at all costs, because it's the cool thing to do" attitude really show.
So will the new Yahoo! mail interface also increase it's spam blocking? I was a Yahoo! mail user for years but as soon as Gmail was opened to private invites, I grabbed an account and to this day can count the number of spam emails that I've received on half of a hand. And I use and put my gmail address everywhere -- on all my forms and contact info.
Until Yahoo! can implement spam blocking anywhere near Gmail, I will be sticking with my "1 optioned" email site.
* Saving your e-mails in conversations ( an incredible concept)
*Works stable on all browsers ( I'm not sure if anyone else noticed buy yahoo doens't play well with opera)
*2 gigs of space.
*pop access
*and most of all simple.
I switched my mom (not computer savey) to google and she picked it up in seconds. People need to learn more bells and whistles doesn't always equal better.
The author comes across being very emotional and too judgmental for me to take the review seriously. Why was it even necessariy to add the arrogant bit? Oh right! That's the common sterotype Google has on Wall Street. I forgot! No doing a traditional IPO and not taking themselves too seriously apparently runs counter to Wall Street traditions so Google is automatically arrogant. I guess then all innovators are in a sense arrogant because they refuse to do things the same way it has been done.
I work in the finance industry but some of the narrow minded people who work there makes me want to puke. If trying new ideas and being innovative are arrogant, then I hope everyone is as arrogant as Google is. On one hand, Wall Street throws out terms like "think outside of the box" but on the other hand some elements hates change. Take this quote for example:
By contrast, Gmail has none of these new, fluid, desktop-like features.
Uh... hello? This is WEB mail, not desktop mail? Maybe things aren't all the same in both realms? My Gmail is fast as hell and gets the job done. I go on there and answer my mails as needed. Then I'm out of there. Total time taken is usually under one minute. That's how I want it to be.
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If the new Yahoo mail is better than Gmail, then google will have to improve their offering. Webmail service was a pretty stagnant cesspool until google stepped in. The preexisting providers (Yahoo, MSN, et al) were far too happy maintaining the status quo. A webmail provider war can only be good for us consumers. Yay capitalism.
The Yahoo! ads, as pointed out by this blogger, really are quite bad - GMail doesn't even come close to having objectionable advertisements.
And that's still something that bugs me about GMail - lack of folders. The labels are a cool idea, and provide flexibility that you can't get with folders. But it's still super-handy to be able to dump all mail, from, say, a mailing list into a particular folder. Alternatively, a way to view only messages without labels would be helpful.
Google's interfaces (for email and in general) have the advantage of being pretty simple and non-bandwith-intensive. For those people on slower connections, an interface with whiz-bang drag-and-drop bells and whistles will invariably be noticibly slower than a clean mostly HTML-based interface like Google's. I hate Hate HATE Flash websites for the same reasons.
-b.
GMail's primary feature is space. Frankly, I don't care for the interface. Deleting mail is problematic. I've found stuff I've removed show up. You move stuff to Trash, empty Trash, and expect it to be gone. They have no real filtering. Folders are basically non-existent replaced with labelling that difficult to follow. Thank goodness you can attach via a pop client. That being said, I use it.
Reviewers (and slashdotters) lke to throw around the word "choice" a lot. True, it's a good thing that you can choose between Linux and Mac and Windows, or between Yahoo and Google.
... conversations is "arrogant". It's a good thing you can choose not to use GMail! You could use ... well, I guess you can't use Yahoo mail yet.
But then they start to interpret it as the similistic "choice=good", and try to apply that to every level. If I had 4 brake pedals in my car, one per wheel, that would allow me more choice as to how to stop the car, but would that be at all better? If an email program let me tweak TCP parameters, that would certainly be more choices, but would they help or hurt the overall experience?
Mossberg, sadly, falls straight into this trap. He says Yahoo is better because it "more closely matches the desktop experience most serious email users have come to expect". So 100 years ago a car with a buggy-whip interface would have been better? Geez. Look at the user experience, not whether it's awkward in the same way as your old program.
Oh, and never mind that you can't even sign up for the new Yahoo mail at all yet. So you really don't have that choice: use Yahoo's old-and-extra-klunky mail, or Google's latest.
Mossberg: "But Gmail's limitations go beyond this. On several key issues, Google's engineers have decreed that familiar email practices are no longer useful, and have substituted approaches they prefer, arrogantly denying users any choice."
Oh, right. Forcing people to view conversations as
Damn them Google engineers for not giving me the choice to use Yahoo mail yet!
[Note to CmdrTaco: slashcode sucks for not giving me the choice to use any HTML tags I want in here.]
Seriously, I am a die hard Google fanatic but I still use Yahoo mail because it is very good. Gmail is not bad, but is still isn't Yahoo mail.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Based on his comments in the article, he just seems pissy because GMail works differently than the mail client he is used to, and he isn't given an option of working the way he wants.
One clear indication of this is: he complains about having labels rather than folders. Labels are essentially the same thing as folders, except labels allow you to put the message in several labels/folders. The only difference is how they are stored in the filesystem, which is irrelevant in a webmail environment. If they put folder icons on his labels, I bet he would love it.
He also complains about the "Conversation" view of e-mails (threaded view). I like the conversation view. But, I can see his point that it should be an option (even though I still think threaded/conversation view is a better way to use e-mail, because it allows for better context).
He complains about the ads in GMail, which cannot be turned off. Okay.. I guess that's a point. If it used large distracting banner ads, like Yahoo! Mail, I would want to turn them off too. But, the small text ads in GMail blend in and don't distract at all.
There is certainly room for improvement in GMail. But, Mr. Mossberg is a bit harsh when ranting about Google's arrogance for deciding they have a better way to do e-mail..
great, I hope people in places like China are looking forward to new "cool" features of Yahoo :/
Drag and drop is a "feature" that I wish I could disable in my email client. I am forever dragging a folder into some other folder by accident in Evolution. My filters handle all the sorting that I need to do, so I don't even drag mail around. Drag and drop only ever gets in my way.
so does AOL webmail
(enough said)
Sadly, I use Google not because it's the best, but because I have a long memory -- and I remember VERY WELL YAHOO how you guys screwed us with your two megabyte/ten megabyte limit. Yahoo will not get my business again, no matter how much Gmail might frustrate me.
CUSTOMERS HAVE LONG MEMORIES YAHOO!
The baby's fine -- please stop sending business cards.
I wish I had mod points. The summary even calls Google arrogant. Whether or not you feel that that is the case, this is not the editorial page, this is supposed to be interesting news items.
And no, I'm not new here.
While it seems a lot of advanced users on Slashdot seem to love being derived of features by our Google overlords (more in response to Google Talk than GMail)
Eh, I don't see how GMail deprives anyone of anything. You like Eudora? Fine, use POP3. You like Outlook? Use POP3. You like Thunderbird? Use POP3. You like Yahoo Mail? Use POP3 to download your GMail to Yahoo.
What's nice is I get all that without having to pay for an upgraded account. Plus, I have the convenience of also being able to read my email using any web browser anywhere in the world, derived of features notwithstanding.--- A man with a briefcase can steal more money, than any man with a gun. [Don Henley]
I am more worried about usability and accessibility of the webmail than its look. WebMail was meant to have a quick access, wherever you go, whatever system you have. I guess the new Yahoo mail interface will be much slower, will eat a lot more system memory and more error-prone. What will happen if I open that webmail in new IE version, or in Firefox, or in Mozilla, or in Konqueror, or in Netscape, or in Opera... And when a new browser version is released? What will happen if I use a Pentium 233 with 32MB of RAM? Will I be able to access it easily even on a 56K dial-up? And if I have disabled the right-click detection in my browser JavaScript options? And if I have a one-button mac mouse? I don't like these complex AJAX "systems". Sometimes I wish people have the "KISS" (Keep It Simple, Stupid) concept in their minds.
The summary was also largely a quotation summarizing the viewpoint of the original article. In that respect, I don't think it was the summary that was biased, rather it's Mr. Mossberg, the author of the aforementioned quotations. If you're going to villify anyone for being biased, it should be him.
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But more than that, I have to say advanced filters are key to webmail for me. I can route the spam that comes from free newsletters right to the trash. Out of principal, I previously would unsubscribe from the obnoxious newsletters that don't allow you to separately unsubscribe from their spam, but with gmail I never see the "special offers." There are quite a few decent letters I'm much happier to be subscribed to now.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
Hey, to each his own. I'm glad homeslice raved about Yahoo Mail. I just logged in for the first time in AGES and took a look at it and it's lovely. Really, it is. It has ads in the mail body, as always, which sucks. And the interface is a bit busy, with ads and offers and this and that.
:)
But I like the Bulk folder and this interface is clean and nice and all. And I can understand people who don't like the archive, conversation and label metaphors being pissed about Gmail. Like I said, to each his own.
Oh, and let's not forget what else Google did. They went to 1 GB of storage when that was unheard of. And now Yahoo Mail has that, too.
So life is good on the free, web-based e-mail front
RP
I hate the way the gmail people wont allow MSIE to store the password. Don't give me crap about its insecure - its none of your damn business if I want to store it! Jerks.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
You've been here long enough you should know better than to be surprised. :-) One could take a bowel movement and post the details on Slashdot and it will get modded "+5 Insightful" as long as it's one of the first posts. On the other hand, you could write the next "Principia Mathematica" as a response to said first post and it will be modded "-1 Troll" if you don't praise open source in the first few sentences.
The point that was missed is that Google's GMail project was meant to test new ideas. Is it really a new idea to try to mimic Outlook's tired functionality within a web browser? Certainly not, Microsoft already did a superb job of that with OWA. GMail follows Google's UI philosophy to a tee and is nothing more or less than I would suspect from them. They are keeping thing simple by limiting options. That may emasculate some users, because they want to think that they're superior to everyone else and know the right way to setup an interface, but it's a good way to test some of the alternative ways of thinking that Google wanted to explore.
For instance, I had never really taken the time to think of keeping threads of email as a single object. The first place that I saw it was in GMail. After seeing that I really despise having to use Outlook at work with it's cluttered mess of folders. I had also heard of the concept of search folders and labels before, but seeing it in action I realized how much better it is to see, interact with, and think of each message as a single object with multiple attributes that link it to other objects. If I'm looking for an email that was recently sent to me with an image attached I can just click on the "Attachments" label that I created and see all of the messages with attachments.
It's time to put aside that gushing and look at why I understand his complaints. It's difficult for people who just think of email as email to objectify it to realize that GMail's interface is logical. I converted my wife, who almost immediately converted 20 or so of her friends, and she had some issues setting up filters for use with labels. Some of her friends just didn't get it and switched back to whatever they used before. Not the least, I understand the concept of not throwing away data when you have so much storage, but do I really want to have that thrown in my face every time I delete something that I don't want being there? I also wish that GMail would trim the original text of large threads, check the original document of a 100-message thread sometime.
Then again, this is Google so it is a beta project. I could also refute each of my points with someone else's opinion that they like things the other way. Nothing changes that GMail is extremely successful at changing the way it's faithful users think about their email.
Yahoo!'s interface sounds interesting, but I'm interested in knowing if it has what GMail does. Does it have good keyboard shortcut support? Does it treat email messages as one object if I try to organize it in two different ways? I know it doesn't have threaded viewing of messages (yet) but does it hide previous emails and quoted text and/or highlight quoted text in such a way that I can easily discern quoted from new (for those who like to reply to one paragraph at a time)? If not then shame on Yahoo! for not incorporating features that save me time and are well done by Google. For that matter, if they don't have keyboard shortcuts then shame on them for not incorporating an indispensable part of standard UI.
You know, I don't think Gmail really needs to offer the kind of options our author spoke about -- individual messaging, folder options, etc. Those are the very things I was trying to get away from when I switched. If I wanted a desktop e-mail program, I would use Thunderbird or Kmail. I wouldn't go looking to Yahoo!. But that's just me. About the invitations, they're really not that hard to get. Everytime I give away an invite, I get another to replace it -- and I'm not the only one. Hell, go into almost any chat room, find a gmail user, and just ask them at random for an invite. I'm sure they wouldn't mind. Google just did it to spark interest. People always want what they can't have.
The fact of the matter is, that nobody is forcing anyone to use Google email, or Yahoo email, or MSN email, or Hotmail, etc... The choice is always up to the user - Google's engineers have done things their way, Yahoo's did it differently, Microsoft did it yet again differently, several times. Mr Mossberg just needs to pick an interface he likes, and move on. Of course, he's free to express his opinion, just as much as you and I are free to call him an id10t...
POP3 SUCKS for webmail. You don't get any sync features, so forget about keeping your folders consistant accross computers. Forget about having folders at all, in fact, because POP3 doesn't support them.
IMAP is a much better protocol. Until GMail supports it, I'm sticking with FastMail.
How is getting first post not superior? I guess being first to waste a mod point on first post is superior by Slashdot standards.
Seriously, I think that people that waste their mod points on modding down first posts are idiots. If you have mod points right now think about this... How are your mod points best spent? By using them to moderate important posts? Or are they better spent on modding down the same post everyone makes on every fucking article.
People that mod down first posts are bigger idiots than the people that waste their time getting first posts.
Google's engineers have decreed that familiar email practices are no longer useful, and have substituted approaches they prefer, arrogantly denying users any choice.
The only "arrogance" that I see in this "debate" is Mossberg's. Google made available a high-quality web-based mail service based on AJAX and was the first to give users a gigabyte of space. The Gmail experience was closer to any desktop experience than any other webmail service. There were likely lots of usability experts and user testers involved in its development. And if it were for Yahoo! and Microsoft, we'd probably still limp along with 10Mbyte mailboxes and page redraws for each message view. And, yes, the Gmail experience is different from a desktop client. I fail to see how that "denies choice"--Mossberg always has the choice not to use it.
Apparently, Mossberg's 35 years at the WSJ have gone to his head and he has forgotten that he is a journalist, not a usability expert. It is supremely arrogant for someone with his background to make judgements about the usability or quality of applications. In fact, someone who actually knows about usability wouldn't be so quick to jump to conclusions.
Fortunately, we all have a choice: we don't have to read the ill-informed drivel Mossberg publishes in the WSJ.
...and I'm kinda disappointed that the WSJ's standards have spiralled so far out of control.
When you look at the facts, Yahoo is playing catch-up, and they know it. Google came pretty much out of nowhere and released a wholly unprecedented level of quality with gmail. While most, and probably all, other free webmail providers were little more than ad spots first and email clients second, Google provided a service that was incredibly powerful that happened to run ads the same way the rest of their site did. All of this was done in a very elegant, simple yet powerful interface hosted on Google's servers. It's only a rare moment where you get errors from Google servers. It's also only a rare moment where you see something shoddily hacked together from Google's engineers. It doesn't just work, it works very well, and damned near all the time.
Did I mention it's free and nobody forces you to use it? To use the word 'arrogant' to describe the free service that set the current precedent for service and design is laughably irresponsible. How the hell do you get to use such a loaded word with negative connotation towards the parent company in responsible journalism? You don't. The fact that this hack can get paid to write this crap astounds me more than the fact that he clearly doesn't understand a single thing that he's writing about. I mean, I could spend all my days writing about crap I don't understand, but I don't think I'd get paid for it. While I admire his ability to get paid for workplace incompetence, I have to admit that I am baffled by how he manages to pull it off.
I bet he thought he was really clever with other loaded phrases such as "Not Gmail, where 'option' is a term too rarely employed, except in reference to employee compensation." Yeah, great job, ass. Way to make a thinly veiled snipe at the fact that Google happened to find a way to become fucking billionaires giving you great service at no cost.
And finally, since I seriously have to get to bed, my proof that the author has no goddamned clue what he's talking about: "I'm sure Gmail will get better and better, and will eventually adopt the new programming techniques that allow desktop-like ease of use."
This quote just proves that the author doesn't get the point at all. Google has never been one to compromise functionality with form. Just go to www.google.com if you're not sure. The whole google design philosophy almost wholly forbids gmail to ever get to the point where it will adopt these "new programming techniques," and I don't think we can realistically ever expect them to, or even want them to. If Google were to cheapen itself to the point where it were simply copying other peoples' interfaces in order to please woefully uninformed tech writers, I think we'd be much worse off than if they'd just done things the way they always had.
I'm not going to make any statements about which is better between Yahoo mail or gmail. I'm also going to point out that both are free, and you should expect nothing more than to get what you pay for both. In the event that you are pleasantly surprised by how much functionality you get out of a free service, you should be thankful. If you're into Yahoo's interface, use Yahoo. If you prefer Google's interface, use Google. Neither is going to be "far superior" to the other for all people as all people have different needs and preferences.
As for the people who keep hacks like this employed, you should be ashamed of yourselves.
-c
"I hope I don't make a mistake and manage to remain a virgin." - Britney Spears
More than that.
It may have been to have a limited set of beta testers and to spark interest last year, but its still by invite to keep spammers out.
If somebody invites too many spammers, I bet they get warned, then deleted.