Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Does Yahoo mail let you use an interface like gmails? Or do they 'arrogantly' deny us that choice?
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.
Does Yahoo mail have or plan to implement free secure POP access like gmail has?
-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley
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.
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..
I often wonder if I'm the only person in the world who likes to delete things that have no value whatsoever.
Yes, if I need to migrate my mail or back it up for some reason, do I want to have to worry about whether I 've gotten all of the 1,800 emails, most of which are junk? Or do I want to rest assured knowing that yes, there's those 200 emails that are really worth saving, and sigh it's so much easier to know I've backed them up safely.
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.
The Slashdot Limerick
Archiving the message certainly sweeps it out of view, but it's the digital equivalent of throwing a rug over garbage in a corner of your room. Sure, you cant see it, but it will eventually stink up the whole joint if you don't toss it out for good.
Being that one of Gmail's most touted features is its powerful search mechanism, it should be obvious that the less useless data that exists in the search database, more relevant your search results are going to be.
Why in the hell do you want to keep messages that you KNOW you never want to see again? It makes absolutely no sense, and is one of the stupidest Gmail advocacy points I've ever heard.
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.