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Email Turns 34

Posted by Zonk on from the venerable-old-coot dept.

34019 writes "The original Gmail engineer, Paul Buchheit, reminisces on the creation of email, and how he designed Gmail in hopes of it improving the way we communicate. From the article: 'Of course that wasn't the only reason why I wanted to build Gmail. I rely on email, a lot, but it just wasn't working for me. My email was a mess. Important messages were hopelessly buried, and conversations were a jumble; sometimes four different people would all reply to the same message with the same answer because they didn't notice the earlier replies. I couldn't always get to my email because it was stuck on one computer, and web interfaces were unbearably clunky. And I had spam. A lot of it. With Gmail I got the opportunity to change email - to build something that would work for me, not against me.'

5 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. ook... by kuzb · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The original Gmail engineer, Paul Buchheit, reminisces on the creation of email, and how he designed Gmail in hopes of it improving the way we communicate.

    Sorry, but I don't buy the google altruistic angle - they did this so they could better serve us ads. This is all about information, and who controls it. I doubt highly that it had anything at all to do with improving anyone's way of life. Google is a corporation, it's primary motive is, and always will be, profit.

    --
    BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
    1. Re:ook... by ShadeEagle · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Doesn't mean they can't make our lives easier while they're at it.

    2. Re:ook... by Slashdiddly · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You mean in the sense pork industry makes life easier for hogs? I mean - yay, free food!

      I know the humanity is still trying to get out of an age where the struggle for physical survival leaves privacy concerns far behind. But that balance is changing. In 20-30 years, when early idealists within Google are long gone and beancounters have taken over, your data is still there. Near its sunset, Google has the potential of being 100x more evil than Microsoft could ever hope to be.

      Move from desktop apps to web services has many advantages that I won't bother repeating. A lot of those advantages are only possible because of shift of control from end user to the service provider. Like any new technology, this is a double-edged sword.

    3. Re:ook... by Damer+Face · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Three reasons to work hard at what you do:

      (i) because you enjoy it;
      (ii) to earn money and buy pretty things;
      (iii) to produce something of quality that other people will appreciate.

      I don't see that any of these are mutually exclusive; I don't see that number three has anything to do with altruism, and I don't see how anyone sensible would claim that it does.

      I think most of us who like gmail think that the engineers who designed did so with all three criteria in mind. Unlike some other software projects.

  2. Re:Gmail is to email as... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And no, archive isn't the same.

    Why not?
    The point of archiving is to make the inbox a real inbox - a place where all the email you currently need (e.g. new mail, things you still need to take care of). You should have very little mail in your inbox at any given time (I average at ~6). Everything else should be archived and accesed through labels or search. Try it out, it's great.