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3 Email Chiefs Come to Dinner
Carl Bialik writes "The heads of email from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all recently went over to Wall Street Journal columnist Lee Gomes's house for dinner and conversation. Gomes has an interesting writeup of the conversation that transpired. The meal started as a lovefest for Gmail and Google's Paul Buchheit, with Microsoft's Kevin Doerr (no relation to the venture capitalist) and Yahoo's Ethan Diamond 'agreeing that much of the current excitement in the email world can be traced back to last year's debut of Mr. Buchheit's Gmail.' But Gomes adds, 'Whatever early lead Gmail may have had in creating a next-generation email program, both Microsoft and Yahoo have more than caught up. I wondered out loud to Mr. Buchheit if Gmail, the pioneer, might now be falling behind. "There is a lot more we want to build," he responded.'"
You can clearly see where that was going, let alone the article. The article was rather interesting to me... I can only picture the rep's from Microsoft and Yahoo eyeing Googles Rep all night long, just waiting for the opportunity to rip him to shreds.
Just me
I hope they don't mean they have caught up by simply saying, "We have added more free space too!!!"
I still use Yahoo for all of my spam and I love it for that. It hasn't changed much over what it used to be. Maybe I'm wrong here, but I still accidently use shortcuts in Yahoo... that were intended for Gmail.
There are more things I want to see out of Gmail, but I'm just not sure where the "caught up" part comes into play.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
This article shows that engineers of competing products usually respect each other. All too often this is lost when passionate people discuss why they like/dislike a product.
No, I will not work for your startup
I've been playing with Yahoo! Mail Beta for a couple of weeks now, and as far as the interface goes, I'm not terribly impressed. It is essentially a desktop GUI email client fit into a browser window, and it does that well enough (though a little slow on my Linux and Mac boxes -- and they do warn you things may not be great on those OS's). Nevertheless, it feels to me like yesterday's ideas stuck in a new package.
The great thing about Gmail is its interface innovation. Where Yahoo! Mail has always felt cluttered (and Mail Beta does too), Gmail really gets out of my way so I can just read and send email.
I haven't used Hotmail, but from what I've seen, looking over other people's shoulders, they don't really compete with Gmail either.
Dining philosophers.
And what a surprise, a deadlock.
AJAX based drag-and-drop email is becoming commonplace now. At this point it's a "must have" feature, and any web based email program that doesn't have it is going to look as if it hasn't been updated since 2004 :)
:)
Yahoo and MSN both have it now. Even the software that drives private email systems has it now. You've probably seen the screenshots for Roundcube, and you've probably seen the screenshots and swf-demos of systems like Citadel and Zimbra.
The point is, Google was the big trailblazer here, but at this point, everyone is now on that trail. The bar has been raised and rich AJAX webmail has quickly gone past "innovative" and is now "an expectation." Meanwhile, Google is probably busy cooking up the Next Big Thing. We hope.
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I want my pine support!
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
What's funny is how the reps from Yahoo and Hotmail ribbed Google for its "beta" status, but when you think about it... that's truly one of GMail's best features.
Think about it, GMail users--how much trouble was it to get a username you LIKED? In fact, even to this day, there are still a lot of usernames that aren't duped or that require adding a stupid numeral suffix like 666. All because spammers and hordes of username thieves didn't jump on board--hell, they couldn't. I say, stay in "invite-only" beta as long as you want. It's not hard at all to get an invite if you want one, and it keeps the riffraff out.