Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
It started off ok but the punchline could use some work.
The day I liked using the Gmail interface better then Thunderbird (and of course outlook) was the day I think Gmail won the war of email. If you count all the spiffy Greasemonkey extensions in firefox for Gmail, then you have a really amazing email service.
Meet new people, and kill them.
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.
You haven't seen their new beta. It's AJAX based, and allows drag and drop --- all in all, it's a lot like using a desktop client (like thunderbird) in your web browser.
(no relation to the lattice of carbon atoms)
Unfortunately, Buchheit kept interrupting to mention advertisers based on what Doerr and Diamond were talking about.
spam egg spam spam bacon and spam
Remember kids, with great power comes great opportunity to abuse that power
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
Actually, this is already possible. Any email that is of the form myname+stuff@gmail.com will go to myname@gmail.com. So, you can use myname+spam@gmail.com for all your untrusted sources, and just myname@gmail.com for everything else. Then, filter on the To: line and apply appropriate labels, and voila! Problem solved.
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.