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Why Google's New Products Need Not Succeed
RJS writes "There have been some industry analysts lately who have called into question Google's real success, claiming that while Google's search remains a big winner, it has missed the mark when it comes to generating profitable, secondary products. BusinessWeek has just such an article ("So much fanfare, so few hits") but others argue that success relative to the size of Google's bread-and-butter (search) ultimately doesn't matter because it doesn't cost Google much extra to keep these secondary services — like Gmail — operational: the Google grid is on and growing regardless of what services are being run on top of it."
Gmail offers POP3 for free while Yahoo makes you subscribe to Yahoo Plus.
Also, Google Sketchup is pretty neat...
In my mind is Google Calendar. Most people I know use Google for search, just about everyone has migrated to a Gmail account, my GF and I use gSpread for tracking our expenses, wrote invitations to a party on Writely, I use the Google homepage, etc... BUT to launch Google calendar without any tools to sync to other applications, tools, PDAs, etc and then to dump a half-baked API on the development community and let them struggle to figure it out on their own was really sub-par. Although all their products are "beta" this is, by far, the most beta of any product that they have released. Generally, they are handing Yahoo's ass to them. I have touched a Yahoo product since I switched from Yahoo! DSL almost a year ago. Google doesn't have to hit every ball out of the park, but a couple of strikeouts like gCalendar could lose them alot of goodwill and leave openings for competitors.
Yes, you don't understand it.
Archive everything to keep your Inbox clear. Then search for old messages when you need them, by labels, by people, or by keywords. You don't have to see a "cluttered view" of your mail.
Every single one of google's products incorporate google text ads. They are unobtrusive and relevent. Next time you're using gmail, and you're looking at an invoice for say, a hard drive you purchased. On the side bar, it will have text ads for hard drives, not only that, but if there is a tracking number in the email, gmail will offer a link to track the shipment. If there is an address in the email, gmail will offer to map it for you. Insanely useful, simple, and unobtrusive. This is why google is so successful.
Similes are like metaphors
Yahoo mail - eh - I could take it or leave it, but my.yahoo.com is unblievably configurable. I can put and arrange content from just about any site I find on the front page.
Opera's built in email client (M2) uses the exact email paradigm as GMail, AFAIK (I was using it full time 2 years ago when I was on Windows). And it came out before GMail, IIRC.
Even, it had some nicer features like automatic categorization of mailing list emails that had the X-mailing-list (Or something like that) email header, I am still waiting for similar functionality from GMail and I have suggested it several times.
Yahoo mimics a fully functional email client - that's why its more powerful and fully featured than GMail. There are folks who want that power - you are a decided minority.
Personally, I don't know what features Yahoo has (besides being able to view unread emails) that's not in GMail. Does it integrate with a calender? Does it integrate with chat? Does it do anything like that? No - it just immitates a stand-alone program. Well here's a thought - if you want a stand along email program why don't you actually use a stand alone email program?
It's a snap (and free) to get Thunderbird, Outlook, etc. to work with GMail. Last time I checked you had to pay to get POP3 access with Yahoo.
So if you want the actual features of a fully-integrated PIM, then I think GMail is leaps and bounds ahead of Yahoo. If you want a standalone email program, GMail allows you to do that for free. Yahoo is just a weak imitation of either, in my opinion.
It does come down to personal preference, but I think in addition to the facts I've already mentioned you have to realize that GMail's offerings are changing and growing much more rapidly than Yahoo. Yahoo, along with Hotmail, etc. are all playing catch-up with Gmail. Who offered 1 GB storage for free first? My Yahoo account, at the time, was still capped at 100MB or 500MB (I forget which) and I'd already had to start purging emails I wanted to keep. The only reason it got bigger was because of Google.
Even when Google doesn't do everything best now, they have every indication of moving in the right direction and moving faster. Several times I've wished "if only someone would code program x" and then Google comes along and does it (e.g. Google Notebook, integrated chat, Google Spreadsheet, Google Calender) Not all of the features are perfect yet, but I can't find anyone else to match these offerings.
-stormin
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