Slashdot Mirror
What If Gmail Had Been Designed by Microsoft?
caluml writes "There is a humourous look at "What would happen if Microsoft had designed GMail". Gems include: "Another security measurement we'll add is that you won't be able to log-in with just username anymore but are required to enter the full username@gmail.com. Furthermore, we will change the browser URL from 'http://gmail.microsoft.com/' to the more professional looking 'http://by114w.bay114.gmail.live.com/mail/mail.aspx?rru=home'.""
I think they meant Yahoo.
Eat sleep die
I RTFA a little and this sounds like a dumb question which has already been answered by just looking at hotmail. Sure they didn't design hotmail from the beginning but they have been maintaining it longer then Google has with GMail.
Another one of these eh?
Sort of like if Microsoft designed the iPod box?
...it is called hotmail, and was (at least when I last was last there 4 years ago) a disaster zone, which included a page as part of the signup process where you were given the choice of what kind of junk mail you wanted emailed to you.
Well duh, it would be MMail lol. Or Microsoft + e-mail = MeMail and they could have a little dancing leprochaun cuz it sounds Irish. But really they'd probably just sneak in a stealth windows update that removes Outlook and re-routes your home page to their mail site. And in case you don't believe me, at my work we're having a problem with IE7. Microsoft somehow snuck some sort of adware onto the computers that will randomly once in a while load up the Get It Now page for IE7 instead of the actual homepage. It doesn't get any more adware than that. Since the homepage is our important intranet hub, we're considering suing.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
The reason you put the username@hotmail.com is because there is also msn.com msn.ca for the ISP subscribers... hotmail.com hotmail.co.uk etc etc...would be rather limiting if you could only use your nickname and not have different domains......it is probably the worlds biggest web mail service...
why is this news? slllooww news day
I actually like the previewing pane in outlook XP. Emails are usually around three to five lines. Why should I have to open a new window or navigate to a new page for reading them?
___
No power in the 'verse can stop me
I started to read into it but hell hotmail handles @hotmail.com and @msn.com so you need to type in what domain you are using. Other then that the newer interface for hotmail has gotten a lot better, just not as good as gmails.
Hey, now that we had this, Can we have a "What would Slashdot look like if someone artistic designed it" Page?
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
* It will be named iMail (duh)
* It would tell you that you need to sign for .mak to use it (duh)
* It would have only one button (which would do ant function, receive, send, attach)
* It would be that "kool and pretty"(TM) that instead on a mail site you,d though that you are in teletubby land with silver colors
* It would have iPhone compatibility but forget about the other players
* It would save "It just works" even when you have no ineternet connection
* When some problems arise, they would , of course , blame MS.
* Everybody on /. would praise it even if they limited it to 1 MB/month amd send the letters DRMed :-)
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
... there were no more what if stories?
The mass market instead of early adopters?
so, the new gmail looks an awful lot like the new hotmail. its a hell of a lot slower too.
Another modern classic: What if Google search had been designed by the guys behind Windows Search
"Award for the Silliest User Interface: Windows Search"
Okay... It was funny when they did the iPod one. But GMail? It's an adequate web page. Not fundamentally different from any other webmail provider out there. A bit like Hotmail really except uglier.
I do not get the annoying right frame banner while reading an email message in live.com/hotmail. So live.com email has less Ads than Gmail. This is amazing enough and I wish Gmail was showing less adds (either targeted or not). :) but it is just better for the user about ads.
Note: live.com is not my favorite email for other reasons
I laugh at your feeble attempt at a troll.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The comments page for that article links to a much more interesting article.
It's an ok interface...
Except for the fact that they hide the needed NEW button, as a non button.
They need to keep it understandable, THEN pretty.
This will never happen because if anybody artistic got within ten feet of Slashdot, they'd spontaneously combust.
Laughing at a troll is also falling for it. No matter what your response to a troll actually IS, the very fact you post a response shows YHBT. Enjoy! :-)
1) Strange, fixed "color" scheme;
2) Cluttered, but oddly comforting and hyperconfigurable, user interface (except the colors);
3) Random in-joke-based poll every 18 months;
4) Almost usable search engine;
5) People who want to contact you first email editors who then "approve" or "reject" incoming emails based on their personal taste;
6) Arbitrarily assign other users to read your email and act as moderators;
7) AC option gives spammers a fair shot (albeit at a lower mod base) -- don't forget to check AC before emailing something really stupid like this post;
You know, it just might work!
How about a simple tooltip so that if you hover over a message you see it's content? Or... maybe hover over a message and the preview opens up and closes when your mouse leaves that area. Or... maybe a *real* preview pane where any folder you are in is shown in a different preview-active pane/tab? There is so much more Microsoft could do with preview than just on/off, and when ON, most of your message real estate is gobbled by just enough that you don't know what the h311 the message really says.
I chuckle at your psuedo-rebellious FITE DA POWA reasons for choosing your operating system.
When you get a little older, you'll realise that in the real world we go on ease of use and corporate support instead of the '1337' of having to research arcane commands to do the simplest of things (see the article about the $200 PC running gOS, a Linux that not even Google's billions could improve, where you still have to type 'sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree' into a terminal to watch videos on Youtube.)
So laugh away, little boy. I'll carry on using my high-performance industry-standard software backed by the biggest player in the market, while you giggle at me through your retainer as you search through your 132nd obscure forum of the day trying to work out what command you have to type to be able to see those wonderful, fantastical videos of what it's like to actually go outside.
Microsoft iPod
3.243F6A8885A308D313
Well, parent writes the same humorours article but abbout "never do wrong" apple.. and gess what? Parent get moderated flamebait... Go figure....
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
Don't forget the "I am willing to test Gmail's new mail interface" checkbox that brings up a clusterfuck of an interface designed by a retarded 11 year old. Although, admittedly, it has improved since they first put the checkbox there.
This guy's the limit!
You wouldn't write an email without being subjected to Clippy's continued demands for attention by jumping all over your screen screaming "click on me! click on me!!"
Funny stuff! Not suprising to! Which gets me to think, what if Slashdot was owned by Microsoft?
GMail's interface can hardly be considered "good". Its performance is piss-poor on Firefox. It's a little bit better when using Opera, but Thunderbird is still a lot faster.
One thing I particularly hate is how I have to go to a new page just to view a message. The split mailbox listing and message display layout of Thunderbird, Outlook, Netscape Communicator, Mail.app and other real desktop apps is so much more efficient.
It's not funny. This isn't 4chan, go away.
Ha, good one. I use GMail, and every so often I have to go and look at my Hotmail account (it's my login for MSN Messenger), and every time I do it irritates the living fuck out of me. That's not what I look for in a webmail system.
Every new e-mail would be larger than the one before, open slower, and eventually stop supporting your printer.
Oh! And spam would open itself for you!
*Oh, and yes, I do program using MS. Eh, it's a living
This is a primary failing. One that Google, miraculously, seems to have so far avoided. Full credit is due.
Marketing depts make two mistakes.
- (and foremost) They ask people what they want. They convene a focus group of a cross section of people, brainstorm and come up with a list of priorities. The issues with this being that most people don't know what they want, no committee ever came up with anything minimalist, functional or streamlined, and most people in a focus group are only statistically representative -- but not representative in reality.
- They have no understanding of pure Economics. They attempt to maximize revenue from everything up to the point that function is destroyed and satisfaction is lost. Thereby devaluing the product.
Apple and Google are far more successful than many other similar brands. They value function and form. This is why they are successful. This why they have fanboys. It's not rocket science, all you need to do is fire the marketing droids out of the nearest airlock.there were no interesting stories, so someone posted some tired microsoft-bashing article instead?
Oh...
? syntax error
99% percent of the users of hotmail.com will use hotmail.
Personally, I'd like to see emails split up individually instead of in "message threads." I work best that way.
I also like the preview pane, too.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
It's funny how you use the word designed rather than developed. The interface (as with most google apps) looks really plain and boring. It looks like a high schooler designed it. Also to counter your annoying url redirect I was redirected here after typing in gmail.com: https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=mail&passive=true&rm=false&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fmail.google.com%2Fmail%2F%3Fui%3Dhtml%26zy%3Dl<mpl=default<mplcache=2 Yahoo, in my opinion is the best online email.
"During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
> where you still have to type 'sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree' into a terminal to watch videos on Youtube.
Working out of the box on Ubuntu 7.10. Try to keep up.
I would not be using it! Even more funny is the fact that my security imge word was "robbers" which is exactly how I feel about m-soft! How ironic.
Ooh... did vista hurt you so much you now have to rationalize your choice like that? "High-performance industry-standard software backed by the biggest player in the market?" Whoa, it must hurt.
Dude. I never knew. I promise I won't giggle at you. Not even if you get a virus, or the biggest player in the market calls you a pirate and disables your industry standard software.
Cheers.
So... whatever.
These guys SHOULD be paid microsoft consultants.>br>
Well really come on, the whole type the whole address thing? It's absurd!
Just had a look in my hotmail as I've been using httpmail until it was broken by Leopard and have not had the "pleasure" to discover what I've been missing. It's true the first page you see is full of flashing ads, but when you actually get past that you find your inbox full of spam, some even from various Microsoft departments. Then you look in your spam and find a bunch of mail that's legitimate. When you mark stuff as spam it goes in to "Deleted items" - no wonder hotmail never seems to learn what's spam and what's not!
When you finally get to read a message it starts warning that the mere act of opening it is dangerous, and offers links to self congratulatory advertising disguised as help saying stuff like "Sender ID is a technical solution started by Microsoft" and goes on to boast that "Windows Live Hotmail treats all messages that fail Sender ID and phishing tests as fraudulent" which is a bit excessive considering the world has yet to be convinced Sender ID is some kind of panacea for phishing.
It used to be that if the mail contained links it would open with an iframe displaying sponsorshop messages, but today I see that there are no hyper-links for something that clearly is that, not only with dots but preceded with http, but no, I have have to copy and paste this in to a new tab. I really can't think of any mail client that would deny a hyper-link when it saw one.
Next: at the top of the message there is a message saying "Attachments, pictures, and links in this message have been blocked for your safety. Show content" - when I click show content nothing changes except I don't see this warning. So I guess this warning is there just because it does not comply with MS Sender ID, hardly an intelligent algorithm for warning people about something that may or may not exist.
I expect I could go on and on, but I think you get the drift..
or slashdot? what kind of new was that?
DON'T PANIC
Well I have both a GMAIL and HOTMAIL address so I'll tell you:
It'd be allot faster. Which is ironic consifering Gmail started out fast and Hotmail started out slow.
It'd be better integrated into Outlook.
But the search wouldn't be as good.
Hotmail has 380 million users. 1% of that is still 3.8 million people. Also remember that in addition to hotmail.com, Hotmail supports 28 other domains such as live.dk and live.jp. And users can use Live Admin Center (can the name get any more generic?) to use their own domains with Hotmail, which effectively gives Hotmail an infinite number of domains to support. I actually use this. Given all that, I think it's easier to require that users type in the domain to avoid problems where the non-hotmail.com people forget and try to login to someone else's account.
If Gmail was designed by Microsoft, it might have included (from Day One) a UI with actual functional features - like a delete button. (It took Google months to move theirs from behind a drop down menu.) Or the ability to sort your mail. Etc... Etc..
... this is going to get modded down, but seriously this is really scraping the bottom. Will Slashdot post an anti-Microsoft article even if it's a speculative pile of crap? Articles like this are not funny, informative, or insightful in any way. Please if you want humour around here post something that is actually funny.
Yeah, the iPod video was brilliant, and very well done. But that's because it was done by Microsoft themselves, as it served as a humorous self-deprecating tool to get certain product divisions to use cleaner packaging. This Gmail article, on the other hand, is just the typical Microsoft-bash, and pretty lame too.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Five lines? o_0
Use instant messenger instead.
.. almost like the new yahoo mail, lots of adds, an annoying chat box and takes forever to load.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
is too complicated for the author.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Windows Live Mail has a very clean interface. After you log in it shows you the news highlights for the day and how much of you 5GB of storage that you are using. Once you click on Inbox the only ad that you see, note I said ad, is the banner ad at the top of the page. Unlike Gmail where there are ads down the side and the top of my messages. AS for the address you can get to Hotmail by typing http://www.hotmail.com/ or http://mail.live.com/. While it may redirect to http://by108w.bay108.mail.live.com/mail/mail.aspx you certainly do not need to type that whole address.
As for logging in and having to use the @hotmail.com, that allows them to have more addresses than Google could ever hope to. They can use addresses for any of their sites: @msn.com, @uk.msn.com or any other site.
I would have to say that Windows Live Mail currently kicks the crap out of Gmail.
If you take away threaded messaging, g-mail is just another e-mail program. I do like the way it handles contacts as well, automatically adding them once you send a message and the auto complete is very nice, but Yahoo Beta e-mail is actually a pretty slick drag-drop interface. I'm also a fan of the preview pane for desktop e-mail and yahoo has this nailed.
I still prefer g-mail, but I think it's strongest quality is still the threaded message view. Why has NOBODY else copied this (or am I seriously missing something?)
Ever done a `man` on `top` ?
The Gmail interface sucks. When I first started using it I didn't mind as I assumed it would be cleaned up, but it's hardly changed. It still looks like someone dropped a purely functional UI on a back end with a view to replacing it later when they had time. Props to Google for the service, good spam filtering, pushing the boundaries on quotas etc, but please now spend a bit of time redoing the UI!
-= This is a self-referential sig =-
...They would block you from sending exe files and even zip files containing exe files forcing users to rename the file and instruct the receiver to rename them back. Very user friendly.
.z files go through. Damn, I gave it away. Soon they will be blocked too.
Oh wait, GMail blocks those already. Glad to know
CmdrTaco designed gmail:
No wireless. Less Space than a Nomad. Lame.
Aaahhhh... the good old days: http://web.archive.org/web/19971212072422/http://www.hotmail.com/ Simple, clean, and efficent. It's kind of interesting to note how few changes were logged when it was just hotmail, as opposed to when Microsoft took it over. I can remember saying WTF to myself a few times a month when yet again, something else changed. At least, in the very beginning it would let you select styling that mimicked the old hotmail regime. Now it's either put up with it, or don't use it. So I bounce back and forth between my hotmail and my yahoo accounts. I've switched providers too many times to use an ISP email account, and even with all it's downfalls I will probably still continue to use web based email.
I, for one, find this parody totally offensive!
Microsoft's goal is NOT to please its users. It is to make money! And, damnit, they've made a boatload of it.
You should all just shut up, send your entire salary to Microsoft (excepting just enough for a starvation diet and gas to make it to work evry day [so you can send more money to Microsoft, of course]) and save them all the time and effort they put into making products that appear to be useful.
You ingrates!
Oh, and a new copy (dupe) of some random email every second day!
I tried iGoogle just a few minutes ago, and it was as ugly as anything produced by MS -- first ugly discovery.
Google (just plain google, please!) has been my home page for quite a while, but after I took a look at iGoogle, I found that my home page had been changed to iGoogle! Not Good!!
That was the second ugly discovery, that it was sticky, and I had to cut off cookies from Google to kill it off.
So I've had about enough of what if MS designed whatever!
Would he be my Auntie?
This ?
Turn s60 photos into awesome videos with mScrapbook for all S60 3rd edition phones!
I'd love substring searches in GMail. Regexes, globs, even fairy magic I could live with
First and foremost in this whole discussion? I wouldn't have an MS/G/Mail account. Couldn't pay me to take it.
that you can't tell a "measure" from a "measurement"?
What you said:
...Yet you wrote a condescending, arrogant, and ERRONEOUS response to someone who simply offered a link for information:
"Thanks for the info, but the vulnerability you linked to would require me to go to a website that contained the cross site scripting attack."
Quote from TFA:
"But would-be Hotmail pirates did not require access to the Web sites to bypass passwords. They needed only the complete Web address for the Hotmail server, including the login portion. Changing "username" to a person's Hotmail login name would go to the account without using a password."
"Please tell me you understand the difference between these two types of attack or you have no place taking place in a discussion of internet security."
Please check yourself before you criticize others.
Who cares! This is another "Slashdot is going down hill and trying to slow the descent" thread. Anybody been to osdn.com lately? It points to web.sourceforge.net and their main link is ThinkGeek. This site is full of the most bitter, angry, she should have been mine, mom broke down the door while I was "busy", people.
If you'll spent a tenth of the time trying to make something better instead of 99.9% arguing, we'd actually have a real doll that washed the dishes, did laundry and moved and I'd still make fun of you.
I have "Show Snippets" turned on and I still only see 1 line of the email, which includes BOTH the subject & body of the email.
So, it shows me far far too little to be useful.
It also munges up the "preview" on 1 line.
It may not be so bad on my 1600 (horizontal) screen, but it is unreadable on the 1200 screen. I can only imagine how useless it is on 1024 & 800 sized screens.
What I would like is 3 lines per email preview: 1 for subject & 2 for the body.
What if this were never posted as a real news article?
What did they do? Make it easier to turn the checkbox back off?
You killed the cookies instead of just clicking on 'Classic Home'?! Right.
Errr, as it seems your a bit stupid you obviously need it spelling out: you lose.
wheres the joke ?
What if niggers had been designed by Microsoft?
http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/2787/72400514michaeljacksonwu3.jpg
The simple answer is: It wouldn't have happened at all.
When is the last time that MS has really innovated anything, in the sense of either
a) coming up with a unique and novel idea?
b) refining a previously fringe thing (webmail) to a user-friendly, attractive offering?
No, seriously. I can't think of even a single example that wasn't invented elsewhere and then bought out, or outright copied. MS fanboys, enlighten me.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
from the teh good ol days when it was HoTMaiL, instead of changing it over to live mail (thank you MS). ;)
Which reminds me the got Hotmail via "inorganic" growth, which absolves them of some of the guilt
That was obvious not a serious study looking at if Gmail was designed by Microsoft. It was an hilarious article I enjoyed reading, like an Onion article.
I hate to say it but the anonymous coward has a point... you could have just clicked on the "classic home" at the upper righthand corner which takes you right back to the original google page, until you choose to go to the igoogle page the same way.
It's not ugly at all, and is totally customizable.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
The URL thing in the location bar. It's what's supposed to determine what content you're looking at. If you go to the same URL and it shows something different, that's likely an error - in specs if nothing else.
A link is supposed to take you somewhere else, not change the settings and leave you without a direct way to go back.
It's an error simply because the user who complained didn't like it. He's one of their target market and their misusing of the technology (cookies shouldn't override URLs) confused him. He didn't assume there was a link to go to the old homepage, as he was already at it. What good would a link be, which in a well-designed page only goes somewhere else, when he wanted to be right there?
It's like underlining non-link text, setting links to not be underlined, setting their color to not change when visited, etc. Not the end of the world, but a violation of good designed practices.
It would be profitable.
You only need to use your username to login to gmail? I thought you had to type out the entire email!
I have both a GMail and Hotmail account, I use both almost daily. But as far as actually using it... Hotmail is, hands down, way way superior.
Try sending messages to multiple people you know: GMail's contacts functionality just completely and totally sucks. It's improved in the past few months, but before that you would actually have to type in the beginning of the contact name. No list or anything, just their type-ahead cache. It was genuinely aweful.
Another thing: why does Google even bother with their steady stream of anti-MS FUD? Google is an advertising company... and that's it. It's the only thing they can make ANY money at, and it isn't for lack of trying. Frankly, Google seems desperate to at least get SOMETHING they can succeed at besides advertising, if for no other reason than justifying their insanely out of control expenses to their stockholders. Billion of dollars spent on back rubs, jet planes, and LEGOs are real fun right now, but once reality sets in and the stock price starts to plummet, heads will roll, and their hatred of Microsoft will not help them one bit.
Unless they pull a typical FOSSie (like Teh Lunix, OO.org, XO Laptop, etc) and try blaming their lack of any form of success on Microsoft. Going by their track record, their taking that approach is almost a given.
I actually like iGoogle, it's much faster than waiting for other things to load on my 1k ping connection.
"other things" being gmail.
I have noticed this as well, I don't think they sell it though.
I have seen this using my own email that I have NEVER used on any other website. I have created a personal mailbox to send my stuff to on serverA, from another mail server that I also own (serverB), and I have gotten spam to that mailbox (on serverA)!
I can only guess that someone is paying a large-ish ISP to have a sniffing port on their network and capturing traffic and capturing the email address. I don't allow any email harvesting or anything on my own servers that could account for it.
PS - I know server is misspelled in the subject, there is a length limit.
When is the last time that MS has really innovated anything, in the sense of either
a) coming up with a unique and novel idea?
b) refining a previously fringe thing (webmail) to a user-friendly, attractive offering?
Pocket Internet Explorer was a killer web browser for a handheld in 2000. No, really, it handled pretty much every site I needed to get to, worked in the background, and was plenty fast enough on a 133 MHz SH3. It is still also the only "inherently secure" web browser Microsoft has shipped with any product, because it didn't support ActiveX and implemented a "hard" sandbox.
It's funny how Microsoft swore that sandboxes were too slow for desktops in 1997, but they were fast enough for handhelds that were slower than those 1997 desktops only 3 years later.