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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 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.
...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.
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?
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No power in the 'verse can stop me
The mass market instead of early adopters?
So perhaps they should make it aware of the URL the user types in the browser... if I visit by typing msn.com and I login with the @msn.com email, but if I type hotmail.co.uk then my mail login will be @hotmail.co.uk
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.
Ahhh, yes, design by committee. That's always the best way to go, especially when the committee has shown time and time again that they know absolutely nothing about interface design.
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.Why not have different URLs for the different domains. http://hotmail.com/ for hotmail users, http://mail.msn.com/ for msn.com users and so on and so forth. Why in the fuck would you use hotmail for 6 different domans' users?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
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..
You can set things up so http://mail.yourdomain.com/ (or whatever) will point to your domain's Google login page.
This space unintentionally left unblank.
So perhaps they should make it aware of the URL the user types in the browser... if I visit by typing msn.com and I login with the @msn.com email, but if I type hotmail.co.uk then my mail login will be @hotmail.co.uk
...at which point joe average goes... "domain suffix URL say what now!?"
Sure that would be awesome when it works. And then one day, you click a link somewhere that takes you to the hotmail page via the 'wrong' URL, and it rejects your username and password.
Maybe it would give a helpful message like. Please verify you are entering it in the correct case, oh, and check the URL because we assume your email address uses the same domain suffix as the hotmail URL you are accessing...
Or even worse, what if, for some user name, xyz@hotmail.com and xyz@msn.com have the same password... and xyz@msn.com inadvertantly checks xyz@hotmail.com's address and has absolutely no clue what happened to all his messages...oops... who do you think is going to bear the blame for that fuckup?