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What If Gmail Had Been Designed by Microsoft?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the thank-god-we-could-all-standardize-on-ie7 dept.

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'.""

8 of 279 comments (clear)

  1. Hotmail...? by LingNoi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  2. While funny ... by DerWulf · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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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    1. Re:While funny ... by GrBear · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There's plenty of reasons why a preview pane is a 'bad idea'. Ever remember a certain OS, with a certain bundled graphics library that would allow someone to infect your computer with a carefully crafted embedded image file? Now display that image immediately before the user can delete the email, oh shi...

      How long will it take for hackers to find out other ways into your system via instantly displayed non-text elements?

      Thank you very much, but I'll keep auto-preview turned off.

      Gmail does it right imho.. it displays a snippet of the first sentence, more than enough for me to tell if it's worth opening when the subject/sender is questionable.

  3. You mean what if Gmail had been designed for... by defile · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The mass market instead of early adopters?

  4. Re:the reason you have to put the @ by wikinerd · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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

    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

  5. Re:They have design a webmail site... by h4rm0ny · · Score: 5, Insightful


    Correct me if I'm wrong (as if people wouldn't), but doesn't the Gmail system scan your emails so that it can send you targetted ads? Doesn't that make taking the piss out of Microsoft's security a lot hypocritical?

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  6. blame marketing droids by owlnation · · Score: 4, Insightful
    To be fair to MS, they are only doing what most large Corporation do -- listen to their Marketing Department. Yahoo, eBay, many others, are much worse.

    This is a primary failing. One that Google, miraculously, seems to have so far avoided. Full credit is due.

    Marketing depts make two mistakes.
    1. (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.
    2. 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.
  7. Re:They have design a webmail site... by Blkdeath · · Score: 3, Insightful


    Correct me if I'm wrong (as if people wouldn't), but doesn't the Gmail system scan your emails so that it can send you targetted ads? Doesn't that make taking the piss out of Microsoft's security a lot hypocritical?

    Yes, but Google are not evil. :)

    Seriously, yes, Gmail does scan your e-mails and send targeted ads to you. They also scan your search results and send targeted ads. They also scan web pages you visit and send you targeted ads based on the content therein (providing the web page belongs to Google Adsense).

    This is their business model. Ads on the Internet, much like ads on television are inevitable. The difference is in the degree. Just exactly how invasive are the ads - are they flashing banner ads that are totally irrelevant to you and your life, sponsored spam that makes it into your inbox (or just due to really lousy spam filters) or are they small relatively harmless textual ads that correspond to your general interests?

    Gmail is, IMHO, the least invasive alternative. Now, myself, I just have my Gmail account forwarded to my home server where it's parsed by my own local spam filters (second round) and sorted into its own folder on my IMAP server so I never see their ads (or, in point of fact their interface) so it's all moot to me. :)

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