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?
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?
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No power in the 'verse can stop me
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!
The mass market instead of early adopters?
Another modern classic: What if Google search had been designed by the guys behind Windows Search
"Award for the Silliest User Interface: Windows Search"
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!
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!
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?
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
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...
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They scan your emails and show non-obtrusive targeted ads off to the side, whereas Hotmail floods your inbox with crap mail, obscuring the mail that you actually want to see.
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I guess, but doesn't Microsoft's hotmail system also "scan your emails" to put them into TCP packets?
http://www.news.com/2100-1023-230411.html
Since I heard about this and followed Microsofts response I made a mental note to never get a Hotmail account.
As for scanning my emails to show me targeted adverts I don't really mind this providing the information is not sold on to other companies.
I dont read
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. :)
BD Phone Home!
Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.
1998 called, and it wants its FUD back. Hotmail does ask you whether you would like to get newsletters; however, you can always click through that page, and you never get anything. I've used Hotmail for at least five years, and Gmail for a couple, and I've never had a problem with neither one sending me crap I don't like.
FUD is bad, regardless of whether it is pro-Google FUD, or anti-Google FUD.
You have GOT to be kidding. Gmail has a clean, consistent DESIGN, with almost no images, other than a static "GMail" in the upper left corner.
It brings me to my inbox, with a one line plug for their Google Reader service, and a one line text add for an IT service outsourcing company that's placed near the top of the site. I open an email, and color matched text ads span from top to bottom on the right, similar to a newspaper column. Only the content of the text ads change, not the color, shape, or location.
For Yahoo, both new and classic bring me to some sort of welcome page with a 1x4" ad for their own search service titled "Top Electronics Search", and at least it matches the colors of the rest of the site. There's a big news widget thing in the center. To the right, there's a big f'ing RED, square, Bank of America credit card ad. On the left, the top and bottom of my Outlook-like directory are straddled by little, fugly, Win95 desktop icon-ads. "Bad credit? Card in 3 days", "Netflix Only $4.99/mo.", "Best SUV for Everyday", "Gold's Gym Free 7 Day VIP Pass".
The NEW Yahoo Mail site warns that Safari is not a supported browser, click to ignore. It is cleverly disguised as Outlook, with ads. Moving right along, I click a mail in my inbox, the BoA ad disapears, and the right ad region resizes to allow a shit-you-not, blinking "Have You Checked Your Credit Score This Month?" ad that runs from top to bottom of the page.
The CLASSIC Yahoo Mail site has a 'classical' giant, horizontal, animated ebay ad across the top, and in the same places on the left are more desktop-icon-ads, "See your credit score - free", "Netflix...", "Online Degree Programs", "Gold's Gym...", oh, and with a slightly different icon as the VIP pass, "Gold's Gym 7 Day Free Trial" It looks like a high schooler designed it.
I'll take Gmail, fuck you very much.
Hotmail does no such thing. The newsletters are optional (and off by default, the "Continue" button can be reached by scrolling down).
If you mean they "sell your email address to spammers", well, I have more evidence of GOOGLE doing that than Microsoft. My Hotmail account receives no spam at all (it's quite long, but still). My Gmail account receives about a few pieces a week. Here's the interesting bit: I don't USE my Gmail account. Ever. I don't post the email address anywhere, use it to sign up to anything, or even email real people with it. So how did the spammers guess it? (Note: it is also quite long, with fullstops in it).
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
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. Almost every complicated site is vulnerable to XSS in one form or another if the user can be fooled in this matter. In order for you to read my email I need to click on a specially crafted link that you create that will take me to gmail.
The problem is that I already have link that takes me to gmail: http://www.google.com./ As soon as you make it any more complicated I will probably smell a rat. Why would I trust a link to gmail from anyone apart from google? If you could get your link to the top of the google search results for "gmail" you might be in with a chance.
If you know anything about web development and hacking you know that XSS is a nightmare to prevent if you have users that really are stupid enough to click on every random link to your site that they find.
The Hotmail hack could be executed by anyone with very little technical knowledge and no action on the part of the user of the email box you were trying to snoop on (Apart from the obvious issue of going to hotmail in the first place).
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.
I dont read
Are we talking getting spam in the inbox or getting spam in the spam folder?
First address: 10 letters, not indexed by google. It has 348 mails in the spam folder I received about 4 spam mails in the inbox over the same time period (60 days)
Second address: 8 letters, indexed by google. It has 459 mails in the spam folder and I received about 4 spam mails in the inbox over the same time period
Third address: 8 letters with spam as a suffix, indexed by google. It has 0 mails in the spam folder and I received 0 spam mails in the inbox over the same time period.
It would appear that the safest way to not get spam is to have an address with the phrase spam contained in it. The spam suffix address is also the one I've been most promiscuous with yet no spam at all is received.