Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Inbox Throws Blow At Google... No Flinch?
CWmike writes "Facebook's new messaging system may not be a Gmail killer, but it's definitely another blow in the growing battle between two Internet bigwigs. Facebook took the wraps off what it's calling a modern messaging system on Monday. The new system is designed to handle the convergence of different kinds of messages — Facebook messages, IMs, SMS and e-mail — and bring them together under a single social umbrella. The system also allows users to have a facebook.com email address, though it will work with other e-mail systems like Gmail and Yahoo. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is adamant that it's not intended to replace e-mail, but industry analysts say the new system will almost certainly draw some users away from Yahoo mail and Google's Gmail. Meanwhile, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Computerworld that he's not worried at all about Facebook's new 'Social Inbox.' 'More competition is always good because it makes the market larger,' Schmidt said, charging that journalists were hyping the rivalry: 'As a group, you all are focused on the competition rather than the market getting larger. It brings more people in. We are all served by having everybody in the world get online.'"
'More competition is always good because it makes the market larger,' Schmidt said, charging that journalists were hyping the rivalry: 'As a group, you all are focused on the competition rather than the market getting larger. It brings more people in. We are all served by having everybody in the world get online.'
Upon returning to his office after the press conference, Mr. Schmidt was heard to say, "I'm gonna fuckin' KILL Facebook!"
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
More people shifting from open federated protocols to the closed world of Facebook is a bad thing. I sincerely hope that it doesn't happen.
Google has always done a really, really good job at keeping spam out of my actual inbox. I have had a gmail account for an awfully long time, and the amount of spam that has made it into my inbox is miniscule.
Facebook, on the other hand, makes it a point to spam you with as much crap as possible. What use will a facebook.com mail account be when it is just choked with messages about virtual cows, virtual gifts, virtual sit-ins against and / or for just about everything, etc.
Google is a notorious marketer, but I don't fear them in the same way that I fear facebook. Google promises not to use the information they collect to personally identify you. Facebook already has your personal identification. What do you think that little prick Zuckerberg is going to do with it?
Let's ask Zuck himself:
SLASHDOT: so have you decided what you are going to do about the users?
ZUCK: yea i'm going to fuck them
ZUCK: probably in the ear
ZUCK: yea so if you ever need info about anyone at internets
ZUCK: just ask
ZUCK: i have over 400000000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns
FRIEND: what!? how'd you manage that one?
ZUCK: people just submitted it
ZUCK: i don't know why
ZUCK: they "trust me"
ZUCK: dumb fucks
Correction.
One company just directs ads to you. They serve the ads directly and they don't hand over your private data.
The other company routinely changes privacy policies every couple months so you don't know they're exposing and selling your data after you repeatedly told them you don't want them doing that.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
We've had email since around 1720. OK, maybe more like 1970-1, but anyway still a really long time.
Yeah, 1720 was when IP over Avian Carriers was invented, though it took that one 270 years of use to even get put into a written standard.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
If I understand the presentation I saw, one of the things this Facebook tool will have going for it is, it'll be an IMAP client. You can punch in the details of your mail server, and use it as webmail for that service. Like, embed SquirrelMail in Facebook.
If Facebook can convince users to punch in the details for GMail's IMAP server, reading their GMail mail via Facebook instead of the GMail web interface, then Google runs the mail infrastructure, but Facebook gets the ad impressions. Remember, if you access GMail via IMAP, you see no ads at all. (I use GMail via IMAP, from several desktop and handheld IMAP clients.) If that started to happen in any volume, I bet Google would wake up and notice.
hahahahahaha.
... well, brutus maybe ...
sorry, no dice. zuck is trustworthy and reliable for me as much as
Read radical news here
It's called an Android phone.
Realize who this service is aimed at... When these people joined facebook they gladly handed over passwords for all their email accounts and instant messaging services. Now all this stuff is going to be done in house.
At this point, if you've used facebook and you haven't been completely neurotic about what you're exposing, they've got a very good handle on who you are, who your friends are, what's in your inbox and what's in your friends inbox.
Those of us, who want to keep our privacy won't use this service. That other group of people have already lost their privacy, they just haven't realized it yet.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Why are SO many people willing to have all their communication logged and data-mined by for-profit companies?
For the features, of course. Grepping through 7GB of email is slower than hell. I have yet to find a mail client that will import and index that much mail without crashing. Even if one exists it will be damn slow when searching. It also won't be very useful from my phone for maintaining a merged email/phone/postal address book. That PC based client also won't store SMS texts with included images. Or translate my voicemails into text emails.
There's certainly a market for an email system that does all that without storing data non-locally. Nobody has developed it yet, and it won't gain wide acceptance unless it is marketed by Microsoft. And there you're back to having trust issues again.
Support SETI@home
When I submit my cv for a job do I really want my email address to say @facebook.com?
Didn't think so.