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What happened, Gmail?

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Re: What happened, Gmail?

#141

Post by daveFNbuck »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #130
mikeash wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being spam free was revolutionary when Gmail was new. It also revolutionized email by offering enough space that you could actually keep an archive. When most providers offered maybe 10MB, Gmail offered 1GB. If those don’t sound revolutionary today, it’s only because Gmail revolutionized things so hard that everyone had to jump on board.

You're only seeing it from one perspective: from the perspective of a single non-power user - yes, Gmail made the difference. But in terms of proper e-mail usage: be it through MS Exchange, University campuses, corporate servers - they made no difference. Everyone already had enough space there anyway, and spam filters worked - as they had enough email volume to detect attack. And they still use these systems.

I switched to gmail after losing my college account upon graduation. I'm sure my college is still using this system, but it's not available to me. Neither are the corporate e-mails for jobs I've left. For personal e-mail, almost everyone is a single non-power user.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#143

Post by coldtea »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #131
coldtea wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Over the past, what... 30 years? - e-mail remains what it had been in the first place: a protocol for exchanging messages. The difference is (a) those messages started to measure in the hundreds or thousands per day, not 5 of them at most like in the eighties, (b) people started using it for all kinds of work collaboration and organization. Not just some academics exchanging ideas.

So what collaborative features unique to Gmail does the organisation you work for currently actively uses? PS: please do not say "Hangouts", as Hangouts are only loosely integrated with Gmail. These are two separate systems and it does seem they are still unsure if these two should be merged together.

Why do they have to be "unique to Gmail"? The parent's argument was that email is the same thing for 30+ years.

Several mail programs have added integrated calendars and notifications, email snoozing, labels, classification into buckets, context, and so on -- including basics like search.

And of course there are the apps and plugins -- e.g. Asana within Gmail and the like.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#144

Post by salvar »

pferde wrote: post #72
verletx64 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many things are we supposed to do as people? Everybody touts options spanning every domain going from email to mobile devices and it's like, oh it's just a bit of configuration/tweaking for a few hours and then you're good to go. So yeah, hand holding is good, because to be honest, I don't get up on a Saturday morning and say "oh boy I can't wait to setup my email filters, right after I tweak my Arch Linux instal…

I kind of get what you are saying - there are lot of things we should not be caring about and let automation take care of. But in my opinion, what is and is not important to someone is something deeply personal, and I find it scary that someone would want to relinquish control particularly over that. I see it as "can someone tie my shoelaces for me please?" level of non-responsibility. And it scares me.

Surely that's a cynical interpretation of "important"? We've seen examples in this thread where important can mean "not spam" or "not random newsletter", yet you hold on to the one meaning where users are asking for their shoelaces to be tied for them because they are so irresponsible.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#145

Post by toopsss »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #130
mikeash wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being spam free was revolutionary when Gmail was new. It also revolutionized email by offering enough space that you could actually keep an archive. When most providers offered maybe 10MB, Gmail offered 1GB. If those don’t sound revolutionary today, it’s only because Gmail revolutionized things so hard that everyone had to jump on board.

You're only seeing it from one perspective: from the perspective of a single non-power user - yes, Gmail made the difference. But in terms of proper e-mail usage: be it through MS Exchange, University campuses, corporate servers - they made no difference. Everyone already had enough space there anyway, and spam filters worked - as they had enough email volume to detect attack. And they still use these systems.

> Everyone already had enough space there anyway

Lol my 100mb before the uni (National top 30 research) switched to gmail was definitely plenty of space. And google should have just hired the $7/hr freshman that configured spamassassin instead of wasting all that money on Postini. You’re funny; don’t quit your day job though.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#146

Post by fiatjaf »

I don't understand people complaining on free services. I believe it's something you can do, but not as seriously as this article makes it sound. Gmail is a toy.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#147

Post by hota_mazi »

pmlnr wrote: post #32

Email was meant to be kept simple, and Google is making this exponentially hard with every single "design" iteration. Get off Gmail - it'll break your email. The article has very good points, especially when it touches the issue of "hidden" mail, like the promotions tab: there are labels and tabs. There should be only one system, and no, don't hide things from the user at this level. When there's 17k mails in promoti…

Get off Gmail and get on... what?

You're only offering non constructive criticism. Gmail is light years ahead of any other email client I have tried so far.

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#149

Post by spookthesunset »

potatoyogurt wrote: post #104
Normal_gaussian wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Things like unprintable email is a bad joke. Unprintable? What if I connect to Gmail with mutt? It gives the sense of a false security. It also fundamentally breaks with what the user expects. The user expects their email to be theirs, to do with what they will. I know of no situation in which I would like an email which I specifically cannot print; I have no idea how I would explain it to my Grandfather.

It's not really about ordinary users like you. Google is shifting their strategy for Google Drive more towards enterprise, and this is a useful feature for enterprise users. Have you ever seen one of those email signatures stating "this email is property of XXX corporation, etc. etc." or seen an email sent to a large group of people in a company with strong exhortations not to send it anywhere else? This is a strict…

> Yes, people can actively work around the printing restriction, so it's not 100% secure.

And the people that do work around it in order to violate company policy can be dealt with here in meatspace.

Eg: HR -- "We didn't want you printing that sensitive email.... why did you go out of your way to print it?"

Re: What happened, Gmail?

#150

Post by spookthesunset »

stephenr wrote: post #11
achamayou wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An important feature of Gmail from the get go was how well it separated Spam from relevant email. I don't think you'll find too many users who prefer to do that manually. It's a matter of degree of course, but scary seems too strong a word.

As I mentioned elsewhere: spam can be filtered objectively, but importance would have to be identified subjectively.

> "spam can be filtered objectively"

"Objective filters" (by which I assume you mean "rule based") can easily be worked around by the people trying to get through the filter. All you gotta do is figure out the rule and bam, you are back in again.

Sure it might work for your tiny little family domain name with your tiny 10 mailbox email server. No spammer gives a crap about you. But when you are on the scale of gmail, you will have a lot of people whose entire purpose in life is getting through your spam filters. "Objective filters" turn into a continual game of whack-a-mole. Put in a rule, wait half a day until somebody works around that rule, put in another rule.... repeat ad nauseam.

"Objective Filters" don't scale at all. They might filter out the riff-raff script kiddies but anybody whose livelihood is based on getting past your "objective filters" will easily overcome them.

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