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Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

#171
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but where? There are not that much email providers that will live forever and won't change your UX and have mobile apps, and... and...

Get a domain from Gandi. $15/year and includes email service. You can either use the email directly, or forward it somewhere else so you can keep using the same email address forever even if you change providers.

This is no different than just using Gmail. Eventually yet another service is gone and you have to adjust your workflow to another email app.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

#172
post #74

At the risk of saying something unpopular, I like the new Gmail. I liked the previous Gmail too, so maybe I'm not the best judge. It is slightly slower, but I like the look and enjoy working in it. While I dream of doing it, I think it would be hard to PM something as popular as Gmail. Once you reach a nine figure user count, any change you make will be met with millions of unhappy people...

Please refrain from self judging what your response may be or may not be on HN. Just state what you think. I urge you to read FAQ on HN etiquette.

I have read the FAQ. The first item is to be civil and avoid snark. The third item is to assume good faith.

You've responded to the worst possible interpretation of what I said. I can assure you that I wasn't prejudging how people would respond to me because frankly, when I worry about those things, my writing goes to hell. Instead, I was trying to be friendly and poke fun of myself.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

#173

In addition to everything else, they've eliminated the different colored stars & icons. I liked those and used them to highlight mails I wanted to get back to. Now there's only starred and unstarred. (Be careful how you use 'important', as Google tries to learn from that and gets it wrong.)

They have? Doesn't seem so in my account. I've been using the green tick, red exclamation mark & co. for the better part of a decade since they've been in Labs. They still work for me. Should I be worried?

Re: Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

#174
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get a domain from Gandi. $15/year and includes email service. You can either use the email directly, or forward it somewhere else so you can keep using the same email address forever even if you change providers.

This is no different than just using Gmail. Eventually yet another service is gone and you have to adjust your workflow to another email app.

First, if you use your own mail clients rather than the vendor's interface, you don't need to change apps when you change email providers.

Second, even if you do need to change apps, you don't need to change addresses if you have your own domain.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

#176
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using GMail since 2004 and I'm not having any trouble, even in Firefox.

Same. I’m actually at google but I’m not going to tell the gmail team about this post because 1. I don’t agree with it, and 2. Gmail team is already painfully aware that any given change will be unappealing to a subset of users. 3. They are probably already here, taking note, considering. Unfortunately we can’t all have a custom UI written exactly to our specifications. Gmail team has to try to do what they think is…

Outlook.com seem to have been making UI changes that haven't irked people.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

#178
post #74

At the risk of saying something unpopular, I like the new Gmail. I liked the previous Gmail too, so maybe I'm not the best judge. It is slightly slower, but I like the look and enjoy working in it. While I dream of doing it, I think it would be hard to PM something as popular as Gmail. Once you reach a nine figure user count, any change you make will be met with millions of unhappy people...

I liked previous Gmail versions. I could see why people may dislike them, but they were fine for me and worked well (especially after setting up a dark theme and compact view density). Now it's so unbearably slow and ugly that I switched to HTML view and consider it an improvement.

That really stinks - I don't work for Google but I'm still sorry that's happening to you.

I'm not using the most powerful machine (i7-8550U + 8gb of RAM) and I'm running Chrome 69 on Windows 10. It's a little slower than the previous version, but nothing I'd call unbearable. In fact if I'm being really honest, I'm not even sure if it is slower, or if I'm just saying that it is to fit in. :)

Re: Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

#179
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get a domain from Gandi. $15/year and includes email service. You can either use the email directly, or forward it somewhere else so you can keep using the same email address forever even if you change providers.

This is no different than just using Gmail. Eventually yet another service is gone and you have to adjust your workflow to another email app.

I have no idea how you can compare Gmail to Thunderbird + your own domain + any decently sized email provider. It's absolutely trivial to move domains and email providers and using a client like Thunderbird means your experience remains consistent (and performant) over time.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone from Google here? The new Gmail UI is painful

#180
post #49

I do consulting work and am regularly given an account on the company's email system. More recently they're using GMail underneath, so now I've apparently got a dozen accounts on GMail. And GMail, bless it, when I login through the company's system clocks me through to a "Choose which account" system. My reaction is to open a new tab and login again, and it usually takes me straight through to the actual email withou…

Agreed so much, don't Google engineers have this same issue switching between work and personal e-mail or is Gmail not used internally?

Yes. It was broken for the ten years I worked there.
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