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Gmail has become unusably slow

gabrielweinberg.com

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Re: Gmail has become unusably slow

#101

Post by mrtron »

[deleted] wrote: post #100
andreyf wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's utter disdain for our quaint notions of customer service and transparency Do you really expect GMail to provide personal customer service to its ~176m [1] non-paying users? Run the numbers: if the average user calls in 5 minutes a year (very low estimate), how many hours a day of customer support would it take? And transparency - are you suggesting they open source their infrastructure so you can hack on Big…

[deleted]

Hmm?

14.6 million hours, around ~293M.

Re: Gmail has become unusably slow

#102

Post by lallysingh »

icey wrote: post #23
charlesju wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way Google can scale customer service to be profitable for free services. Gmail at the end of the day is a free service, and you should either (a) pick a different email provider or (b) setup shop yourself if you need that kind of service.

Is there any software out there that handles spam as well as Gmail's spam filter? The rest of the features that Gmail offers seem like they'd be hard to replicate as well - I'm talking about the cool stuff like being able to put arbitrary periods in your email address, or adding +whatever to the end of it. I really like Gmail today, but if there were a way to replicate all the nice things it does on a server I contro…

The spam filter isn't my favorite. Every time I go into my junk mail folder, I see too many mailing list entries in there, for obviously valid messages. These are all programming mailing lists, and the messages are just regular programming talk.

Re: Gmail has become unusably slow

#103

Post by blueben »

andreyf wrote: post #73
Vivtek wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Y'know, this article isn't about Gmail performance nearly as much as it is another article about Google's utter disdain for our quaint notions of customer service and transparency. Somebody who goes to a conference might get something like feedback and disseminate it to the masses - but that's it. Google is not interested in hearing about problems, and if they themselves are affected by a problem, well, boy howdy, th…

Google's utter disdain for our quaint notions of customer service and transparency Do you really expect GMail to provide personal customer service to its ~176m [1] non-paying users? Run the numbers: if the average user calls in 5 minutes a year (very low estimate), how many hours a day of customer support would it take? And transparency - are you suggesting they open source their infrastructure so you can hack on Big…

I pay handsomely for Google's Premium service, and I still get no customer service. So now what?

Re: Gmail has become unusably slow

#104

Post by blueben »

wmeredith wrote: post #75
Vivtek wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Y'know, this article isn't about Gmail performance nearly as much as it is another article about Google's utter disdain for our quaint notions of customer service and transparency. Somebody who goes to a conference might get something like feedback and disseminate it to the masses - but that's it. Google is not interested in hearing about problems, and if they themselves are affected by a problem, well, boy howdy, th…

You get what you pay for. End of story.

I pay $50 per user, and get the same "support" as free users. Got any clever comments about that?

Re: Gmail has become unusably slow

#105

Post by blueben »

mattmcknight wrote: post #36
icey wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any software out there that handles spam as well as Gmail's spam filter? The rest of the features that Gmail offers seem like they'd be hard to replicate as well - I'm talking about the cool stuff like being able to put arbitrary periods in your email address, or adding +whatever to the end of it. I really like Gmail today, but if there were a way to replicate all the nice things it does on a server I contro…

Too many of the nice things it does can't be done on "a server" you control.

Aside from the UI, what can't be replicated?

Re: Gmail has become unusably slow

#107

Post by [deleted] »

qeorge wrote: post #70
rmorrison wrote: post #65

I definitely think there is room in the market for a new, online, paid email client. One that can connect to multiple outside accounts like Outlook, "infinite" storage, emphasis on privacy, gmail-style user interface, regular backups, and solid customer support. Email is extremely important to people and they don't want to worry about it. I wouldn't mind paying for a reliable and secure email client in the cloud.

FWIW, we used hosted Exchange from MS: http://microsoft.com/online/ Its $5/user/month, 25GB storage, great webmail client, and hands down the best support I've ever gotten.

[deleted]

Re: Gmail has become unusably slow

#108

Post by jodrellblank »

mnemonik wrote: post #83
qeorge wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, we used hosted Exchange from MS: http://microsoft.com/online/ Its $5/user/month, 25GB storage, great webmail client, and hands down the best support I've ever gotten.

Whoah, whoah whoah! We have hosted Exchange at my university. The Outlook web client is perhaps the worst piece of software I am forced to use on a regular basis. The calendaring is completely useless on the web client. I can't see anyone else's schedules so when I make meetings with them, its like shooting a rifle blind folded. I have to do a "guess and check" method where if Outlook vomits in my face and says someo…

Which version? If you're on Exchange 2003 then complaining about how a 7-8 year old program isn't up to scratch is a bit silly. Even 2007 is closing on 4 years old, and the web interface was improved a lot from 2003 to 2007 and again from Exchange 2007 to 2010 (not sure about calendaring specifically).

And if you are on Exchange 2003 or 2007 then IE gets the good browser interface, and every other browser gets a basic one.

Do I get some sort of notification when my inbox is full? No.

This is because someone hasn't turned it on for you; Exchange does this (by default, I thought). Emails you when you hit the "no more sending" limit, then again as you hit the "now so full you can't receive" limit.

Re: Gmail has become unusably slow

#109

Post by jodrellblank »

webwright wrote: post #81

Time for DuckDuckEmail, I say! :-)

I'd be tempted to design a "Never delete email again! We autodelete all email 10 days after receipt! Mandatory!" service.

It would be able to be cheap/free/low infrastructure by not needing masses of storage, and stay fast by not needing to handle tens of thousands of mails. And it wouldn't need a complex UI or tagging/labelling/tabbing/folders.

Also it would encourage / enforce dealing with mails and getting the information of of your mailbox and putting it wherever it needs to be.

It would also probably need to have a tie-in with some persona wiki and dropbox so you could easily shunt relevant content that you need to keep.

I think many people would find that they just don't need most old email and wouldn't miss it. The panic of "I have it around somewhere, let me spend time searching ... I think Bob sent it to me one time" is replaced by the certainty of "I don't have it".

If email was physical stuff, we'd call email archiving a hording disorder.

Re: Gmail has become unusably slow

#110

Post by electromagnetic »

paulgb wrote: post #20
latch wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I don't see the two as being remotely related. In fact, I'm tempted to say that google's technical brilliance is likely the reason for their poor customer service. What is amazing is that a company as large and with as many products as Google - regardless of its technical prowess - hasn't set up the necessary customer service infrastructure yet.

I think it's also amazing that, in a decade of using many Google products and APIs, I've never needed to contact support.

Ditto, my money is on Google having poor customer support because the vast, vast majority of user issues are user caused.

From what I've seen with friends, all of their issues with gmail have been user caused.

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