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Ask HN: Anyone else find the new Gmail interface sluggish?

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211–220 of 222 posts

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else find the new Gmail interface sluggish?

#211
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which big company starts with "N"? I can only think of Nintendo..

The N in FAANG stands for Netflix, because people needed an N and FAAG would be awkward.

I love your theory about how “N” got in there. Thanks for sharing.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else find the new Gmail interface sluggish?

#212

Am a googler (hence throwaway account) & I can easily tell you why this shit keeps happening! Google featureless ZERO penalties for fucking shit up! Zero! Do you know what the people who wasted two years on Allo got after it was canned? Nothing! Some of them actually got promoted! Google GREATLY encourages "launches" - releasing something publicly. And keep in mind - no penalties if the shit is half baked, not workin…

>>others just begin optimizing for promotion as opposed to optimizing for what is good for the user or the company.

"Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy": In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else find the new Gmail interface sluggish?

#213
post #43

Yes. I was complaining into the air on twitter, and their support responded by asking me to clear the cache and cookie. I told them: no man, it's not cache and cookies. You're loading too much stuff on initialization. It takes about 45 seconds for page load, and it's not until 1m37s that I can compose an email. You're making about 285 requests (19MB) before I can compose. That's the size of a long pop song on iTunes!…

> about 285 requests (19MB) before I can compose. This is insane. So I went to test it. 358 requests, 6.3MB, 20 seconds till full load. Compared to the standard, really old view ( https://support.google.com/mail/answer/15049?hl=en ): 14 requests, 25.3KB, 2 seconds. Edit: fans were spinning hard, so I opened the task manager: after CPU went down from ~90% tab is using 600-700MB, stable, with the dev console open, 400-…

30MB in 288 Requests in new Gmail 105KB in 20 requests in html version

https://imgur.com/a/OvBrDAk

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else find the new Gmail interface sluggish?

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand these reasons, but come on, at least some of the execs must have noticed that the new Gmail is a total mess, I simply can't believe they're all clueless. This actually made me and people like me to migrate away from Gmail. Do they really want to loose the competitive advantage they used to have?

The execs probably know but are also victims of the same perverse incentives. It's not their fault it's worse, they did an excellent job of launching the update!

This means people at the very top should look back and see where they fucked up as it looks like this machine got a life on its own and starts to act against the best interests of the company.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else find the new Gmail interface sluggish?

#216

Am a googler (hence throwaway account) & I can easily tell you why this shit keeps happening! Google featureless ZERO penalties for fucking shit up! Zero! Do you know what the people who wasted two years on Allo got after it was canned? Nothing! Some of them actually got promoted! Google GREATLY encourages "launches" - releasing something publicly. And keep in mind - no penalties if the shit is half baked, not workin…

Look at that naïve little coder who thinks that the company benefits from the bugless products. Google launched a new service. Google stocks grew. Everyone is happy, you just helped people make some millions.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else find the new Gmail interface sluggish?

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Google mail is already a personal domain I just manage through Google apps. To be honest the main reason I keep it on Google apps is the six-ish people I talk to exclusively through hangouts (and momentum). If I do get forced to the new gmail web version I'll likely switch to a desktop client or write my own client if I can't find a tolerable one.

OK, here is the real shocker. I had to create an outlook account and get a Office 365 sub for various reasons. I actually found the Outlook + Skype + OneDrive combo more usable than their Google counterparts. If you had told me this five years ago, I would have had you sectioned under the mental health act

I don't discount that possibility, but I use hangouts to talk to specific people who don't use any other PC-based chat. That's the downside of tying your email address to your chat I suppose.

I've taken to using Windows Mail for my gmail usage half the time anyway now, even though I'm still on the old web client.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else find the new Gmail interface sluggish?

#218

A week or two after reverting back to the usable gmail, Google notified me they would switch my Google apps mail to the new gmail in a popup on the corner. It presented me with two options: Now, Delay One Week. Instead of choosing one, I adblocked the notification. Two weeks later I'm still on the old gmail that responds to clicks. Hoping it never changes.

You just need to be careful not to accidentally log out.

Gmail periodically logs me out and I'm still on the old client as of today.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else find the new Gmail interface sluggish?

#219
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was enough for me to take my staff over to a Microsoft-hosted email account. Outlooks just sits in the background using a few dozen megabytes, and has a better UI than Gmail. You don't need to hunt through Chrome tabs to find your email client, or load a webpage each time you want to check email. Having a native desktop application is a much better experience.

It's a shame that everyone is moving away from native applications. Web apps and things like electron have their place. But if you are creating an application to be used all the time, you should make it native.

The problem is how hard it has become to make native apps on all platforms. Too much work and they never look and feel the same either.

Electron is fine, and webapps can be very fast, but that takes proper coding with a focus on performance and UX. Many companies just don't care.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone else find the new Gmail interface sluggish?

#220

Am a googler (hence throwaway account) & I can easily tell you why this shit keeps happening! Google featureless ZERO penalties for fucking shit up! Zero! Do you know what the people who wasted two years on Allo got after it was canned? Nothing! Some of them actually got promoted! Google GREATLY encourages "launches" - releasing something publicly. And keep in mind - no penalties if the shit is half baked, not workin…

Allo is canned?
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