The reason gmail was successful is that it didn’t revolutionize email. It was just a very good client that worked well but roughly the same as people were already used to.
I’ve seen so many of these revolutionary email clients over the years but they all fail. It’s just too hard to get people to radically change their workflow, and tbh the current one isn’t even that bad.
Yes it was. It took years before I had a limit. I used to use gmail like google drive well before drive existed. There was even a tool called gmaildrive(0).
I'm surprised too, but the screenshot showing "You are are currently using ... of your 1000GB" brings back memories. Maybe it's because back then 1GB of email storage seemed essentially unlimited?
I remember those, you got 5 of them... later Google Wave also had invites .. which was cool but ended up in the graveyard anyway... Lifehacker's Gina Trapani even wrote a guide to Google Wave but I believe Wave was killed right before after it was published
Yeah, I agree with you. I'm sorry, but whether it was unlimited or only 1GB, it felt unlimited to me at that time and that WAS revolutionary. At the time, GMail seemed vastly superior to the main alternative, Yahoo Mail.
> The reason gmail was successful is that it didn’t revolutionize email. It was just a very good client that worked well but roughly the same as people were already used to.
I take it you never had a Hotmail account with 5mb mailbox limit (though by 2005 was a bit larger like maybe 10 or 20mb).
The revolutionary thing about gmail is that it offered 10x-100x more space than its competitors, for free. Everything else about it was whatever.
> It was just a very good client that worked well but roughly the same as people were already used to.
UI-wise, yes, but GMail was also the first mainstream "AJAX" [1] app. Before it the expectation was that clicking on almost anything on the page would cause a full page refresh. GMail was in part revolutionary because of how snappy it felt for a webmail client.
I remember using OWA (Outlook Web Access) before that.. but you are right this is the one that stands out..... soon after this Digg was created and the onslaught of all the web 2.0 sites like delicious, flickr etc etc
After all XMLHttpRequest was a non-standard addition to the web API by Microsoft, specifically added for Outlook AFAIK. Firefox copied it though, so GMail could use it without sacrificing browser agnosticism.
I come from the perspective that email is totally broken; both in my personal spam filled inbox and in my corporate information black hole email. So I'm genuinely curious
I have multiple email aliases that feed into the same box. I filter messages based on what alias they went through and who sent them. Nearly all messages get automatically marked as read; they're there, but I won't get notifed of them. For a few high priority senders who have my high priority alias, they get the star treatment: notification, star, reminder to reply, etc.
Also, if you filter for the word "unsubscribe," you can cut through a good chunk of low-priority automatic messages.
It's just Google. I have a Google Workspace subscription for my personal domain, but you can accomplish a similar thing using "plus-aliases" on standard free Gmail accounts: "foobar+lowpriority@gmail.com"
Get good at searching, filters, modifiers, keywords, etc. My I boxes are huge, but I generally find what I need quickly by typing a fee searching filters and keywords
It was delightfully sparse coming from heavyweight desktop clients. Though now that I'm at 98% capacity, I need to hook up a heavyweight client to do real cleaning...
I mean, even as someone who has now removed google from my life as much as possible including no longer relying on gmail.
I disagree, I think gmail was genuinely a step forward. I remember the yahoo of the time just being extremely clunky. A polished fast UI can be considered a revolution in its own right.
Wasn't it also one of the first to do HTML emails or am I mis-remembering?
The email threads were a really nice quality of life feature.
Of course we have the amount of space it gave you and that weird ticking space thing that made everyone's space go up at a consistent pace.
That being said, the way I see it. Email doesn't really need a revolution at this point in time. It does what it needs to do, it does it well (except for spam), and I feel like attempt to move past that (wasn't it google that showed off some sort of interactive emails?) are ultimately a bad thing.
Personally I like that email has stagnated a bit, let it do its job without tacking on feature after feature.
HTML emails were there before, but I agree that fast UI and threads was a step up from Yahoo or Hotmail. Labels instead of folders, username+wildcard@ email addresses, filters (at least the UX was better than traditional rules). They also enabled POP and IMAP. IIRC, IMAP used to be a premium feature for email providers at that time.
I’m not sure about revolution, but e-mail can certainly be evolved.
20 years ago, not as many emails were sent, especially transactional emails. User behavior has evolved since then.
For example, storing email receipt of a random Amazon order from 2 years ago doesn’t make much sense these days.
Hey has addressed some of these changes, but there is a lot of room for improvement.
"It's just too hard to get people to radically change their workflow, and tbh the current one isn't even that bad."
Gmail's update last month mandating use of Javascript radically changed workflow for me. The difference in speed and resource consumption for me against the faster HTML version is significant, not to mention an increasing cluttered interface. Over time, people get used to the slower speed. Very sad. More of our time and resources stolen by a so-called "tech" company. I thought I was free from this nonsense when I quit using Windows decades ago. I was wrong.
Gmail serves Google first and Gmail users second. When it wants to make changes that benefit Google, it can make them, no matter how "radical". Why. Because it's too difficult for Gmail users to find an alternative mail provider.
Gmail has stagnated so much, I can't believe it. Fastmail Web and mobile apps are 100x better (fast as hell, much clearer UI, no clutter, no ads…). Idem for Web search, I find Kagi so much better…
I only use Youtube among all Google product nowadays, with lots of uBlock filters to make it simple (and remove all the crazy bad ads and recommendation). A few Google Maps search for location ratings (if only there was a review community for OrganicMaps…).
I benefit somehow from AOSP through LineageOS but without any of the Google tracking and useless products' bundling.
I hope my past investments don't make me too biases (shareholder from 2004 to 2012) but for the past decade, I feel like their products and services have become worse and worse.
I wish more people could afford paid services like Fastmail and Kagi, I'm sure Google would try a little to compete and improve their apps. But I believe they'll have to die before they start doing more than passively exploiting their monopoly to passively generate profits from ads powered by big (never really consented) data collection. I wish.
I have to use Gmail at work and we are definitely paying for this crap.
We're actually looking at replacing Google Workspace with Fastmail or some alternatives.
We'll only miss Google Sheet but we'll still have to use some of their development tools and services (due to Android being completely closed – no way you can publish apps without Google Play Services these times).
Ungoogle yourself. Don't rely on google. I had transferred a quite valuable DID number to my Project Fi phone. Due to unfortunate circumstances I was not able to pay for a while. I lost:
1. The valuable number
2. Access to my Gmail Account. I know my PW but gmail won't let me log into gmail without confirming with the number that I lost. Hence, my gmail account is gone
3. Paid apps. I lost apps I paid for and that were linked to my phone or email, e.g. threma, insync etc.
Had a lawyer write to google. No answer. Don't rely on google for anything important. I have a new gmail for my Android. I don't even know it out of my head since I don't use it. Why would I?
At least Tuta has support. Somebody you can contact. But I prefer to control the domain too. Germany/US Based? I would prefer Switzerland or Iceland compared to EU/US jurisdictions.
I seem to have an old yahoo email that I had set up 2fa about 8 years ago. Recently it logged me out abruptly and wont let me back in. That number is with someone else and they are fearing otp hijacking and have blocked me.
I have a considerable number of accounts liked to that so I am kinda in the soup. Urrrgh.
Is there no standardized way to solve these problems ?
I can give details about the email, recovery number, aliases, settings, last emails I remember
The only way to solve it is to own your own domain and to make sure that you always pay for it. The catch is that you have to do this from the start.
I'm hopeful that governments will eventually realize how impactful this is, and mandate email provides to implement forwarding services after an account is closed and they have verified your identity, possibly via government ID.
That's why I use gmail with my own domain. If they ever fuck me, I can point my MX records at a new provider. I do have to pay them for the privilege of using my own domain, but at least that way I'm not the product.
I'm in the same boat, even though I have the email, password and recovery email; and all the emails from the account forward to me.
If all of us who are locked out of our Google accounts got together and made a HN post, we might be able to get it on the front page, which is the only officially-recognized support channel for Google now.
Just put your domain name for registration. It will say it is registered already but then offers you the option to buy email hosting. I think it is 18 Euros for 5 Email accounts per year. It is based in Switzerland.
Australian fastmail may be better - I don't have experience myself - but it starts at 60 dollars a year. Maybe someone who is a user can give feedback here.
Regarding infomaniak: They offer a free email service (without your own domain). Maybe you try it out to get a feel if this is right for you and your domain: https://www.infomaniak.com/en/free-email
And hands off to apps that have a registration code. E.g. pleco. They are not linked to your email and you don't lose them if your gmail is gone...
Or cheapest solution: internet.bs has email forwarding for free, like many other registrars. You could use it only for service registration and not for emailing. But sometimes companies insist you email them with the registered email and you won't be able to do this then.
Google themselves have tried to build several new revolutions throughout the years. Wave and Inbox are the ones I can easily remember. Workspaces probably should also count?
Google Inbox had some issues but I really miss two things about it: the ability to make certain categories of email be hidden for the rest of the day or week after you reviewed them once, and the ability to add tasks to your inbox, either associated with emails or standalone.
They said they would fold the functionality of inbox into Gmail but they never did for those features.
I like their mission. I used them for a while and the service was great, but I got annoyed at not being able to use any other client than theirs. I wanted to use Thunderbird, but they don't support IMAP for encryption reasons. I switched to Fastmail and it's been nice, I like that they're fixing the shortcomings of email by pushing for new standards like jmap. I'd probably have stuck with Tuta if they had a plan for a new standard that let them be privacy oriented and also let me use Thunderbird.
Yep, it is a bit too big walled garden at the moment. Since it is E2EE almost completely, it is harder to make alternative clients. But still they should offer some specification.
They aren't bad at all but be warned that you shouldn't use them for throwaway addresses that are lightly used. They will delete your account if there hasn't been activity for 6 months.
Sounds like a lot of time, but surprising how quickly that time runs out.
This seems like a generic advert for a generic email product, that's only posted here because it says "Google is bad". I don't disagree with the sentiment, but let's face it, if this company got the same level of traction as Google, we'd be talking about how they're now the bad guys and how do we migrate away from them.
I used Gmail for almost 18 years, but recently I switched to an email with my own domain and now use Apple Mail to read and send emails. It's not perfect, but Gmail was wearing me out. Even though I was paying for One, I was still being shown ads, which I find unacceptable.
This doesn't get around that boil-the-ocean problem with email. Even if I use a more privacy-focused email service, if the people I'm emailing with are using Gmail or Outlook, my data's out there anyway. You need everyone who's using Gmail to stop using it at the same time, or you're not really avoiding Gmail.
> We don’t need to write “Don’t Be Evil” into our code of conduct because it’s in our DNA.
I mean, why not put it in there anyway then? Everybody thinks they're essentially good, including Google on the day they removed Don't Be Evil from their code of conduct.
I wish there was a new universal messaging platform that is:
* based on open protocols (to foster choice in clients, system providers, etc.)
* but whose encryption and security features are included from the ground up
* plus the platform and associated protocols would support both short-term/brief/ephemeral style messaging like texting, instant messaging, chat...Plus, the slower-style messaging of emails.
* finally, would be really great if the prime use-case was peer-to-peer communication *first* and only fall back to having a server (or server-related infra.) in those cases of bounce-back style issues, etc.
...But, maybe i'm asking too much in this age of blockchain, super-powered computing in phone-sized bricks, virtual/augmented reality, social media access to many global users, and AI.
I know, i know, I've pretty much showcased the theme of XKCD 927 [https://xkcd.com/927/] ...but what can i say, it feels like in this day and age, we shouldn't be where we are with messaging. ;-)
You do want server-related infrastructure, at least so the clients can find each other.
I think Matrix fits most of what you describe. I'd really like commercial Matrix offerings to become commonplace. I think there could be a market opportunity here, but most businesses would rather lock you into a proprietary service.
You're right that a server, or at least some server-like gateway node/mechanism (for discovery, client connections and likely other reasons - even if only temporary) would be needed.
Also, as far as matrix, yeah i count myself as a super-duper fan boy of matrix...so, you're preaching to the choir here! :-) I so badly want matrix to keep gaining more mindshare and keep evolving its protocols, etc. I guess it could be used for "slower" style messaging like email too i suppose. I guess that would be managed/controlled all in the UX for a particular desktop/web/mobile client.
Hmmm....I wonder what an email-style client would look like with matrix messaging underneath?
EDIT: By the way, @loudmax i failed to mention that there are already some matrix commercial hosting/service providers...but its still early days for them. I think it will take time before they are more plentiful and as you noted more commonplace (I look forward to that!). See: https://matrix.org/ecosystem/hosting/
I’ve seen so many of these revolutionary email clients over the years but they all fail. It’s just too hard to get people to radically change their workflow, and tbh the current one isn’t even that bad.