The Force is Strong in this One

June 16th, 2004

Filed under:
Technology

The Force is Strong in this One

Must resist…must resist…thus far, I’ve managed to resist the temptation to obtain an email account from Google. I know it’s currently the coolest toy on the technophile block, but I already check 15 email accounts for myself and various clients. I don’t need any more.

I’m interested in but skeptical about the technology itself. I’m sure it’s got fancy conversation threading and massive storage and super-fast search, but, you know, it’s still just a glorified Hotmail account. There’s no paradigm shift here, no disruptive technology. Additionally, I like to know where all my data is. I’m sure that Gmail is super secure and reliable and that your data is exportable, but it’s comforting to have my big bolus of email data right under my desk.

Clive Thompson of collision detection has a decent summary of the Gmail phenomenon.

Comments: 4 Responses so far

Martin
June 17th, 2004
12:07 am

The one big advantage of this type of service is that you can access it from anywhere. I find this indispensible.

I use fastmail (www.fastmail.fm), because I can access it from my regular email client using IMAP. (Something you can’t do with Gmail. Yet…)

But its space is limited. It has more than Hotmail, but definitely not a gigabyte.

[Reply]

Tom Murphy
June 17th, 2004
1:34 am

Darren,

Gmail is a little different.

First of all it is lightening quick in terms of delivering e-mail (at the moment anyhow).

Secondly the gigabyte storage is a major step forward. It may just be storage, but it is certainly a leap from 4MB.

Thirdly when you sign up a brand spanking new hotmail account, before you even log-in you have spam waiting. In the couple of months I’ve been using Gmail I’m still waiting for my first piece of spam… damn I know I’ve just tempted faith.

Finally, and most importantly. Searching email with Google… oh yes that is pure heaven.

Now if only Google would hurry up and ship a desktop search engine for files etc. I’d happily part with $100 for it. (I’ve used X1 etc. but am still waiting for GoogleDesktop).

My two cents..
TM

[Reply]