Friday, February 10, 2006

Not At the Mercy of Gmail

Winer: They probably do care, in an abstract and aggregate way. But what if the performance never came back? Or what happens if Google stock stops going up? Who wants to be on Gmail when that happens?
If that happens, switch clients. That's the awesome thing about Gmail compared to Yahoo or Hotmail. No lock in. Gmail lets you specify a different email address which effectively makes Gmail just another mail client for me. For example, my email goes to and comes from my crazybob.org address, not my gmail.com address. It's difficult for recipients to tell I even use Gmail. If you use your gmail.com address and still want to switch, use the forwarding feature. When it comes time to export your email and use something else (Apple's Mail.app for example), you can use the POP3 access. Yahoo and Hotmail charge premiums for these features if they offer them at all. Disclaimer: I work for Google.

4 Comments:

Blogger Sefton said...

[sarcasm]What if the world ends tomorrow? How can I be assured that my Gmail will go on to live forever?[/sarcasm]

2:59 PM  
Blogger gnome said...

Anyway.. Such post sort of make me feel uneasy... I use only gmail...

5:47 AM  
Blogger Bob said...

My post? You should feel secure in the fact that Google gives you choice. Google has to work extra hard so you don't want to switch whereas other providers resort to lock in instead.

9:30 AM  
Blogger Phil Wilson said...

Dave's crazy. He should try using Hotmail sometime (or any time in the last decade), it's got not only a terrible UI but an incredibly slow response time.

3:36 AM  

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