Gmail loves me not
I was completely unphased when the recent discussions on Evolt.org’s thelist turned to Google’s new, invitation-only (for now) Gmail service. Evolt is, after all, a geek-driven organization, so naturally they would talk about such things. But in the past couple of days, however, discussions about Gmail invitations—who’s got `em, who wants `em, and why they are worth having—have all but taken over many of the mailing lists I follow, even the non-technical ones.
I’m now feeling like the only person in the world who hasn’t received an invitation yet—not that I’ve been expecting one. In fact, this blog entry is the first time I’ve even given the issue any serious thought. My Web-mail needs are more than adequately taken care of, so Gmail is not really very appealing to me, but the question I would like to have an answer to is:
When is Google going to get into the Web-hosting business, thereby forcing all other hosts to jack up their own services to remain competitive, as Gmail has for the Web-mail service providers? If Gmail can afford to offer a gigabyte or two of mail storage for free, surely these Web-hosting companies can offer more than the typical, fixed fee 100MB-500MB or so, right?
My only complaint about gmail (and it’s kind of major) is that you can’t send mail with Japanese encoding unless you take the time to convert it to UTF-8...or whatever. It just gets all messed up…
That would be a rather significant shortcoming for those of us who use Japanese, but I’m sure Google will get that fixed at some point. Gmail is, after all, still in an experimental phase, right?
But the only feature of Gmail that strikes me as a radical departure from the typical e-mail service (and, yes, I am aware of the search capabilities it offers) is the huge storage capacity. Until Gmail came around, most mail services were offering a stingy 3MB or so for a free mailbox, with an option to pay for one that would start at around 25MB. Now, however, thanks to Gmail, most of them are offering at least 100MB, with paid options that start around 2GB. All it took was Google’s prodding, for which all Web-based mail users should be grateful.
Go visit The Dynamic Duo, and grab that last invite before someone else gets it. I won’t use gmail for anything serious due to privacy concerns, but I do think it is a beautifully well designed web application. There are things I think could use improving, but gmail is probably the best web application I’ve seen to date.
Sweet! Gmail loves me not, but UltraBob loves me a lot! (In a purely fraternal, strictly platonic sense, of course.) Thanks, UltraBob!
gmail is probably the best web application I’ve seen to date
It does seem remarkably well done, that’s for sure. Is that Python under the hood, or is that just my imagination?
You got the account yet, Sako? Sorry, I hadn’t known… I’ve still got an invitation for you if you still need one.
Thanks, Luis, but UltraBob hooked me up. For some reason, though, it wouldn’t let me register as any of my usual nicknames (they can’t all be registered already, can they?). It kept pushing me to use name.surname@…, well, you know.
So I guess you know where you can reach me now.
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