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> Email was meant to be Email isn't a religion and originalism isn't a meaningful framework for analysis. Email started as a simple answer to a simple questio

> Email was meant to be Email isn't a religion and originalism isn't a meaningful framework for analysis. Email started as a simple answer to a simple question, and has evolved from there to answer increasing hard questions. The original inventors totally failed to anticipate many important realities about email (most significantly, spam, but also encryption and signing), and email has evolved to deal with that. You're free to keep using email as you believe it should be used, but you have no right to insist that other people hold back in adopting new ways of doing things that they feel suits them better.

heavenlyblue 8y ago
> increasing hard questions Over the past, what... 30 years? - e-mail remains what it had been in the first place: a protocol for exchanging messages. You're still sending text. You're still attaching links to your messages if you'd like to send a large file. You're still trying to keep concise in your comm. What have evolved, exactly? Sans encryption - that's not really a "hard question". Gmail's a great spam-free platform, but it doesn't add anything revolutionary.
- twblalock 8y ago
  Good spam filters, tags instead of folders, and a lot of storage were the features Gmail brought to the table, for free, that made it so popular. It was also a nicer web interface than the competition -- so nice that it managed to get a lot of people to use it instead of desktop mail clients, which were the norm at the time.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >Over the past, what... 30 years? - e-mail remains what it had been in the first place: a protocol for exchanging messages. The difference is (a) those messages started to measure in the hundreds or thousands per day, not 5 of them at most like in the eighties, (b) people started using it for all kinds of work collaboration and organization. Not just some academics exchanging ideas.
  - heavenlyblue 8y ago
    So what collaborative features unique to Gmail does the organisation you work for currently actively uses? PS: please do not say "Hangouts", as Hangouts are only loosely integrated with Gmail. These are two separate systems and it does seem they are still unsure if these two should be merged together.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      Why do they have to be "unique to Gmail"? The parent's argument was that email is the same thing for 30+ years. Several mail programs have added integrated calendars and notifications, email snoozing, labels, classification into buckets, context, and so on -- including basics like search. And of course there are the apps and plugins -- e.g. Asana within Gmail and the like.
- mikeash 8y ago
  Being spam free was revolutionary when Gmail was new. It also revolutionized email by offering enough space that you could actually keep an archive. When most providers offered maybe 10MB, Gmail offered 1GB. If those don’t sound revolutionary today, it’s only because Gmail revolutionized things so hard that everyone had to jump on board.
  - heavenlyblue 8y ago
    You're only seeing it from one perspective: from the perspective of a single non-power user - yes, Gmail made the difference. But in terms of proper e-mail usage: be it through MS Exchange, University campuses, corporate servers - they made no difference. Everyone already had enough space there anyway, and spam filters <mostly> worked - as they had enough email volume to detect attack. And they still use these systems.
    - twblalock 8y ago
      > You're only seeing it from one perspective: from the perspective of a single non-power user - yes, Gmail made the difference. That's the perspective of most people. They are not power users, they don't have the technical ability to deal with complicated email systems, and they just want something free that works well. Your concept of "proper" email usage doesn't cover most of the population.
    - mikeash 8y ago
      As a university user at the time, it certainly wasn’t my experience that everyone already had enough space, or that spam filtering worked.
    - daveFNbuck 8y ago
      I switched to gmail after losing my college account upon graduation. I'm sure my college is still using this system, but it's not available to me. Neither are the corporate e-mails for jobs I've left. For personal e-mail, almost everyone is a single non-power user.
    - toopsss 8y ago

heavenlyblue 8y ago

> increasing hard questions Over the past, what... 30 years? - e-mail remains what it had been in the first place: a protocol for exchanging messages. You're still sending text. You're still attaching links to your messages if you'd like to send a large file. You're still trying to keep concise in your comm. What have evolved, exactly? Sans encryption - that's not really a "hard question". Gmail's a great spam-free platform, but it doesn't add anything revolutionary.

twblalock 8y ago
Good spam filters, tags instead of folders, and a lot of storage were the features Gmail brought to the table, for free, that made it so popular. It was also a nicer web interface than the competition -- so nice that it managed to get a lot of people to use it instead of desktop mail clients, which were the norm at the time.
coldtea 8y ago
>Over the past, what... 30 years? - e-mail remains what it had been in the first place: a protocol for exchanging messages. The difference is (a) those messages started to measure in the hundreds or thousands per day, not 5 of them at most like in the eighties, (b) people started using it for all kinds of work collaboration and organization. Not just some academics exchanging ideas.
- heavenlyblue 8y ago
  So what collaborative features unique to Gmail does the organisation you work for currently actively uses? PS: please do not say "Hangouts", as Hangouts are only loosely integrated with Gmail. These are two separate systems and it does seem they are still unsure if these two should be merged together.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    Why do they have to be "unique to Gmail"? The parent's argument was that email is the same thing for 30+ years. Several mail programs have added integrated calendars and notifications, email snoozing, labels, classification into buckets, context, and so on -- including basics like search. And of course there are the apps and plugins -- e.g. Asana within Gmail and the like.
mikeash 8y ago
Being spam free was revolutionary when Gmail was new. It also revolutionized email by offering enough space that you could actually keep an archive. When most providers offered maybe 10MB, Gmail offered 1GB. If those don’t sound revolutionary today, it’s only because Gmail revolutionized things so hard that everyone had to jump on board.
- heavenlyblue 8y ago
  You're only seeing it from one perspective: from the perspective of a single non-power user - yes, Gmail made the difference. But in terms of proper e-mail usage: be it through MS Exchange, University campuses, corporate servers - they made no difference. Everyone already had enough space there anyway, and spam filters <mostly> worked - as they had enough email volume to detect attack. And they still use these systems.
  - twblalock 8y ago
    > You're only seeing it from one perspective: from the perspective of a single non-power user - yes, Gmail made the difference. That's the perspective of most people. They are not power users, they don't have the technical ability to deal with complicated email systems, and they just want something free that works well. Your concept of "proper" email usage doesn't cover most of the population.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    As a university user at the time, it certainly wasn’t my experience that everyone already had enough space, or that spam filtering worked.
  - daveFNbuck 8y ago
    I switched to gmail after losing my college account upon graduation. I'm sure my college is still using this system, but it's not available to me. Neither are the corporate e-mails for jobs I've left. For personal e-mail, almost everyone is a single non-power user.
  - toopsss 8y ago