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Gmail won because it fixed the biggest pain points with HTML email and spam. And so many years later nobody has come even close. That's not their fault.

by jahvo 8y ago

ubernostrum 8y ago
And now you get to wonder what ideas people might have come up with, that you'd have loved, but got shut down immediately because Google doesn't let people break in with new ideas. Being the best available option is good. Using a dominant position to try to ensure nobody is ever allowed to compete with you again in the future is bad, and in theory illegal.
- lallysingh 8y ago
  How would this play out in email? Users can have more than 1 email account, and even just forward from their old acct to their new one.
  - ubernostrum 8y ago
    How would what play out? If Google blackholes mail coming from new ("untrusted", therefore "spammy") providers, how does a new provider gain traction in the market? They already do this with other services. YouTube is probably the single most-DMCA'd site on the internet, for example, but still gets prime search-result real estate. But if you try setting up a competing video site, Google will count how many DMCA notices it gets to take down links to your site, and penalize you in search results for being a no-good horrible copyright-violation-enabler. Google is very very good at setting up situations where the rule for their property is different from the rule for everyone else, and for some reason it always favors the Google property...
    - SquareWheel 8y ago
      Youtube surely does get a lot of DMCAs, but the vast, vast majority of copyright disputes are handled with a system meant to preclude DMCAs. Secondly, do you have any evidence that DMCA claims are a ranking factor? Google search actually goes out of its way to point to sources showing takedowns, implying they do not agree with them. Thirdly, Youtube has millions of incoming links. It's going to do pretty darn well in ranking no matter what.
      - dhimes 8y ago
        Google's mobile support was horrific when they started penalizing other sites for a bad mobile experience.
        SquareWheel 8y ago
        Desktop and mobile searches are indexed separately, so they could hold high desktop rank even if mobile faltered. Though I'm not sure which service you're referring to specifically. In most cases I would still expect inbound links to be very high, offsetting any mobile penalty.
      - ubernostrum 8y ago
        YouTube gets special promotion in Google SERPs, because it's a Google property. So it gets to live way up top. And yes, Google has admitted that DMCA notices received for results to your site is something they'll factor in to rankings for non-Google properties: https://searchengineland.com/dmca-requests-now-used-in-googles-ranking-algorithm-130118 https://searchengineland.com/dmca-requests-now-used-in-googl...
        SquareWheel 8y ago
        I've never heard of that signal before, but it is interesting. I'm guessing it's designed to reduce the visibility of pirate stream websites. However, "YouTube gets special promotion in Google SERPs" is still an unfounded claim. There are hundreds of signals. Failing at one does not prove collusion.
        ubernostrum 8y ago
        Google properties, and certain special programs like new sites that use AMP, get preferred placement at the very top of the results page. This is not some sort of weird way-out-there conspiracy theory. You can test it yourself by going to Google, typing in something likely to have a video result, and observing how Google showcases a YouTube result at the top. Here's what I see, in a private/incognito tab, searching for the name of a recent popular music song and the artist, for example: https://i.imgur.com/iBSUBOV.jpg https://i.imgur.com/iBSUBOV.jpg Literally everything in that box is a link to a Google property, or to further Google searches that will promote Google properties. Below the fold (it's a large box) is a carousel of news stories about the topic, promoting Google News as a news aggregator. The actual search results don't start until below that.
    - joshuamorton 8y ago
      Ask MailChimp or sendgrid, among a variety of others?
takluyver 8y ago
And because Google realised they could afford to give you 1GB space when everyone else was offering ~10-20 MB, and because they launched it cleverly, with restricted signups making a gmail.com address a desirable thing. But the complaint isn't about how GMail got to a dominant position, it's about what it does with that position.
CM30 8y ago
Isn't their HTML/CSS support atrocious? I mean, it might be a bit better than Outlook, but as far as HTML emails are concerned, it's more mobile browsers which have made it actually usable again: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/email-client/gmail/ https://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/email-client/gmail/

Gmail won because it fixed the biggest pain points with HTML email and spam. And so many years later nobody has come even close. That's not their fault.

by jahvo 8y ago

Gmail won because it fixed the biggest pain points with HTML email and spam. And so many years later nobody has come even close. That's not their fault.

ubernostrum 8y ago

And now you get to wonder what ideas people might have come up with, that you'd have loved, but got shut down immediately because Google doesn't let people break in with new ideas. Being the best available option is good. Using a dominant position to try to ensure nobody is ever allowed to compete with you again in the future is bad, and in theory illegal.

lallysingh 8y ago
How would this play out in email? Users can have more than 1 email account, and even just forward from their old acct to their new one.
- ubernostrum 8y ago
  How would what play out? If Google blackholes mail coming from new ("untrusted", therefore "spammy") providers, how does a new provider gain traction in the market? They already do this with other services. YouTube is probably the single most-DMCA'd site on the internet, for example, but still gets prime search-result real estate. But if you try setting up a competing video site, Google will count how many DMCA notices it gets to take down links to your site, and penalize you in search results for being a no-good horrible copyright-violation-enabler. Google is very very good at setting up situations where the rule for their property is different from the rule for everyone else, and for some reason it always favors the Google property...
  - SquareWheel 8y ago
    Youtube surely does get a lot of DMCAs, but the vast, vast majority of copyright disputes are handled with a system meant to preclude DMCAs. Secondly, do you have any evidence that DMCA claims are a ranking factor? Google search actually goes out of its way to point to sources showing takedowns, implying they do not agree with them. Thirdly, Youtube has millions of incoming links. It's going to do pretty darn well in ranking no matter what.
    - dhimes 8y ago
      Google's mobile support was horrific when they started penalizing other sites for a bad mobile experience.
      - SquareWheel 8y ago
        Desktop and mobile searches are indexed separately, so they could hold high desktop rank even if mobile faltered. Though I'm not sure which service you're referring to specifically. In most cases I would still expect inbound links to be very high, offsetting any mobile penalty.
    - ubernostrum 8y ago
      YouTube gets special promotion in Google SERPs, because it's a Google property. So it gets to live way up top. And yes, Google has admitted that DMCA notices received for results to your site is something they'll factor in to rankings for non-Google properties: https://searchengineland.com/dmca-requests-now-used-in-googles-ranking-algorithm-130118 https://searchengineland.com/dmca-requests-now-used-in-googl...
      - SquareWheel 8y ago
        I've never heard of that signal before, but it is interesting. I'm guessing it's designed to reduce the visibility of pirate stream websites. However, "YouTube gets special promotion in Google SERPs" is still an unfounded claim. There are hundreds of signals. Failing at one does not prove collusion.
        ubernostrum 8y ago
        Google properties, and certain special programs like new sites that use AMP, get preferred placement at the very top of the results page. This is not some sort of weird way-out-there conspiracy theory. You can test it yourself by going to Google, typing in something likely to have a video result, and observing how Google showcases a YouTube result at the top. Here's what I see, in a private/incognito tab, searching for the name of a recent popular music song and the artist, for example: https://i.imgur.com/iBSUBOV.jpg https://i.imgur.com/iBSUBOV.jpg Literally everything in that box is a link to a Google property, or to further Google searches that will promote Google properties. Below the fold (it's a large box) is a carousel of news stories about the topic, promoting Google News as a news aggregator. The actual search results don't start until below that.
  - joshuamorton 8y ago
    Ask MailChimp or sendgrid, among a variety of others?

takluyver 8y ago

And because Google realised they could afford to give you 1GB space when everyone else was offering ~10-20 MB, and because they launched it cleverly, with restricted signups making a gmail.com address a desirable thing. But the complaint isn't about how GMail got to a dominant position, it's about what it does with that position.

CM30 8y ago

Isn't their HTML/CSS support atrocious? I mean, it might be a bit better than Outlook, but as far as HTML emails are concerned, it's more mobile browsers which have made it actually usable again: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/email-client/gmail/ https://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/email-client/gmail/