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I don't remember anyone running services with offerings similar to e.g. Gmail back then without income from targeted advertising. Back then, my mailbox had 10 M

I don't remember anyone running services with offerings similar to e.g. Gmail back then without income from targeted advertising. Back then, my mailbox had 10 MB capacity while Gmail offered 1 GB thanks to the money from advertising.

anonymousab 8y ago
It's unclear to me how much of Gmail was made possible due to immediate pocket lining potential, and how much was possible due to their bringing the model of "offer orders of magnitude more service than what the average person will use, and absorb the outliers in the margins" to a web app service. I don't think Gmail started out with heavy email content harvesting and integrated advertising but I could be misremembering.
- TomMarius 8y ago
  I did not say that it was thanks to email harvesting, it was the targeted ad income they had in general that made it possible.
whatshisface 8y ago
The current state of your mailbox seems like a good corpus for memory-less targeting. Other than your emails, which the email provider obviously has to store, no personal information would have to be kept. As a result I'm not sure that the GDPR would impede Gmail, except to make it more valuable by increasing the scarcity of having that much data in one place.
- TomMarius 8y ago
  I wasn't talking about email harvesting. It was their targeted ad income in general that made it possible to bootstrap this service at the beginning and then make use of the e-mail data to further improve their otherwise free offering.
- icebraining 8y ago
  Gmail can't use that data for ads unless they ask for consent separately (which the user can refuse).
inetknght 8y ago
AOL wasn't the only email provider back then and Gmail isn't now today either.
- TomMarius 8y ago
  Yeah but it used to be the only one with more than 10 MB storage in days when disk space was very expensive.
- manigandham 8y ago
  Competition doesn't matter unless a competitor actually make things better. Back then, everything sucked. Gmail actually pushed the industry to the next level. Most other services today are no better than a pop/imap inbox as before, just with a bigger storage quota.
  - inetknght 8y ago
    What's wrong with pop/imap?
    - manigandham 8y ago
      They're old crappy protocols designed a long time ago. There's a reason why no modern email system uses them but only offers a mapping interface at best for older clients.
      - inetknght 8y ago
        MAC is old and designed a long time ago. IP is old and designed a long time ago. TCP is old and designed a long time ago. Everything is built upon them though. Why can't things be built upon POP and IMAP? Why are they crappy protocols?
        manigandham 8y ago
        > Why can't things be built upon POP and IMAP? That's a different question. 3 random examples don't really mean anything. IPv4 is old, HTTP/1 is old, SSLv1 is old. Sure they work, but we also have newer better stuff. The old email protocols do not properly support modern features like syncing across multiple devices and servers with lightweight and efficient payloads, along with fast and safe attachment handling, consistent message ids, message threading, labels, contacts, push-based notifications, and many other things that people take for granted today. All modern email systems have built their own and don't use pop/imap because they're too outdated to even use as a foundation. Here's JMAP from Fastmail if you want more details on a open-source email protocol: https://jmap.io/ https://jmap.io/

anonymousab 8y ago

It's unclear to me how much of Gmail was made possible due to immediate pocket lining potential, and how much was possible due to their bringing the model of "offer orders of magnitude more service than what the average person will use, and absorb the outliers in the margins" to a web app service. I don't think Gmail started out with heavy email content harvesting and integrated advertising but I could be misremembering.

TomMarius 8y ago
I did not say that it was thanks to email harvesting, it was the targeted ad income they had in general that made it possible.

whatshisface 8y ago

The current state of your mailbox seems like a good corpus for memory-less targeting. Other than your emails, which the email provider obviously has to store, no personal information would have to be kept. As a result I'm not sure that the GDPR would impede Gmail, except to make it more valuable by increasing the scarcity of having that much data in one place.

TomMarius 8y ago
I wasn't talking about email harvesting. It was their targeted ad income in general that made it possible to bootstrap this service at the beginning and then make use of the e-mail data to further improve their otherwise free offering.
icebraining 8y ago
Gmail can't use that data for ads unless they ask for consent separately (which the user can refuse).

inetknght 8y ago

AOL wasn't the only email provider back then and Gmail isn't now today either.

TomMarius 8y ago
Yeah but it used to be the only one with more than 10 MB storage in days when disk space was very expensive.
manigandham 8y ago
Competition doesn't matter unless a competitor actually make things better. Back then, everything sucked. Gmail actually pushed the industry to the next level. Most other services today are no better than a pop/imap inbox as before, just with a bigger storage quota.
- inetknght 8y ago
  What's wrong with pop/imap?
  - manigandham 8y ago
    They're old crappy protocols designed a long time ago. There's a reason why no modern email system uses them but only offers a mapping interface at best for older clients.
    - inetknght 8y ago
      MAC is old and designed a long time ago. IP is old and designed a long time ago. TCP is old and designed a long time ago. Everything is built upon them though. Why can't things be built upon POP and IMAP? Why are they crappy protocols?
      - manigandham 8y ago
        > Why can't things be built upon POP and IMAP? That's a different question. 3 random examples don't really mean anything. IPv4 is old, HTTP/1 is old, SSLv1 is old. Sure they work, but we also have newer better stuff. The old email protocols do not properly support modern features like syncing across multiple devices and servers with lightweight and efficient payloads, along with fast and safe attachment handling, consistent message ids, message threading, labels, contacts, push-based notifications, and many other things that people take for granted today. All modern email systems have built their own and don't use pop/imap because they're too outdated to even use as a foundation. Here's JMAP from Fastmail if you want more details on a open-source email protocol: https://jmap.io/ https://jmap.io/