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Generally speaking, the cornered the market through building good products that beat the competition. Do you remember free email providers prior to gmail? ISPs
by dannyw 6y ago
Generally speaking, the cornered the market through building good products that beat the competition. Do you remember free email providers prior to gmail? ISPs who you maintained a paying customer relationship with offered worse quotas and outdated web mails.
- Fnoord 6y agoYes, I remember plenty of free providers (as well as quality paid ones, and ISP ones, for example GMX and Ilse), including with IMAP/POP3, TLS/SSL support, anti spam features, anti virus features etc. Gmail was unique in three ways: it had a huge quota (for that time), and it offered a slick web interface. The other way Gmail was unique was the invite. If you gotta get invited to become part of the (secret) club, that makes it more special.
- HappyJoy 6y agoI remember Hotmail
- HenryBemis 6y agoI remember postmaster.co.uk and hotmail.com, they were around way before Gmail, and were less invasive, but I got my own domain and I serve my own emails since 2000 so I got that covered. I like my emails like I like my newspaper: NOT to read them together with someone else. I do know that emails are clear text etc but it's not fun that I get an email about XYZ and then every website I visit shows me ads about XYZ.