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Google gained a tremendous amount of goodwill early on because they provided incredibly powerful free tools - search, web mail with 1GB of space, etc. -- which
by TimTheTinker 4y ago
Google gained a tremendous amount of goodwill early on because they provided incredibly powerful free tools - search, web mail with 1GB of space, etc. -- which was so much better than what stingy incumbents offered (Yahoo Mail's free tier offered 10 MB of email storage at the time). But the rest of the industry has (mostly) caught up technically with them.
But cleverness and free tools will no longer be enough, since they're invading people's privacy (as ad revenue motivates them) and failing in customer service.
- babypuncher 4y agoI'd say Google has fallen behind. Gmail is a good example. I switched to Fastmail, which loads on my PC in less than a second after I click the bookmark. Gmail takes nearly 10 seconds. And Fastmail provides a configuration profile to provide push notifications to the native iOS email client, something Google stopped offering 6-7 years ago.
- TillE 4y agoThe Gmail web interface has been crud for 10+ years now, but...it's free. Not too surprising that paid services are better. It's really hard to beat 'free' as long as it's barely good enough.