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You don't need to be a Google employee to know its products lack innovation from day 1. It's a one trick pony company, having just created search, rest is only

You don't need to be a Google employee to know its products lack innovation from day 1. It's a one trick pony company, having just created search, rest is only buy/copy/steal. It's a company rotten to the core. It bought a few companies back then and helped scale it with capital (Android, YouTube...), also copied others, like there's a whole Netflix documentary about Google Maps. Don't come saying that Gmail was genius. There were so many free web mail offerings at the time. The only thing they did differently was giving 5GB storage because they never needed to make money with it, as search was a money printer. Now that there is no ad space left to be added on their products, it's a sinking ship. Also with their dieing cash cow search business, with Perplexity and OpenAI eating their lunch. It you still look at Google and don't see IBM, you need new glasses

bradhe 3y ago
Even if Gmail was genius, it's almost 20 years old and hasn't really evolved that much since day 0.
- idontwantthis 3y ago
  How would you want it to evolve? It shows and sends emails good. The promotions and social tabs are nice but I’d probably rather those all just went to spam instead.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >How would you want it to evolve? It shows and sends emails good. Yahoo mail is better for me because it implements the use of tabs, making e-mail multitasking a breeze. Also Yahoo's UI is more compact and less wasteful of screen real estate and just feels snappier while Gmail feels sluggish even on modern machines. So yes, there's definitely room for Gmail to evolve beyond just barebones sending and receiving emails, as there's dozens of other companies who can do that just the same or better, because otherwise why use Gmail beyond the Google brand name, network effect, and integration to the wider Google-Chrome-Android ecosystem which is it's biggest strength and selling point, but as a stand alone email service it's pretty lackluster and unimpressive.
    - dartos 3y ago
      In my life, this is the first positive thing I have ever read/heard about yahoo
      - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        What's so negative about yahoo mail today? Other than not being a hip cool company like Google.
        dartos 3y ago
        No idea, but there’s an old adage that goes like: There exists only 2 kinds of tools. The kinds people complain about And the kinds nobody use. Yahoo is definitely the latter.
  - 010101010101 3y ago
    They did evolve it with Inbox, and then subsequently killed Inbox to roll worse functionality into Gmail proper.
  - happymellon 3y ago
    I'd like my delete key to delete emails. Like my other mail clients.
- prepend 3y ago
  It’s devolved actually. The ui used to be faster and more responsive (remember compact mode?).
  - Ekaros 3y ago
    I remember that it used to categorize mails automatically. Which was nifty feature to me... But I think that was gone years and years ago...
Havoc 3y ago
I seem to recall gmail starting with 1gb?
- prepend 3y ago
  Yep. And it was quickly searchable. I think Hotmail had like 10megs and search sucked. Do Gmail’s innovation was “lots of space and search works as well as google.”
mola 3y ago
Be fair, Gmail was groundbreaking. It's UX was miles ahead of anything else. Especially webmail UIs. Google was a good product company for a while. But the it wasn't anymore.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >It's UX was miles ahead of anything else. Not my experience. UX was more or less in line with everyone else, UI just looked cleaner and prettier because it didn't yet have obtrusive ads compared to the competition. Gmail was groundbreaking because it offered 1GB of storage at launch compared to measly 100MB or so from Yahoo or Microsoft. Google brand name + invite only scarcity at launch + huge storage space + no ads at launch = the formula the drove initial popularity.
  - ctvo 3y ago
    Gmail was the first single page application I remembered using. It was eye opening to many people what the web could be as an application platform. You could compose a message and have it follow you as you read other emails, for example. It was not just about storage space: Gmail was better in every way. Even the spam filter was smarter and better than everyone else’s for a very long time.
    - pilaf 3y ago
      Exactly. It was also one of the first mainstream web apps to make widespread use of XMLHttpRequest. The term AJAX hadn't even been coined at the time of Gmail's release, and it was probably a major factor in the popularization of the technique.
    - happymellon 3y ago
      Then they disabled the delete key from deleting an email. Why would anyone do that?
      - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
Maro 3y ago
Search, Ads, Analytics, Gmail, Docs, Drive, Youtube, Maps, Android, Calendar.. All 10 are category defining (but at least top 3) products. I'd like to have a 1-trick pony like that one day!
- IAMMidway 3y ago
  Genuine question: What is category defining about Google Calender? Or even good? In my experience it lacks a lot of features and is kind of clunky.
  - Maro 3y ago
    I worked at roughly 10 companies in my life. Most either used Outlook/Office or Gmail/Calendar/Drive. Personally I hate the Microsoft office productivity stack, and on the other hand, I love using the Google stack, including Calendar.
    - prepend 3y ago
      Different strokes for different folks. I don’t like google calendar and prefer outlook’s. It’s probably the only part of office except Excel that I actually think works well. Not perfectly, I’d still like a good calendar based around sharing and collab, but the best out there. I think we need a good decentralized calendar that treats all calendars as peers. Outlook and google treat a single server as being the authority and everything has to go to those servers for actions. I’d rather see something like a calendar blob for individuals that gets sent around and rehosted lots of places like git. Or at least the availability. It’s still funny to me how hard it is to tell someone off server what your availability is.
    - latexr 3y ago
      There’s nothing wrong with you preferring one service over another, but the question was what makes Google Calendar “category defining”.
- latexr 3y ago
  The commenter you’re replying to was explicit: > rest is only buy/copy/steal. Go check the wikipedia page for those products and scroll to the “History” section. You might be surprised how the common thread is “another company was doing X, and then”.
prepend 3y ago
> It's a one trick pony company This is most successful companies though. Companies are lucky to have a single good idea. So I don’t think it’s a valid criticism to say “all McDonald’s had was franchising systematic food production” as that’s a big deal and it’s carried then all these decades. Or “all Toyota had was their production assembly method” etc etc. I think companies are typically a really good idea and then many years of optimizing that idea and process innovation.
znpy 3y ago
> The only thing they did differently was giving 5GB storage because they never needed to make money with it, as search was a money printer. Uh, no, they gave 1GB at the time, when the most you would get was usually either 100MB or 250MB (i think that was what Hotmail was offering at the time?). GMail was a game-changer at the time, though. The search features were incredibly fast and super accurate, the UI would refresh immediately (AJAX before it was cool, essentially, nobody was doing that at the time) and their anti-spam was top-notch. Literally, spam was not an issue anymore. Oh, and it was super fast and very lightweight: I had a P3 with 128MB ram at the time of launch, but it would still run incredibly well. I managed to get an invitation from a friend, and I loved it. Nowadays... It's almost saddening.

bradhe 3y ago

Even if Gmail was genius, it's almost 20 years old and hasn't really evolved that much since day 0.

idontwantthis 3y ago
How would you want it to evolve? It shows and sends emails good. The promotions and social tabs are nice but I’d probably rather those all just went to spam instead.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >How would you want it to evolve? It shows and sends emails good. Yahoo mail is better for me because it implements the use of tabs, making e-mail multitasking a breeze. Also Yahoo's UI is more compact and less wasteful of screen real estate and just feels snappier while Gmail feels sluggish even on modern machines. So yes, there's definitely room for Gmail to evolve beyond just barebones sending and receiving emails, as there's dozens of other companies who can do that just the same or better, because otherwise why use Gmail beyond the Google brand name, network effect, and integration to the wider Google-Chrome-Android ecosystem which is it's biggest strength and selling point, but as a stand alone email service it's pretty lackluster and unimpressive.
  - dartos 3y ago
    In my life, this is the first positive thing I have ever read/heard about yahoo
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      What's so negative about yahoo mail today? Other than not being a hip cool company like Google.
      - dartos 3y ago
        No idea, but there’s an old adage that goes like: There exists only 2 kinds of tools. The kinds people complain about And the kinds nobody use. Yahoo is definitely the latter.
- 010101010101 3y ago
  They did evolve it with Inbox, and then subsequently killed Inbox to roll worse functionality into Gmail proper.
- happymellon 3y ago
  I'd like my delete key to delete emails. Like my other mail clients.
prepend 3y ago
It’s devolved actually. The ui used to be faster and more responsive (remember compact mode?).
- Ekaros 3y ago
  I remember that it used to categorize mails automatically. Which was nifty feature to me... But I think that was gone years and years ago...

Havoc 3y ago

I seem to recall gmail starting with 1gb?

prepend 3y ago
Yep. And it was quickly searchable. I think Hotmail had like 10megs and search sucked. Do Gmail’s innovation was “lots of space and search works as well as google.”

mola 3y ago

Be fair, Gmail was groundbreaking. It's UX was miles ahead of anything else. Especially webmail UIs. Google was a good product company for a while. But the it wasn't anymore.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>It's UX was miles ahead of anything else. Not my experience. UX was more or less in line with everyone else, UI just looked cleaner and prettier because it didn't yet have obtrusive ads compared to the competition. Gmail was groundbreaking because it offered 1GB of storage at launch compared to measly 100MB or so from Yahoo or Microsoft. Google brand name + invite only scarcity at launch + huge storage space + no ads at launch = the formula the drove initial popularity.
- ctvo 3y ago
  Gmail was the first single page application I remembered using. It was eye opening to many people what the web could be as an application platform. You could compose a message and have it follow you as you read other emails, for example. It was not just about storage space: Gmail was better in every way. Even the spam filter was smarter and better than everyone else’s for a very long time.
  - pilaf 3y ago
    Exactly. It was also one of the first mainstream web apps to make widespread use of XMLHttpRequest. The term AJAX hadn't even been coined at the time of Gmail's release, and it was probably a major factor in the popularization of the technique.
  - happymellon 3y ago
    Then they disabled the delete key from deleting an email. Why would anyone do that?
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago

Maro 3y ago

Search, Ads, Analytics, Gmail, Docs, Drive, Youtube, Maps, Android, Calendar.. All 10 are category defining (but at least top 3) products. I'd like to have a 1-trick pony like that one day!

IAMMidway 3y ago
Genuine question: What is category defining about Google Calender? Or even good? In my experience it lacks a lot of features and is kind of clunky.
- Maro 3y ago
  I worked at roughly 10 companies in my life. Most either used Outlook/Office or Gmail/Calendar/Drive. Personally I hate the Microsoft office productivity stack, and on the other hand, I love using the Google stack, including Calendar.
  - prepend 3y ago
    Different strokes for different folks. I don’t like google calendar and prefer outlook’s. It’s probably the only part of office except Excel that I actually think works well. Not perfectly, I’d still like a good calendar based around sharing and collab, but the best out there. I think we need a good decentralized calendar that treats all calendars as peers. Outlook and google treat a single server as being the authority and everything has to go to those servers for actions. I’d rather see something like a calendar blob for individuals that gets sent around and rehosted lots of places like git. Or at least the availability. It’s still funny to me how hard it is to tell someone off server what your availability is.
  - latexr 3y ago
    There’s nothing wrong with you preferring one service over another, but the question was what makes Google Calendar “category defining”.
latexr 3y ago
The commenter you’re replying to was explicit: > rest is only buy/copy/steal. Go check the wikipedia page for those products and scroll to the “History” section. You might be surprised how the common thread is “another company was doing X, and then”.

prepend 3y ago

> It's a one trick pony company This is most successful companies though. Companies are lucky to have a single good idea. So I don’t think it’s a valid criticism to say “all McDonald’s had was franchising systematic food production” as that’s a big deal and it’s carried then all these decades. Or “all Toyota had was their production assembly method” etc etc. I think companies are typically a really good idea and then many years of optimizing that idea and process innovation.

znpy 3y ago

> The only thing they did differently was giving 5GB storage because they never needed to make money with it, as search was a money printer. Uh, no, they gave 1GB at the time, when the most you would get was usually either 100MB or 250MB (i think that was what Hotmail was offering at the time?). GMail was a game-changer at the time, though. The search features were incredibly fast and super accurate, the UI would refresh immediately (AJAX before it was cool, essentially, nobody was doing that at the time) and their anti-spam was top-notch. Literally, spam was not an issue anymore. Oh, and it was super fast and very lightweight: I had a P3 with 128MB ram at the time of launch, but it would still run incredibly well. I managed to get an invitation from a friend, and I loved it. Nowadays... It's almost saddening.