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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 w

by 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
      >Why would anyone do that? Part of the trend of needing to dumb down everything by removing "power" user features because we can't trust non-computer savvy users to not self immolate their data.
pharmakom 3y ago
Exclusivity made everyone think so. Groundbreaking marketing, for a webmail service.
aitchnyu 3y ago
It started the trend of ...drum roll... taking you to the inbox after logging in. Others would take you to a news frontpage or some other crap. When I open a page for AWS and GCP service and I see a marketing page instead of a list of cloud resources, I die a little.
thiago_fm 3y ago
Nah, it was only groundbreaking if you were using Yahoomail. Sure, they were innovative to use XHR along lots of Javascript to improve the experience, but what got people into were the 1GB + no ads. Nowadays, they probably offer one of the worst email experience, with ads and terrible privacy. How many times have we heard about the US government reading emails from other governments countries, like US spying on ex-presidents from Brazil regarding oil companies? Google had also the coolness factor of the "don't be evil" and being overall a lean and trustful company. Nowadays nobody thinks of Google like this.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
  Your issues with Gmail seem to be the sort that would desolate with privacy wonk nerds, which I suspect are immaterial from Google’s perspective.
PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
I think people have forgotten or weren't around back then. gmail did away with the idea of folders and instead had tags. They were very clearly an innovation on top of how most organization happened with email. granted, those tags were shunted into folders for the IMAP protocol, but if you were using the web UI it was a whole other world. The rest of the world caught up, but at the time they were absolutely groundbreaking. yahoo and hotmail existed at the time but neither had anything on gmail.

by 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
    >Why would anyone do that? Part of the trend of needing to dumb down everything by removing "power" user features because we can't trust non-computer savvy users to not self immolate their data.

pharmakom 3y ago

Exclusivity made everyone think so. Groundbreaking marketing, for a webmail service.

aitchnyu 3y ago

It started the trend of ...drum roll... taking you to the inbox after logging in. Others would take you to a news frontpage or some other crap. When I open a page for AWS and GCP service and I see a marketing page instead of a list of cloud resources, I die a little.

thiago_fm 3y ago

Nah, it was only groundbreaking if you were using Yahoomail. Sure, they were innovative to use XHR along lots of Javascript to improve the experience, but what got people into were the 1GB + no ads. Nowadays, they probably offer one of the worst email experience, with ads and terrible privacy. How many times have we heard about the US government reading emails from other governments countries, like US spying on ex-presidents from Brazil regarding oil companies? Google had also the coolness factor of the "don't be evil" and being overall a lean and trustful company. Nowadays nobody thinks of Google like this.

cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago
Your issues with Gmail seem to be the sort that would desolate with privacy wonk nerds, which I suspect are immaterial from Google’s perspective.

PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago

I think people have forgotten or weren't around back then. gmail did away with the idea of folders and instead had tags. They were very clearly an innovation on top of how most organization happened with email. granted, those tags were shunted into folders for the IMAP protocol, but if you were using the web UI it was a whole other world. The rest of the world caught up, but at the time they were absolutely groundbreaking. yahoo and hotmail existed at the time but neither had anything on gmail.