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"When Gmail launched wih the promise that users would never again have to manage remaining space they obliterated the competition." Except that they didn't. Fo
by edanm 14y ago
"When Gmail launched wih the promise that users would never again have to manage remaining space they obliterated the competition."
Except that they didn't. For the last few years, Gmail was a distant third competitor in the webmail space. It seems that now they're finally catching up, and maybe overtaking Hotmail/Yahoo. But saying that at its launch it "obliterated" the competition is simply incorrect.
- jonknee 14y agoThey didn't take over immediately (it's a pain to change email addresses, the lock-in is pretty high), but they did force nearly immediate changes from the major players. Hotmail at the time was offering only a few megabytes of storage (!) while Yahoo! was offering 6MB. Within months both providers greatly increased their storage, though not immediately to the level of Gmail, to help retain users.
- edanm 14y agoAgreed. I think this is a pretty good example of competition and market forces causing all users to have an improvement, even though the vast majority don't know or care about these things.