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> I remember how awesome it felt in comparison to Yahoo Mail The author is comparing it to Outlook and other email clients, not to the existing webmail applica

• visakanv 13y ago
  more anecdata: I very specifically remember thinking "wow, this kicks yahoo and hotmails' butts!" I never bothered with outlook or other non-web-based clients
• bad_user 13y ago
  Yes, but then you're comparing apples with oranges, as Gmail wasn't initially meant to be an Exchange/Outlook replacement, being in a different league entirely and useful on its own merits. That along with Google Apps, Gmail is suddenly viewed as a replacement for Outlook/Exchange, well that's a classic innovator's dilemma.
  • RyanMcGreal 13y ago
    The latter half of your comment answers the objection you raise in the former half. Gmail is a classic worse-is-better disruption of an existing superior product.
• dasil003 13y ago
  The OA actually seems to be claiming that it still sucks compared to Outlook. But this is similar in spirit to the endless refrain about how ill-suited the web is to application development and how far it is behind 20-year-old GUI SDKs. Meanwhile web application development continues to evolve and plow forward despite the misgivings of no small number of graybeards frantically waving their arms in protest. The bottom line is web is two steps backwards in terms of GUI, but four steps forward in terms of distribution, cross-platform, accessibility and availability. Gmail was probably the single most important bellwether of how Microsoft's lunch would eventually be eaten by cloud services.