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> And really, I can't remember any feature that pulled me to gmail other than a) free, b) lots of space, and c) google's name Originally? Lots of space, yes, b

> And really, I can't remember any feature that pulled me to gmail other than a) free, b) lots of space, and c) google's name Originally? Lots of space, yes, but search and speed were big ones, as were threaded conversations, labels instead of folders, built-in gchat (that might have been later), amazing spam filtering, POP3 and eventually IMAP access. Since then, priority inbox has been a huge win for me, and I don't use the tabbed inbox, but some people seem to like it. I'm sure there are a bunch of little things I don't notice as well that would make the 2004 interface feel ancient.

taeric 12y ago
Oh, I realize things have grown. And I am in no way saying that I am unhappy with gmail. Just that I can't really remember what drew me to it. Spam filtering isn't something I remember it being much better at. (Well, it was better than other free options, but I had a paid email back then.) The rest was really just permission to not use folders. Did they even have labels at the outset? I recall there was a big cry over not having hierarchies of data. Maybe it was just labels were simpler... Honestly, I've stopped using labels, even. I do think it made it apparent that archiving was more than plenty for most people. (And they eventually caved and added deletion.) Anything else you could just search for. Though, again, I don't recall them being that much better at search than other options at the time. All of that is to say that I don't feel google revolutionized email so much as the just implemented the subset that people actually needed. And made it free for lots of storage so that you no longer had to perform any maintenance. (Seriously, I was paying for email that had a scant 100 megs at the time.)
- scrollaway 12y ago
  > Maybe it was just labels were simpler... Labels used not to be nestable.

taeric 12y ago

Oh, I realize things have grown. And I am in no way saying that I am unhappy with gmail. Just that I can't really remember what drew me to it. Spam filtering isn't something I remember it being much better at. (Well, it was better than other free options, but I had a paid email back then.) The rest was really just permission to not use folders. Did they even have labels at the outset? I recall there was a big cry over not having hierarchies of data. Maybe it was just labels were simpler... Honestly, I've stopped using labels, even. I do think it made it apparent that archiving was more than plenty for most people. (And they eventually caved and added deletion.) Anything else you could just search for. Though, again, I don't recall them being that much better at search than other options at the time. All of that is to say that I don't feel google revolutionized email so much as the just implemented the subset that people actually needed. And made it free for lots of storage so that you no longer had to perform any maintenance. (Seriously, I was paying for email that had a scant 100 megs at the time.)

scrollaway 12y ago
> Maybe it was just labels were simpler... Labels used not to be nestable.