Well, I finally opened a GMail account so I could play around with the features and see how it compares to the other email providers out there. As with anything, I have found good, bad, and ugly.
The feature set is decent, the interface is clean, and I do really respect the effort of reorganizing email in order to make it more consumable. I'm not sure if it will succeed, but only time will tell on that part. After my initial investigation, I think the new approach to conversations (like a message board) are handy.
However, I have found one missing feature that will keep me from migrating my Yahoo or Hotmail accounts to GMail. The management of contacts has regressed considerably when compared to tools that already exist. What do I mean by that? Just try to create a list of contacts. That's pretty basic functionality, but I didn't see a way to do it. Also, the only information regarding contacts that you can store is their first, last, and email address. What does this mean? You have to have two places to keep contact information (Gmail for email and another for address/birthday/etc.). I have enough problems keeping my contacts together without this limitation.
Another area that Gmail needs to improve is integration with IM and other types of collaboration. To think that email stands alone is a poor assumption. Granted I haven't read Gmail's intended growth path or claim to know what version one will contain, they need to think larger than email. Since Google doesn't have an IM client, what about expanding it to become an RSS reader?
One last area I would like to see improvement is in the interface. Granted Google has gotten by for years with the clean search interface, I don't want to spend time in email looking at the plain screen. Give me a skin or two to choose from. If they are ugly, at least I'll choose to go with the plain than have that be the only option.
Although the 1,000 mg of disk space is extremely attractive, it still isn't enough to over come the lack of contact management. If it added in contact management and the ability to integrate with other collaboration tools (RSS Reader, etc.), it would be a no brainer for me to switch. Also, if they were to throw in some sugar coating and make the interface more consumable, I would turn my back on Yahoo and Hotmail and tout the greatness of Gmail.
1 comment:
I have to admit that GMail didn't invent the conversation thread view of email. As a matter of fact, several other email clients do this, but this is the first of the "free e-mail providers" that has offered it.
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