kirukkal.com

A biased review !!

I am going to enjoy the new yahoo mail. No doubt about it. The new Yahoo mail which has added Ajax technology to make the mail app look like desktop mail application. Many of us who are used to Outlook’s look and feel are going to enjoy the virtual Outlook through Yahoo Mail.

But this review on WSJ by Walter Mossberg is certainly biased to a large extent. From the review –

Similarly, Gmail forces you to view ads alongside your emails. Unlike Yahoo, it offers no paid option to avoid the ads.

I’m sure Gmail will get better and better, and will eventually adopt the new programming techniques that allow desktop-like ease of use. But I’m not sure Google’s arrogance will ever make room for user preferences on things like folders or ads, or how emails are grouped.

Yahoo’s new email program would blow Gmail away if it were widely released today. That’s partly due to its features, but also to its respect for user choice.

GMAIL, when it was introduced last year, it was appreciated for being radical in approach and not following the boring and conventional method of email maintenance. The replacement of folders to labels was similar to Web 2.0‘s tagging. And if someone doesn’t understand what tagging is all about, cribbing about GMAIL changing folders to label doesn’t stand up to the levels of WSJ’s reputation.

I googled, googled and googled throughout the review to see if there was a mention of free POP access that GMAIL give. Yahoo was giving free access and then took it back few years back. I am not sure which user doesn’t want POP access which GMAIL gives. Not everyone might need it but the idea of re-opening POP was done only by GMAIL. And the stingy 4 MB limit of yahoo mail was raised to 1 GB only to counter GMAIL 1 GB storage. This news of yahoo raising its limits after being forced by GMAIL indirectly is comfortably forgotten in the review.

And what an dramatically sweeping statement that is to say Yahoo’s new email program would blow Gmail away. I have to say NO WAY. Yahoo may be the top notch on webmail as of today and may introduce the Oddpost way of email to the online community. But it’s because of GMAIL that the email revolution 2 started and I assume its the first product to be used by millions of people even when its in BETA. So there goes the Yahoo pride !!

subbudu

14 responses to “A biased review !!”

  1. I too like the Yahoo’s UI [haven’t used it till] than GMail, waiting to see if it beats the speed of GMail. I’m using the new HoTMaiL [mail Beta, and it’s 2 GB for me] which is not cleaner [still has banner ads] as GMail but fast as GMail and has the same folder functionality like outlook [I’m not a fan of tagging, I like to shove away things ;-)]

    The mail war has begun!

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  2. Yahoo simply cannot overtake Google Mail. If it looks like Yahoo can, Google will hire up Yahoo’s top techie guy.. and make Yahoo gasp for breath..

    Ada !! Google is sued atleast once a week.. hmm.

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  3. Ah, another of those crap reviews and mudslinging.I guess the oldies in the internet bussiness just can’t digest Google super performance. Google is a phenomenon. It’s high time these potato chips-eating-reviewing monkeys understand this. This comment ‘Google’s arrogance’ has me up in arms. If Gmail could give us 2 GB mail, why didn’t yahoo introduce this much earlier. Did they think we are dumb f*** to keep up with thier shi*. Now whoz being arrogant. Google or Yahoo or for that matter MSN.

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  4. I suspect that significant development on the Oddpost mail was done in Chennai – that’s what is being spun out as Yahoo’s rich-client-like mail – it’s basically Oddpost’s work, and oddpost used to have an office in chennai that became part of Yahoo after the merger. I don’t remember the name of the company, but you should be able to get the details with google.

    I agree that Walter Mossberg’s reputation seems undeserved after reading the article – seems kind of shallow.

    BNB

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  5. sorry for diggression
    can any one tell any free product similar to google’s web accelerator? i want a proxy kind of thing which will allow to access a website blocked at server, given that i browse from a node…..

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  6. Whatever Yahoo does better, it can never overtake Google for its search capabilities. And Gmail uses its core competency to “search, not sort” the mail. I never label nowadays, the search is juz too good. Thats the value of innovation. They are pushing forward in traditional Yahoo and MSN fortresses, and it can only be good news for us..for now..

    Random Access
    The search has just begun !!!

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  7. This is the most biased comparison between gmail and yahoo mail that i have seen

    >>By contrast, Gmail has none of these new, fluid, desktop-like features. You can’t scroll through all of your messages’ headers without loading a new Web page. And there’s no preview pane, only a feature that shows a snippet of the content of an email.

    Gmail will not load a web page everytime when user clicks on a message. It seems that this guy has a poor understand of AJAX. Message priview for google is already available via a greasemonkey script written by a Googler (http://persistent.info/archives/2005/08/20/gmail-preview-bubbles). How long it take to Google to incorporate to gmail.

    >>Gmail…forces you to view all of your email in groups of related messages called “conversations,” instead of viewing them individually as they arrive. Not Gmail, where “option” is a term too rarely employed, except in reference to employee compensation. .. (Yahoo plans to add an optional grouped view soon.)

    Google adds features based users suggestion (https://services.google.com/inquiry/gmail_suggest/). if more ppl ask for a feature then they will add it.

    where was this guy when yahoo offered 4mb and google offered 1gb of space.

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  8. I actually got free POP access from Yahoo in return for a promotional email from Yahoo, once a week. I saw it in Options->POP Access and Forwarding.

    “As a Yahoo! Delivers member (you asked to receive special offers via when you registered with us), you can take advantage of email forwarding and POP access. Each one is free, exclusively for Yahoo! Delivers members”

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  14. Gmail, Email, Ymail….whatever happened to normal mail brought by postman! I wonder how come normal mail has no “competition”, but thereis only one mail besides airmail, trainmail etc etc. I suppose those are only part of processing, but the package as such is just one.

    Ah man once upon a time, there was no email, now we have Xmail, Ymail, Zmail…nice! 2 decadesago, the average Indian dind’t even know abt computers, but today the tables have turned. But I don’t understand one thing, why do Indians see email and cellphone and other technology as a sign of fashion statement or status symbol and not as just a necessity or a part and parcel of our lives?

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