Google Mail (Gmail.com)

GMAIL
Email like no other.

I have used a fair amount of email services in my time, from the horlocks of Hotmail to the slow and always down mail.com – Yahoo was probably the best but it never received the popularity of Hotmail and has been heavily beaten in the instant messaging wars. Suddenly, Gmail has hit the scenes and is changing how we think of email – leaving a wake of controversy yet flocking in the users. The fact that you can’t go to Gmail and sign up like any other free webmail service, has increased its popularity along with the constant hampering from the media and the threatened court cases from privacy groups. What makes Gmail so good, yet so controversial? What makes it unlike any other mail service?

Any good email service should provide the user with enough space to receive emails and be able to store them without having to delete regularly to have free space. Until Gmail came along this was virtually impossible with free webmail, Hotmail offered a mere 2MB with Yahoo and other main competitors offering a little more. You would only see over 100mb with email included with your ISP or an address you pay for. Google shocked everyone when it revealed that Gmail would have a storage capacity of 1000MB ( 1GB ) This meant that user would practically never have to delete an email ever again, assuming the average email is about 5bytes then Gmail could store 200000000 emails! Of course, some emails will be bigger and others will be smaller than that size, but on average. The mighty Microsoft (meh) couldn’t be out done though, so now offer, wait for it – 25MB! Way to go.

You would think with being able to store so many emails, it would be impossible to find emails that you had stored or it would at least take along time. Well, with Gmail no. Gmail like many email services, lets you create ‘labels’ (Folders) but these are quick to access and work better than on any other service I have seen. It doesn’t take them out of the inbox, it just labels them in a folder for quick access. Emails are then archived. There is a search function, within which you can search all your emails. It looks through the email content, titles, attachment names and the senders name to bring up your results. This makes for quick and affective finding of emails. In the same search box, you can search Google.com as well which brings email and web searching together at a whole new level, easily switching between email and searching the web. No other currently provides this to the same level that Gmail does.

Its all well and dandy being able to store 200million emails and quickly being able to search them and store them, but Gmail has some other features that really lift above any competition. Unlike any other free webmail service, Gmail is based around Javascript, and the possibilities this creates are amazing. Shortcuts can be turned on, for example, all I have to do is press ‘C’ and automatically I am in the compose an email mode. This speeds up the whole process and they shortcuts aren’t hard and easy to remember. Another cool feature is that if you have your inbox open and are waiting for an email, you don’t have to refresh every so often to check if it has arrived – it automatically appears. Others include quick email address entry – everyone you send an email to is saved in your contacts and you can edit their name etc. When composing an email to lets say, to dad@dadsemail.com you start typing ‘Da..’ and it brings up ‘Dad’ and the Email address for you to click, kinda like in the address bar of your browser but nicer looking.

Another unique feature with Gmail is that it is more conversation based. You can receive and email from someone and reply, they are grouped together like a conversation, so if you replied and they replied 7 times, it would say ‘dad, me, dad .. (7)’ This makes it easy to see what the previous person typed without all the reply junk and its very handy at times.

Unlike Hotmail, possibly the biggest free webmail service on the web, Gmail is fast and affective. Loading times are low and it is quick to access. It doesn’t consist of huge graphic or flash advertisements. It is plain and simple but very appealing, how every website should be designed. More content can be fitted on a page clearly than its competitors could only hope for if they used size 0.2 font. Gmail have got the design perfect, unlike some other big names in the webmail sector. It’s a classic example of well thought out designing with the needs of the user in mind and helping to keep the speed up despite the use of the Javascript language.
Google’s support is vast and covers every help topic you would need to ask about in plain simple, easy to understand everyday language. Gmail are also very apologetic if there is ever an unusual downtime of the site etc. Gmail provides a great package yet to be matched by an paid or free webmail service.

Gmail though, as I mentioned earlier is no doubt the most controversial webmail service ever. Why? When reading an email look at the advertisements (they fit in so nicely you don’t hardly notice them!) If you are reading a email about Cars, the ads will be focused on cars. This has caused uproar with many privacy/human rights people who demand this is a breach of privacy. The email is read and keywords used to make the ads targeted to you, therefore more chance you will click them over some Dating service or Weight loss fraud that many sites display. This is another reason why you are encouraged not to delete emails and receive 1000mb, it could be called Big Brother, they can see all about you. Another factor that has annoyed some is that it can take several weeks before emails are really deleted from the Gmail servers were emails are stored in numerable copies. To be frank, the thought of Gmail knowing my details and having copies of my emails and having the ability to read them scares me a little, but I am still willing to have that and have the advantages Gmail provides. Besides being Big Brother, there isn’t much else wrong with it, nothing actually. I think the media have done enough to warn us about Gmail now, they should give it a rest after all, it is the users decision whether to sign up or not, and they agree to the TOS in which the disadvantages are well stated.

In closing, Gmail is an awesome webmail service. It is like no other and is changing how we think of email. It brings it to new levels of speed and storage. Besides the fact that Google can read all your emails, it is THE best email service known to man. If you haven’t got it, you need to get an invite soon!

Hope you enjoyed reading,
Mark

( I have several invites, drop a line in my PGB if you want one )