Meeting of the email chiefs 03 Jan 2006
19 comments Latest by babie teka
The guys behind the email apps at Google, Microsoft and Yahoo got together for dinner the other week with the Wall Street Journal’s Lee Gomes. Everyone played nice (‘tis the season after all) and even the Yahoo and Microsoft programmers admitted that Gmail was a thunderbolt that woke up the space. Gmail guru Paul Buchheit said, “We were trying to make the email experience better for our users. We ended up making it better for yours, too.”
Gomes asked each to say what in his product he was most proud of:
Mr. Diamond noted that in Yahoo’s mail program, users can see their entire inbox in a single screen, rather than having to page through it screenload after screenload. It was a hard feature to add, he said. The other two men nodded their heads in agreement; neither has yet matched it.
Mr. Buchheit said what he most liked about Gmail is the ease and fluidity with which it lets him work with his messages.
Mr. Doerr noted the powerful desktop-like features of his Microsoft product, such as the on-the-fly spell checking of messages as they are typed.
The men reported similar pressures: cranky users of Web browsers with tiny market shares demanding that their browsers be supported, while not appreciating how much work is involved. And the struggle to find a way to innovate with a product — but not so much that existing customers will be alienated.
19 comments so far (Jump to latest)
Jeff Croft 03 Jan 06
It’s awesome that they got together. All three are doing good things, and some exchange between them can only be good for users.
As for the cranky small-market browser users: I do appreciate the work involved, and I won’t complain if an app doesn’t support old or very fringe browsers. But, any modern app ought to be able to support the latest versions of IE, Gecko (Firefox), WebKit (Safari), and probably Opera, too. As long as by “small marketshare browsers” they don’t mean “Mac users using Safari,” then I’m okay with it. :)
Rob L. 03 Jan 06
Yeah, what Croft said.
Kyle 03 Jan 06
Anyone have a sceenshot of this Yahoo! single page inbox thing?
Doesn’t seem hard to me, so I must not be appreciating the “coolness” of it.
Gstfssn 03 Jan 06
Some people use things that is not supported by other browsers. For example, Microsoft has got some special things in IE (i.e. “filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow”). Does any other browser have similar stuff that is not supported by other browsers?
Chris 03 Jan 06
Mozilla browsers have the “moz-” extentions.
Safari has a couple little things that degrade nicely like “input=’search’”. Oh, and safari can do drop shadows on text but that’s just part of CSS 3.
Tom 03 Jan 06
Yahoo! Beta email has gone away from the one page inbox. It now looks like Microsoft Outlook - basically a clone of it in a lot of ways. Sure, it looks slick. Now it is slow and buggy. Yes it’s a beta, but I hope it gets a LOT better before they release it.
Tony 03 Jan 06
Kyle,
The single-page inbox isn’t anything that looks spectacular or anything. It’s just like outlook or any other desktop client, only in your browser.
The new Yahoo! Mail beta is slow, and I wish the RSS reader was better (because it is handy), but other than that I like it a lot. The best feature is the tabbed interface — being able to go back to your inbox while composing a message is great.
Eddie 03 Jan 06
I’m an opera user, I’d like to point out a few things here:
1)Standards are standards for a reason. The only extra work that should be involved would be to get your app up to standards. I’m not saying Opera is infallible, because it is, but nobody should have to change code to fit a browser (but obviously it’s in the companies best interest to cater to the majority). If someone says “get gmail to work with Opera!” then google could say “opera doesn’t support feature X.” and be done with it. Of course, if feature X is not standard, then where to do we go?
2) it doesn’t apply in this case, but it’s still on topic because whenever we hear the “support my browser” argument we think immediately of the rabid fanboy’s that throw hands in the air which is a prejudice that is sometimes unwarranted because of browser checking/sniffing. I’ve seen one too many web apps that block Opera simply because they are not willing to test with it. Fine- I get that Opera is a very small minority and it will not fit in your test matrix. But at least just tell me that and let me try. I understand super secure apps like banking and the like where you just don’t want to take the chance, but common everyday mashup types apps sometimes just block Opera even though it will work just fine. Warn me and let me try “at my own risk” -I’ve emailed companies to clarify if they have found problems with Opera or if they just don’t guarantee a good experience. If it’s the latter, I ask them to just let us try!
I’ve written before about how it should be done
andrew 03 Jan 06
Have any other Yahoo mail & Safari users noticed the alarmingly frequent crashes lately? Slow response times, beach ball, crash. Bleh.
Chris Johnson 03 Jan 06
I believe I read that Gmail is supported in either Opera or Firefox because the browser makers implemented the necessary functionality, rather than Google writing new code.
Standards are very important here, and it’s the responsibility of the browsers to implement them. The web could become a universal platform, and I think one of the first steps is to eliminate the need for browser checks.
A. Arp 03 Jan 06
“I’m not saying Opera is infallible, because it is…” - Eddie
Was that a Freudian slip? ;)
Eddie 03 Jan 06
Chris
Yes, that’s true with Opera. That’s the case I mentioned before with google.. in that case, “feature X” was XMLHttpRequest or something along those lines.
the quote:
“cranky users of Web browsers with tiny market shares demanding that their browsers be supported, while not appreciating how much work is involved.”
..should be changed to either one of these:
“cranky users of Web browsers with tiny market shares demanding that their browsers be supported, while not realizing that it is in fact their browser that does not support the correct feature set”
*or*
“cranky users of Web browsers demanding that standards be supported, while not understanding how screwed up and proprietary our code actually is”
Eddie 03 Jan 06
ummm good catch…
“I’m not saying Opera is infallible.”
I’ll just leave it at that then :)
Don Wilson 03 Jan 06
Awesome. Now if only I could figure out how to test Yahoo and Microsoft’s online adaptations.
Jon S 03 Jan 06
Having tried the “big 3” and their latest betas I can say that MS’s is pretty sub-par while Gmail and Yahoo are both looking good.
Yahoo’s client is nice, a bit buggy at the moment but I’m able to scroll 4,000 emails in my inbox very easily. The tabbed interface is also extremely convenient. It still uses folders for storage as opposed to Gmail’s tagging system, which is a downer in my opinion.
Once Yahoo integrates their calendar, contacts and note-taking portions into their nice new ajaxy interface they’ll have a winner.
Rob Mason 04 Jan 06
Google just seem to be able to do what Microsoft can’t: build agile, functional systems, with nice code that will get used.
I wish our Dev team would take a leaf out of Google’s book instead of relying on M$!
Jeff Pamer 04 Jan 06
Something I thought was interesting…The ages of the “email chiefs” are pretty much just as expected. Google being the youngest at 29, Microsoft the oldest at 39, and Yahoo, the middle child, at 34.
Swati 04 Jan 06
teeeheeee on what Jeff said :p
babie teka 06 Jan 06
hello thank you for you respect
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