Ask HN: Will web-based email ever catch up to or replace desktop email clients?
Web-based email clients like Gmail & Yahoo mail are highly functional, have the available-anywhere benefit, and run with the support of some serious server muscle (so things like search can be fast and awesome). Plus they don’t bring your computer to a grinding halt. However, as advanced as the web has become they are arguably still clunky, and lack the Pizzaz and responsiveness of desktop mail clients like Outlook and Apple Mail. For something that we use every day, those things are important.
Given the convenience of web-based mail clients (and barring the obvious downsides like a full store of offline email) - have they finally come of age to replace their desktop equivalents?
4 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 17.3 ms ] threadWe moved our company email from Outlook to Gmail roughly 2 years ago and personally I struggled at the time. Since then I have become a fan of Gmail, but it took a lot of adjusting. I have tried to convert a few Outlook and Apple Mail users but I find that most people really struggle with the move.
The most painful thing by far is the threaded view (more specifically that they put the newest message at the bottom of the thread). To someone who isn't super committed to the change it seems ludicrous - your Inbox runs top down from newest to oldest but when you open a thread it works in the exact opposite way.
Now that I think about it I don't know what the person who made that decision was smoking at the time - it's a sure way to turn people away from your product. I can only assume they did it that way to make it feel more like IM, but if they want to acquire more business users they should at least make it an option to put the most recent message at the top, like every other mail client does.
With time my experience with Gmail keeps degrading and I'm to the point where I notice myself browsing around the web for other options like FastMail and such. I haven't seen anything overwhelmingly better, at least not in the way that Gmail was when it first appeared.
The original Gmail, when it came out and you had to be invited in and such, was mind-blowing better than the competition. I've not seen any update to any Google service since that so clearly was above the competition. Recall that it was so good people thought it was one of their April Fool's Day hoaxes.
Since then, if anything, I've seen Gmail degrade with time. I get more spam now than ever. (And the spam comes in different forms such as via Gmail Chat/Hangouts), the interface is laggy to me on a MacBook Pro with 20mbit↓ connection, and new innovations like the Google Voice merging are always buggier than what they called "Beta" in Gmail circa 2005->2009.
It tries to create a radically enhanced email experience (Email 2.0 if you will) without the necessity to switch to a new email client. We call it a Smart Skin for Gmail because it transforms the Gmail Inbox into something much more - allowing you to place emails on a set of priority lists along side your tasks, with drag and drop sorting, due dates etc.
If you are interested, you are welcome to skip the Private Beta queue by going to http://get.sortd.com - I created an invite code for you (use HN27182818284).
Do you think there's something in this?