Should you switch to Gmail?

I have been using Gmail as my primary personal email service since June 2006 and I can not imagine using another service. I received an invite for a Gmail account shortly after it was launched on April 1, 2004 and tried it out for a few days before abandoning the idea of leaving my Hotmail account. Over the next couple of years I tried the service out a few times before finally making the big switch. Ever since, I’ve been spreading the word and trying to convert people.

First, a little bit of personal history. I got my first email address in late 1996/early 1997 through Hotmail and have used it consistently for the last decade. While I have ventured into uncharted territories and tested out other services, I always came back to (one of) my Hotmail accounts. However, by June of 2006, Gmail was far too superior of a service for me to not be using it.

I still use my Hotmail account from time to time, most of the time however it is delegated to signing up for random services on the internet and tends these days to be a catch-all for chain emails, endless forwards and offers of cheap Viagra and porn.

As a decade long user of Hotmail I was able to make the switch and not look back. Why are others so slow to adopt?

The Competition

In May of 2006 more than 92% of web mail traffic was handled by four providers:

1. Yahoo! Mail 42.4%
2. MSN Hotmail 22.9%
3. Myspace Mail 19.5%
4. Gmail 2.54%

That article is almost a year old, so I’m going to assume that these numbers have changed and I’m guessing that Gmail and Myspace have improved, while Yahoo! And Hotmail have dropped.

One of the reasons Gmail has been slow to attract users is the perpetual beta stage it has been in since its initial release. The only way to get a Gmail account is to have a current user send you an invite. (Note: There have been recent reports that Gmail is now in public beta, and anyone can sign up.) While this will definitely put a hinder on service adoption, I would wager a guess that almost all users of the internet know someone who uses Gmail and could get an invite if they wanted.

However, not all of the internet’s 1.1 billion users^[1] are eager to change. A person can develop a strong bond with their email service, and this bond is compounded as the years of service pile up. This also has to do with the demographics of the user.

A young, internet-savvy person will be more open to trying out new technology just to be seen as an early adopter, while an older—or less computer literate—person will be very happy with the status quo and try to fight the need to learn something new and seemingly foreign to them to the death.

Since Gmail was beaten to the web mail game by nearly a decade, they have an obvious disadvantage in gaining users new to the internet.

Storage Revolution

The launch of Gmail revolutionized a long-complacent industry. At a time when most free web mail accounts offered a scant 25 mb of storage, Gmail introduced 1 gb of storage capacity.

This had an immediate and rippling affect. Yahoo! was the first to react when it increased its storage capacity from 4 mb to 100 mb only two months after the release of Gmail.^[2] Hotmail followed suit less than a month later by increasing its storage limits from 10 mb to 250 mb.^[3] Both companies were still trailing Gmail by a long shot.

The storage war has continued for the past two and a half years. Gmail is now offering approximately 2.8 gb and increasing by the second (literally) at a rate roughly equal to 1 gb of increased capacity per year. Hotmail’s successor Windows Live Mail offers 2 gb of storage as does Yahoo! Mail.

Changing the Way You Use Email

One of Google’s early selling points for Gmail was that-due to the storage limits-you never have to delete an email. Ever. While most of us take this for advantage now at most web mail services, it is important to remember the limits on storage that Yahoo! and Hotmail had at the time.

Keeping 2 gb worth of email can be useful, especially since Gmail makes excellent use of Google Search, but it can also be hard to organize. Most services still force you to organize with an archaic folder system. I never organized email in folders when I used Hotmail, and I detested doing it in Outlook when I was working in an office.

Gmail introduced tagging as a way to organize email. This allows you to keep all of your email in one central window (the inbox) but add multiple tags to each email. In effect this allows you to dynamically add every email to an unlimited amount of folders without taking the email out of the inbox. Both Yahoo! and Hotmail (Windows Live) still use the folder system.

Design

Simple is in. It’s no secret that simplistic designs are all the rage these days. Not only are they easier on the eyes but they are easier to consume and navigate, which makes for a much easier user experience. Just take a look at Flickr, Google, 37 Signals or any number of popular newish websites.


Fig. 1 - Gmail after you log in.

Gmail has got the simplicity in design thing down. Yahoo! and Windows Live Mail have gone the other direction and cluttered their mail services with as many widgets, links, images and features as they can cram onto your screen. This creates a lot of visual noise and distracts you.


Fig. 2 - Windows Live Mail after you log in.

I don’t know about you, but when I’m checking my email I want to check my email. I don’t want to see photos from the top nine celebrity weddings. I do not want to check out free local classified ads at Kijiji (even though it is a good resource). And I really don’t care what the top ten romantic cities in the world are. I want my email, nothing more, nothing less.


Fig. 3 - Yahoo! Mail after you log in.

Conclusion

With what I’ve said above it’s pretty obvious that I’m a huge fan Gmail. I’m not trying to say that it is the end-all-be-all of web mail services. Everybody has their own tastes and if Hotmail/Windows Live Mail or Yahoo! Mail or whatever is working for you, good, great, awesome. I just know that nearly everyone I’ve invited to Gmail has made the switch and loves it.

Authors of the popular technology blog, TechCrunch prefer Gmail because performance (speed) is consistently fast, and emails can be tagged making search much more effective. They also offer more storage and other features, and it’s free. In a recent blog post they compare Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail, and come up with the following:

If you are looking for speed and tagging is important, Gmail is for you. If you are looking for the closest thing to Outlook online, go with Yahoo Mail.

If you want to try it out and you’re having problems getting an invite, leave a comment and I’ll fire one off to you. See for yourself, and don’t look back.

References:

1. World Internet Usage Statistics News and Population Stats, retrieved February 7, 2007
2. Yahoo! announces "New and Imrpoved" Yahoo! Mail, introduces major increase in storage space, makes 50 million additional e-mail addresses available. Yahoo! Press Release, June 15, 2004. Retrieved February 7, 2007
3. Hu, Jim "Hotmail to offer 250MB of free storage". c net, June 23, 2004. Retrieved February 7, 2007

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