“What if Gmail Had Been Designed by Microsoft?” Yeah, it’s about that bad (and funny).
I love Gmail. There are things I wish it did differently, but by and large it seriously rocks as a mail interface.
On the other hand, maybe the whole e-mail client debate is moot …
74 view(s)
At least I have been predicting the death of email clients for a while now. I mean, having Thunderbird or Outlook etc installed on your local machine. Various kinds of webmail, even Exchange online, are improving fast.
I think there will always be some desire for that “on my machine” sort of a setup — be it for paranoia or for practical features/speed that a local client can provide better than any web client can.
That said, where I see things going are to more convergent clients. Gmail, as noted, has the Gtalk client integrated into the sidebar (and allows search of conversation threads in the same fashion as e-mail). On my Blackberry, Outlook mail and SMS and Gtalk and phone logs, etc. all show up in the same display, and that works just fine. Clicking on a name offers the opportunity to e-mail, SMS, or phone the person at their various addies. That’s pretty cool, and works just fine (other vagueries of the BB interface notwithstanding).