arghyle

PC Magazine posted an article yesterday noting how Gmail seems to be falling behind competing services, like Yahoo, AIM, and Hotmail. From the article:

Where does this all leave us, as consumers? Well, we’re lucky enough to have three great, new, totally reinvented (not to mention free) Webmail services at our disposal. Gmail, on the other hand, has been left behind.

The article then goes on to link to reviews of AIM Mail, Opera Web Mail, Windows Live Hotmail (beta), and,Yahoo! Mail (beta 3). There is a lot of reading to get through, but there is a summary right there on the main page- Hotmail and Yahoo share the editor’s choice award.

So is Gmail falling behind the pack? The article rightly points out that it does not use AJAX like the others (so no drag and drop), but says its strength is in the extra features (like Gcal and Documents) that are integrated into the platform.

Over at Web Worker Daily there is a pretty solid rebuttal to PC Mag’s claim. The author at WWD points out that Gmail is different, not worse or falling behind, which seems to be correct to me. Before getting on the defensive though, it should be pointed out that Gmail not having changed much recently may be because it was so far ahead of the other three (Opera does not really count) than even with the advances the others have made Gmail still has a better interface and better performance than the others. Gmail could stand for some updating, but it is still the most scalable, most adaptable, and most powerful webmail currently available. It may be falling behind in the storage category (Yahoo is coming out with an unlimited size mailbox) but the search features, a light-weight chat system, and easy access to great tools (like Reader) definitely set it apart from the rest.

Personally I think Gmail should throw in some changes like increasing customization, integrate better mail importing, increase the power of Mail Fetcher, and have a more options as to the layout, but I am sure there are a lot of things in the works. That said, I think it does the best job at being powerful without becoming bloated or cluttered. As the others have improved they have not been able to maintain this balance.

There are also the intangible’s to consider though. For example, I have heard rumors about job applicants who are applying to a tech position having their resume immediately screened out just because they had a Hotmail account. This seems ridiculous, but your email account does say something about you as an internet user. Plus there is the factor of advertising. Gmail has very low-profile text ads which are totally out of the way. Other services us much more visable ads, often graphical ones, that are annoying and oftentimes intrusive. This is something that may not seem like a big deal at first, but can get very annoying over time. Speed is another thing to factor- Gmail may not have AJAX, but I have found it to be the fastest of the bunch. Also browser support is something to take into consideration- I have not had problems with Gmail on any computer, even ones without Javascript (you have to use the HTML only browser), or older systems, etc. Not many other webmail platforms can match it in this respect.

Another final aspect that has to be taken into consideration is the login. Your login for these sites is now the same you use for other Google sites or other Yahoo sites. Google does the best job of making this simple and effective while I have constant problems with Yahoo and Microsoft in this respect. Your Google account gives you easy access to great tools like Analytics, while my Yahoo login can’t even get me into my old school Flickr account.

Sorry to rant. I don’t want to come off as a Gmail fanboy, but I really think that PC Mag’s article, while bringing up a some good points, came to the wrong conclusion. Yahoo and Hotmail have been greatly improved, Gmail is still the winner here.

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