Yahoo Mail Vs. Google Mail

HCI IDC is one of and only Interaction Designers group of India. HCI IDC group is popular among Indian IT companies and User experience professionals. It is so popular that total Number of members count in HCIIDC will say total number of interaction designers in India. This group is moderated by Anirudha Joshi - Indian HCI Guru.

There were some hot discussions going on about the best email services i.e. Yahoo Mail vs Gmail.

I request every one to join the HCI IDC group. For those who are not member of HCIIDC, I have copy pasted Anirudha's reply on that topic. Its nice & here you go -

Here is Anirudha Joshi - Indian HCI Guru reply on that topic
Back in 1999 in the hey-days of the dotcom, at a seminar in IDC, there
was some corridor talk about how Yahoo! had emerged as a leading
search engine, and everyone (including myself, I confess) thought that
Yahoo! has a fantastic momentum and no one can touch it now. We were
all wrong - and Google proved it.

Personally, gmail is my favorite webmail service (and I have been
through Yahoo, Hotmail and our own Squirrle Mail in IITB, though not
recently) but I must admit that gmail took some getting used to.

The concept of labels was different in itself. But gmail disturbed one
other of my important email habits - before gmail, I used to 'leave
behind' actionable mails in my inbox till I was done with them. So a
blank in-box meant that I have been a good boy. A swollen one meant
that I have things to do. Even if you label a mail, it still stays
behind in the in-box, so in gmail this didn't work. But I got over
this one by changing my habit - I created a label called to-do and
started labeling only those emails that I had something actionable
from my side. Voila, I discovered that I have fewer to-do mails than
not-to-do mails. That actually reduced my labeling / filing effort
(though my mind went through the usual resistance curve before I hit
upon this solution). Now my swollen inbox merely means that I have not
downloaded a backup to my hard disk in a while.

So gmail forced me to change my habits, which might sound contrary to
user-centred design, but it isn't. Allow me to explain. Email is a
frequent, long-term use application to most people and in frequent-use
apps, it may be OK to compromise learnability with speed of use of
frequent tasks. (If you don't use email frequently, perhaps gmail
isn't going to come in the way - only frequent users file if at all).

And I have some data. In my teaching, when I talk about designing
'known products' I give the example of gmail. At this time, I usually
ask if there was anyone in the class who did not have a gmail account.
Ever since I started asking this question, I have not yet found a
single person who doesn't. (The same does not apply to almost any
other email product, though I must confess that data is not rigorous
there).

So why does everyone (in my class) have a gmail account? When gmail
was launched, it was certainly not the first webmail app. There were
dozens of free webmail apps around for over a decade and anyone who
had an email account already had one. So here is an attempted answer:

OK, gmail had a few of technology firsts - one GB email was a big draw
(many people first associated the name gmail to that) and so was AJAX
- it saved a lot of round-trip times (e.g. expanding the reply box
in-line, attaching a file in-line etc.). And of course there was the
automatic contact building that was Google page-ranked (not
alphabetically sorted). Then there was integrated chat that was added
a few months into the product. But all these technology features were
fairly quickly copied by other, established providers. What's more,
gmail still does not support IMAP (and I used IMAP for a while, just
before I switched to gmail). So technology and features is not the
answer.

Gmail also had an interesting marketing first (at least for webmail
products) and this one was completely counterintuitive - you COULDN'T
just sign up, you had to be invited and had to have another email
account. I remember this made a big buzz for a few months after the
launch, and I think the curiosity ensured that many who had an email
account managed to get themselves an invite and gave it a try. The
fact that Google was already an established brand of young, cool
technology helped.

But all this has now become passe, but gmail continues. Why? One
answer could be thread view, and this is true at least in part -
though there are many email products that support thread view, none
are in the sense of gmail. Thread view in gmail actually saves me time
(for example, this thread was lying in my in-box for the past 10 days
with dozen+ replies, but I could read it all in one go, in context,
and then reply - other thread views that I have used in the past
required me to still open each mail separately).

In the end, I think everyone in my class still has a gmail account now
due to its (as has been pointed out) better information visualization
and less visual clutter (though I find the colours and rounded corners
a bit dated).

So, in summary, you don't have to be the first to make a 'dent in the
universe' (it helps, but you don't have to be). You don't even have to
be 100% compatible with what exists - 80% will do just fine. Thinking
out of the box, breaking the rules, brand and clever marketing plans,
including viral effects, help to get you a foot in the door. What
sustains in the long run is good, simple design that works and solves
real problems.

So, do you think you can beat gmail?

Anirudha