I just find this incredible. It has more far more free features than the other two (including free Imap access, something almost unheard of), far, far less intrusive ads, and has a fantastic and highly innovative interface. It also never had a tagline on outgoing emails. That alone should have should have boosted its popularity over the other two back when they added them (Yahoo stopped in 2008 and Hotmail finally stopped last year).
My guess is: lots of people had Hotmail and Yahoo accounts from way, way back (I know I did, and still do), people weren't willing to jump through the hoops that Gmail used to make you go through to get an account, and some people like the old way of doing things and not the awesome new interface. It could also be that one of Gmail's biggest selling points was also its Achilles Heel: the lack of a tagline. As the Hotmail guy said in the above article about their ceasing the practice, it did bring in customers. I wonder if they're the same sort of people who respond to spam.
I still find both of the others unusable due to their gigantic and very distracting ads. If I had to use them, I guarantee you I would use AdBlocker--something I reserve on principle only for only those sites whose advertisements are so bad that they're virtually unusable otherwise.
No comments:
Post a Comment