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YouTube finally forces creation of google+ A/C to comment
CWuestefeld:
At one time gmail was superior. Now, not so much. But when all of your data is with a service, it's hard to change.
-wraith808 (November 14, 2013, 08:37 PM)
--- End quote ---
That's part of the point. It may not be superior in the list of features it supports, or in the responsiveness of its UI, or things like that. But taken as a package, the total product they offer, is demonstrably better than others. We know this is true, because if it weren't, you would have switched.
Apparently for you (and for most of us), the convenience of having our old emails in there is a compelling feature.
(And from a technical perspective, it is possible to download all of your email history from Gmail. You could, if this need was greater than your disdain for other parts of the service, do this. But apparently your disdain is less than the convenience factor derived from not having to go to the trouble.)
wraith808:
At one time gmail was superior. Now, not so much. But when all of your data is with a service, it's hard to change.
-wraith808 (November 14, 2013, 08:37 PM)
--- End quote ---
That's part of the point. It may not be superior in the list of features it supports, or in the responsiveness of its UI, or things like that. But taken as a package, the total product they offer, is demonstrably better than others. We know this is true, because if it weren't, you would have switched.
Apparently for you (and for most of us), the convenience of having our old emails in there is a compelling feature.
(And from a technical perspective, it is possible to download all of your email history from Gmail. You could, if this need was greater than your disdain for other parts of the service, do this. But apparently your disdain is less than the convenience factor derived from not having to go to the trouble.)
-CWuestefeld (November 15, 2013, 01:12 PM)
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Historical use is not demonstrative of superior ability. If such indicators were indicators of anything other than a placid userbase or historical entrenchment, then IE has been the superior browser for YEARS.
You're conflating superior attributes with a lack of a willingness to do anything else.
CWuestefeld:
No, wraith. You're just insisting that the only things that should be considered are technical specifications, and I'm trying to point out that the quality of a product encompasses the entire user experience.
Consider that many people are willing to spend $1000+ on a purse, just because it has a certain name on it. There is no objective measure that makes it better - it's not more versatile, more durable, more comfortable to carry. It just confers on the owner a certain status. Just that cachet of status is a feature of the product that people consider when deciding which product to use.
Similarly, the convenience in the ability to keep a repository of historical email is a factor when deciding to keep using gmail or change to, say, Outlook.com. The fact that Google has seen fit to hold onto your email for you is a benefit of their product. And that benefit is tipping the scales, making it so that all things considered, you want to keep using Google. For your needs, using it is superior to using an alternative.
And if Outlook.com, etc., were smart, they'd make it easy for you to upload the repository that it's possible for you to download from gmail.
wraith808:
The fact that you have used something before is emphatically not a feature of the software. It is a consideration in your choice to move, but it is not a feature that would indicate quality of the software or features thereof. This is one of the things that people complain about when they talk about cloud solutions- the ability to port those solutions to other platforms and the ownership of data.
Countercase 1:
One reason that Microsoft Office has become the defacto standard is not because of anything that is a feature that is qualitative in the software. It is because of a historical monopoly in that arena, and the fact that others utilize it- so interoperability between itself and others that use that software. Is that a feature of Microsoft Office?
Countercase 2:
Google reader. Many people used google reader as an aggregator, if not the interface, because of the fact that Google was a large player, and able to aggregate from different sources. When google reader died, so did a lot of RSS readers that had nothing to do with Google other than they used its API. Their software was built around an infrastructure that was not their own, so collapsed when that lynchpin was removed. This is because Google Reader was not a feature of the software, but rather a dependency.
Gmail is not superior to other alternatives. And I know this. My laziness in moving to something else has nothing to do with Google as a platform, but rather my own choices not to be proactive on that front. That is not a feature of gmail, and therefore has nothing to do with its superiority as a platform.
Stoic Joker:
And if Outlook.com, etc., were smart, they'd make it easy for you to upload the repository that it's possible for you to download from gmail.-CWuestefeld (November 15, 2013, 02:10 PM)
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If by Outlook.com you mean the hosted Exchange, then yes they have many rather exceptional import options.
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