Google's 'Impatient' CEO Apparently Hates Gmail?

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cybrcatter

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I'm sorry, what? I am willing to bet actual money right now that future generations will remember Gmail as one of the greatest contributions to the consumer Internet experience (the crummy new version notwithstanding).


Is this an article or a drunkenly written blog?
 

Firehead2k

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First thing that comes to mind when someone says gmail?
1. Robots reading my mail to show me ads.
2. Yet another webmail service.
 

BillboGates

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Well of course e-mail has a place. But I can see how somone getting paid what im assuming would be something along the lines of $50 a minute would think e-mail is inefficient/a waste of time. Just proves to me how out of touch some of these guys actually get. Surrounded by people telling them their every move was genius.
 

sykozis

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So, now that Steve Jobs is gone....are we going to be seeing more Larry Pages articles??? Can we get more articles that focus on facts and contain less or no opinions?
 

JOSHSKORN

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[citation][nom]jdwii[/nom]i'm so old school i mainly use Yahoo. I only use Gmail for things like facebook. I use Yahoo for everything else.[/citation]
I beat you on that one. I still use AOL for my main E-mail.
 

bunga28

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Hey Ross, did you read the article and try to understand it? The gist is that Larry Page does not like the "back and forth" in email. He would like to get things done properly. That is why he has an informal weekly face to face meetings with his managers.

Sh!t like this turns a non-issue into a big deal, because people like you.
 

aevm

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I use Gmail at work and Yahoo Mail at home. I like Yahoo more.

- Yahoo has drag-and-drop. Easier to move messages to the right folders.
- Yahoo makes it easier to attach pictures and other files
- Gmail combines messages by subject. This is a huge pain to use IMO.
- I need to log in to Google to read my Gmail. After that, Google knows who I am when I do Google searches. Logging out just changes a flag in a cookie, but Google still knows my identity.
Maybe there's no evil purpose here, but it's still a step in the wrong direction.
 

tychot

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I agree with Larry, while I love gmail for email, email itself is becoming a dinosaur. And I'm sure future generations will see it exactly like that. Even now email is a thing for people in their 30's and older, while younger generations will exclusively use communication systems like facebook for everything. Not saying facebook's a corporate solution but.
 
G

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The old gmail was great - the new version has just sent me back to my old email provider.
 

beayn

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I have been declining Yahoo Mail upgrades for the last 6-8 years. The version I have is simple, with minimal scripting. Nice and fast, just the way I like it. That's the #1 reason I keep using Yahoo. Others like Gmail force you to take their "upgrades" where they randomly change the position of everything for no reason and add retarded features that slow shit down.
 

guardianangel42

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I'm sorry, but this article is just stupid. Let's step back just a second and try, just try a little tiny bit, to read between the lines and actually comprehend what Page said instead of hearing what you want to hear/are too incompetent to understand.

Lets assume for a moment that Page was being honest when he made that comment, that email is inefficient. Let's also assume that Page, like most people in any sort of tech field, is not the best communicator. Finally let's assume that, just for the time being, Page isn't a ego-maniacal man trying to take Jobs' place in the tech industry.

With all those assumptions firmly in place, let's look at his comment, quoted from a third party: "He does not much like e-mail either — even his own Gmail — saying the tedious back-and-forth takes too long to solve problems."

So then, Page believes that emailing is "tedious" and that it "takes too long to solve problems". Looking at those opinions, I don't see anything particularly wrong with either of them. Let's look at the alternatives to email, shall we?

Phone Conversations: Real time phone conversations allow for very rapid transferal of ideas as the average speed that a human speaks is approximately 120 words a minute. Comprehension rates is approximately 600-800 words a minute. However you run the risk of missing the other person when you call

Text Messages: Very short, often misspelled or a abbreviated text, creating an abundant amount of opportunity for miscommunication. There is often also a time delay between replies, sometimes a significant one.

Video conferencing: Same as phone conversations, only with the added benefit of video to communicate ideas, allowing for diagrams, flow charts, and more. Usually this requires an extensive level of preparation before being truly feasible.

Face to face: Even better than phone and video conferencing because it allows for improvisation, non-verbal communication, and physical interaction. Requires proximity to the other person

Now, of those options (I may have left a couple out) Email is closest to text messaging. If you send an email, you may not get a reply quickly enough for your needs. If you send an email you will ensure that a series of responses and replies will follow before a complex concept is conveyed fully. If something is miscommunicated, it may take several replies to find the flaw in understanding and rectify it.

This process of extensive reply and response can take hours, especially if you aren't a fast typer. Some would define that as "tedious".

This method of communication can become a problem when you are trying to brainstorm a difficult problem like, oh I don't know, maybe optimizing Android for lower spec hardware. It can also cause a problem when you attempt to do this with more than two people, as a person can reply to one person and the others will have no idea what they said, requiring those two people to explain it to the rest.

This method of communicating would therefore take significantly longer than a phone or video conference and much much longer than a face to face visit. It could be said that it "takes too long to solve problems" using this method.

Page is likely thinking like an engineer or at the very least a businessman. He sees the fact that attempting to do one task using email vs one of the other methods is foolish.

TLDR: The article is very, very stupid because the author Ross took absolutely no time to try and understand the intent of the comment and simple went ahead and interpreted the comment how they wanted to, going into a longwinded rant about how Page was trying to be the new Steve Jobs.

If this were an internet forum post, I'd probably call the author a troll for making such a stupid comment. Kind of pathetic really...
 

randomizer

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Meh, all modern webmail interfaces suck. JavaScript has ruined them to the point of being barely usable at all. I liked Hotmail years ago, and only continue to use it because I'm registered everywhere with that account.

As for email itself, I agree that it is very often a laborious "back and forth" of partial information. Sometimes this is exactly what I want though. With email I get time to come up with a nicely written response to an angry customer enquiry and hope that they overlook the bits that I didn't answer. :lol:
 
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