2 beta invitations landed on my inbox this morning:
* “30 Boxes”:http://30boxes.com _”will be to calendars what GMail was to Email”,_ to quote “Om Malik”:http://gigaom.com/2006/01/11/30boxes/
* “coComment”:http://www.cocomment.com Track all your comments across the blogosphere
Oh joy.
The first one will definitely be sue by Apple.
Hmm, I don’t own an Apple machine, but I guess I know what you’re getting at.
30 boxes will be to calenders what gmail was to email?
You mean it’ll still be marked as beta, two years later, have an initial flurry of excitement that’ll die down to nothign when people realise it’s just another webmail account?
Whether you use Gmail or not, you’ve probably benefitted from its creation. The ‘real’ storage space aside, it’s also one of the first large scale deployment of AJAX and tagging, which is everywhere now.
I don’t give a damn if it’s still called beta or alpha, it’s been more stable than the hotmail account I had for 7 years.
Wow. Calm down. Take a deep breath. Put the gun down.
Remember one thing: gmail is email.
Email is a mass application.
Three quarters, maybe more, of Gmail’s user base haven’t got a clue about tagging. They think Ajax is a cleaning product. They don’t give a damn about it’s influence.
But they do care that Google have never brought it out of beta. They also care that it ws announced as the next big thing to take everyone by storm and to kill it’s competitors. It’s not done these things. It’s ended up as just another web mail app. You may find it better, but you represent a tiny tiny % of the internet.
Everyone I know, from developers to artists to my other half to my parents have ended up using their hotmail more than their gmail.
Sorry 😛 That was my afternoon coffee talking.
It’s just that, to me, Gmail did achieved its purpose. They got the other providers nervous, and in the end rolling out better services. (more storage, better interface)
And E-mail is also personal. I’m using Gmail happily, making use of most of the features. I don’t need other people to use Gmail for it to be useful to me.
I believe it just hasn’t reach its “tipping point”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_point yet. 🙂
“Beta” is Google’s approach to reduce expectation. If you stepped back 5-6 years before dotcom era, Google “Beta” meant “1.0” and “several-monthes-later Beta” should be 2.0. When remove “Beta” out, it’s quite mature product.