Let's not forget the Outlook web team who pretty much started the whole ajax/web2.0 thing in the first place with IXMLHttpRequest.

What was their initial impetus for this? I'm curious what functionality they were trying achieve.

Interactive web pages-exactly what it’s used for in GMail. It was given the name XMLHttpRequest because it was a last-minute addition and the only way to get a feature into Internet Explorer that late in the product cycle was to make it XML-related. Which it obviously wasn’t, but that was how to get it approved. Source: Was a Microsoft employee at the time, though not on the IE team.

I always wondered. What happened to the team behind start.com ? At the time I thought it could have been a golden brand and the realization was slick, I remember reading they had a lot of freedom to experiment.

Like Sidewalk, Mungo Park, and any number of initiatives it was managed into extinction by political ineptness.

I still miss Sidewalk. For a lovely couple of years, you could rely on quality reviews of everything in your hometown.

It could have totally owned much of the space now occupied by Yelp and Craigslist. A true class act Bill pulled the plug on far too early. One of his most egregious mistakes IMHO.

Back then most APIs (that I used) were in XML. It definitely seemed XML related.

It's funny how in those days XML was also short hand for "make way guys, this is the future".

I thought it was a really overhyped and ugly way to represent data, but this did not seem like a popular thing to express. In retrospect, standardizing on something was probably a good thing for the time though.

I still think XML gets an unfair rap.

-Perfectly readable to me, works fine with auto-collapse. Closing tag is complained about but it helps you keep track of what you're reading.

-Cleaner than "simpler" serialization formats in many cases, like putting type information in an attribute instead of something hacky like giving your json object a $type member. Ran into this myself serializing objects in an array of BaseClass where the class of the objects mattered, had to turn on a flag in the JSON library.

-Extensible when you need it, as the X stands for. As in the prior case, mapping extensions onto more rudimentary formats becomes hacky and less readable.

Obviously it's going to be easier to use JSON et al in some contexts but I never felt anything was inherently wrong with XML. XML is still probably more appropriate if you're storing a lot of metadata to your objects and you're not in a context like web dev where only other formats are treated as first-class.

There are some things I don't like about JSON. It's supposed to be easy for JS users because it's literally "JavaScript Object Notation" but it has annoying differences like requiring quotation marks around variable names and disallowing // comments. Not intuitive at all.

HN(2013) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5626079 See also: http://web.archive.org/web/20070623125327/http://www.alexhop...

Did Outlook team have any idea they where inventing their largest competitor?

For all people involved in side projects, this quote is something to remember.

>"One of the lessons I learned from that was just in terms of my own psychology, that it was important that I always have a working product. The first thing I do on day one is build something useful, then just keep improving it."

I was just reading something about all the defunct and abandoned google projects. So now "How Gmail Happened" reads to me like gmail too is done and gone, something that happened in the past but is no longer happening. I guess that day will come eventually. Maybe tomorrow? I never know what google is thinking when it comes to cancellations.

Nope. It’s now also a paid enterprise product (at consumer prices) so it probably pays for itself. I’ve been a customer since day 1 and think the $7/month or so it costs is ridiculously low. Also see this critically important comment regarding use of your own domain: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19566056

Its a horrible UI, and insanely expensive. GMAIL is a joke. I know there is a massive anti MS circle jerk, but I'm paying HK$97.00 (12.42 USD) user/month for Office 365 Business Premium. And it's SO much better than gmail will ever hope to be.

google products are clearly written by people fresh out of high school. They are utterly devoid of features and functionality that MS had developed 20 years ago. It's so sad the lack of desktop integration, alerts, rules, and being able to utilize external data in 'sheets' and other nonsensical toy apps.

But we have a generation that grew up on 'free' crap and they honestly don't know any better, and MS is far too inept to market anything.

Also it's so nice to not be the ones with the 'old and out of date' office installs, or doing bids with big companies and not being able to open their XL sheets. I can't even fathom trying to compete using children's toys like google anything.

I agree with much of what you’re saying, but the search and spam control make it worth far more than what I pay. YMMV certainly.

Let's be honest, it's also a big way they build data on you and show you targeted ads so I'm sure it pays for itself without direct revenue.

They do not scan the contents of mail for advertising purposes (consumer as of 2? years ago, and for paid gsuite I don't recall them ever doing this).

Just wondering how you would know that they do or do not do that?

They are pretty explicit about it here https://gsuite.google.com/learn-more/security/security-white...

Does that include those of us lucky enough to sign up prior to them actually charging for g-suite and being grandfathered into. Free plan for up to 10 users?

My limit of 50 users laughs at your puny 10.

(I believe the original limit was 100, so someone who signed up in time for that can now come along and laugh at us.)

Yes.

Yeah, sure they don't...

Nope that's never going to happen, Gmail is the cornerstone of G Suite. As of January 2017, G Suite has 4 million paying businesses, and 70 million G Suite for Education users.

That doesn't seem to preclude that it could become an enterprise-only product

I see no reason to cancel it or not, but those numbers seem pretty small relative to google's general user base and revenue.

I have no idea if or why they would cancel it or not, just saying that the numbers you gave seem like small potatoes. Then again Google really needs to show alternatives to advertising revenue (e.g. why Nest was brought onto Google's balance sheet).

Gmail is likely there to stay. Nevertheless you should always use your own domain (is this still possible for free with Gmail?). I made the move and left Gmail for most things, except an Android account. Missing the most: Decent search

What is bad about Webmail in general: Webmail is not email. Public Wifi Spots, even Internet providers are more and more blocking ports.

I do not know if it is still the case, but I believe that you can still create a new GCE or GAE account in a custom domain which will create a new Google Apps organization for you. You will have one free email account (and can set up all other addresses to be redirected to it).

That Google Cloud thing for custom domain email is also closed.

Thanks for letting me know.

To the best of my understanding, there is no free option for a custom domain on the Gmail/Google platform. "Google Apps for Business" once has a free tier, but it was discontinued, and "G Suite" now starts at $6/month (per user.)

Can you elaborate on Webmail? any email service opened via browser is - Webmail ?

Yest, but this is not "email". Not unusual to block all ports (incl. 25, 587, 465 and 110) except 80 adn 443. If you complain that email does not work then they check their "webmail" and say "what do you mean? Gmail works...".

This is not a major obstacle for me since I can pass through all ports via a http/https VPN but this is not how the internet is supposed to work.

It is. I do it.

Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7506270

The top comments on that thread discuss the importance of owning your email address by way of using a custom domain, so you can move to a new providers and not worry about losing contacts or missing emails. I fully agree with that.

Back in 2014, both Outlook and Gmail had free family plans with custom domain capability, but have since removed those options. Is there a good low-cost option for custom domain email in 2019? For people who use and rely on email a lot, Fastmail is definitely the best option, but it is too expensive for my use case. I would like to set up custom domains for my family (5-10 people in total) and I would like to know what is the cost-effective best practice to do so these days.

One option would be to set up a micro VM at AWS, or Digital Ocean, etc. to host your mail server, with something like Squirrel Mail. Then set up your gmail account to allow forwarding for your other email address ("send mail as" in Settings / Accounts and Import), so that outbound mail from your private server can be forwarded through Google's servers (so you don't get blocked by everyone else).

This way, if Google mail goes away, you can pick up another free email provider to relay mail through in the future (assuming everyone else also allows "send mail as").

Is this how your email workflow is setup?

Yandex email is free, even if you want to bring your own domain. https://connect.yandex.com/pdd/

Zoho has free custom domains. I don't use the web client much, but it's actually pretty good.

Just about all of the big hosting companies will do email hosting. Everywhere from $2/month to $15/monht (including office 365)

you don't even need to buy your domain from them.

This seems to be a good solution. Have you used it yourself? How has your experience been with migadu?

mailbox.org - it allows you to have up to 25 aliases so you can use it with multiple domains

Yandex is free for your own domain. Not sure how many mailboxes it supports.

By staying in beta for 5 years

The bigger question to me is why did everyone suddenly change to using their real names when gmail invites were no longer a thing and it opened up?

Can't speak for anyone else, but I remember trying to snag a funny or hard-to-get name during the invite period but they were all taken. For a short time I used my common "screen name" of the time but soon after switched to [email protected].

I was in my mid-late 20's and If I'm being honest with myself, I think I looked at Gmail as the webmail provider that more "savvy" or professional people used. I wanted something I could use for both personal stuff and professional contacts so the old [email protected] wouldn't cut it.

Later on this would shift to using my own domain to express professionalism but I still have my first.last@gmail address as the account all of my friends and family use.