Re:Google Maps' Moat Is Evaporating
by cowsandmilk on Tuesday December 29, 2020 @02:33PM
(#25573793)
Your argument is about why users moved to gmail. jeffbee is saying Google created GMail to have users signed in so that they could give better search results through personalization.
Email search wasn't the draw initially, and wasn't even all that much better; there was serious controversy over search, years later, as it was tied to ads that reflected the content of private communications.
Hotmail, Yahoo et al had reasonably good search for the time, but stiflingly little free space. Google offered far more free space with IMAP and POP3 access.