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A comment on Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who turned it off. Parent comment

Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by qbasic_forever on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @12:42AM (#30174176)
Gmail was a way, way, way better experience than Hotmail or anything else when it started (and even almost a decade later). Maps blew everyone's mind at launch too and instantly made an entire group of direction and mapping websites irrelevant. Google Earth was magical just spending hours trotting around the globe too. Reader (RIP) was by far the best RSS reader.
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Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by datalist on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @01:45AM (#30174569)
Maps and Earth were not in-house built but purchased.
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Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by Graffur on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @06:14AM (#30176112)
Maps was amazing at first and then it got ruined bit by bit. But somewhere along the way it got awesome again. I think it's really good right now.
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Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by quartesixte on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @02:20AM (#30174751)
WAIT WHAT?

[real time search ongoing]

Goodness how have I not known this?!

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Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by foxfluff on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @03:47AM (#30175253)
Yep, I had Earthviewer 3D installed on my PC before Google Earth was a thing.
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Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by bigiain on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @04:55AM (#30175625)
The maps guys then pushed on to even greater heights with … Google Wave…
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Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by defanor on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @08:11AM (#30176981)
> Gmail was a way, way, way better experience than Hotmail or anything else when it started

I recall seeing it as sluggish and awkward when I finally decided to check it, abusing Ajax. Other web interfaces (that I tried) were more lightweight and predictable, and regular mail clients I found to be a much better UX. So I've mostly attributed Gmail popularity to Google promoting it, possibly using that invite-only policy to make the users to spread the invitations. It sounds like at least some users actually liked it, but I don't think it's a clear example of a good service by Google.

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Re:Google to turn on activity tracking for many users who tu... by cesarb on Wednesday February 02, 2022 @08:59AM (#30177562)
Don't forget the other advantage of Gmail over other webmail hosts back then: the amount of free disk space they gave to every account was HUGE. And if you wanted regular mail clients, IIRC Gmail always allowed you to use a traditional mail client, both over IMAP and over POP3.
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