Re:20 years ago Gmail revolutionized email. It's time for a ...
by gsharma on Monday April 15, 2024 @01:14PM
(#40043177)
HTML emails were there before, but I agree that fast UI and threads was a step up from Yahoo or Hotmail. Labels instead of folders, username+wildcard@ email addresses, filters (at least the UX was better than traditional rules). They also enabled POP and IMAP. IIRC, IMAP used to be a premium feature for email providers at that time.
I’m not sure about revolution, but e-mail can certainly be evolved.
20 years ago, not as many emails were sent, especially transactional emails. User behavior has evolved since then.
For example, storing email receipt of a random Amazon order from 2 years ago doesn’t make much sense these days.
Hey has addressed some of these changes, but there is a lot of room for improvement.
I disagree, I think gmail was genuinely a step forward. I remember the yahoo of the time just being extremely clunky. A polished fast UI can be considered a revolution in its own right.
Wasn't it also one of the first to do HTML emails or am I mis-remembering?
The email threads were a really nice quality of life feature.
Of course we have the amount of space it gave you and that weird ticking space thing that made everyone's space go up at a consistent pace.
That being said, the way I see it. Email doesn't really need a revolution at this point in time. It does what it needs to do, it does it well (except for spam), and I feel like attempt to move past that (wasn't it google that showed off some sort of interactive emails?) are ultimately a bad thing.
Personally I like that email has stagnated a bit, let it do its job without tacking on feature after feature.