ContentI’ve raved about Gmail before. About how it is hands-down the best webmail platform out there today. About the efficacy of the spam filters, about the usability of the interface, and about the power and convenience of the search features.
But what I haven’t said explicitly yet is why it is all so important.
You see, Gmail isn’t just another webmail product. But that’s not because of how Gmail lets you search instantly through old conversations. Nor is it because Gmail’s labels are a great alternative to folders. And it’s not even that it lets you save 1000 MB of data.
No, Gmail is important because it’s the best. Gmail is better, and more usable, than any other email application in existence — including applications that run on your desktop.
Sure, Gmail doesn’t have 100% of the features that those desktop applications do. But give Google some credit — it’s a beta. And even as a beta, it is still by far the best webmail out there. And it’s so convenient that I use it instead of the venerable (and all-powerful) mutt for most of my personal email these days.
So here’s the thing — I access Gmail when I’m at work using Firefox on Linux. I access Gmail when I’m at home using Safari on Mac OS X. I access Gmail using Internet Explorer on Windows when I’m in an internet cafe. And someday soon, I’m sure I’ll be accessing Gmail on my Treo 650 when I’m at the beach.
Right, I understand. Webmail in general has been around since the beginning of, well, the web. Hotmail, Yahoo!, and every ISP on the planet offers webmail. But the fact is, none of those webmail applications were half as good as Outlook, Eudora, or Thunderbird. You still found yourself tethered to a desktop operating system to get the most out of your email application.
Then along comes Gmail, and suddenly, the best application for a particular task is — yes, a web application. That’s a first. And it required Google to pull it off.
But then you start looking around and then you realize that there are all sorts of brilliant new web applications springing up. Bloglines is probably the best RSS reader out there, insofar as it can aggregate tens of thousands of feeds, save your history, share your blogrolls, and more. I’d say that del.icio.us is the best bookmark manager out there. Hello and Flickr are two web applications competing to be the best for photosharing. The list goes on…
And these new web applications aren’t just about data, either. The first generation of interactive internet sites were all about serving up data. News sites, “homepage” sites, etc. The Yahoo’s and Geocities of the world defined that first generation. This was the age of the hyperlink — a glorified world of Gopher and Usenet with embedded images and blink tags.
Then the second generation of web applications came along. This was all about providing services. Amazon, Travelocity, Ebay, and Google itself. A million e-commerce sites. A million ways to connect people and products and things.
But those two generations had something in common. They could only be built online. There was no desktop equivalent. There was no way to envision, really, an Expedia that ran on your home machine. So the traditional desktop application and operating system developers, such as Microsoft and Apple, had nothing really to fear from this new world. They could continue to make software, and make you pay for software, that served your other needs, such as word processing and email.
But then Gmail arrives and fires a shot across the bow of the traditional desktop application developers. With Gmail, Google is saying, “we don’t need the desktop.” At all. Give us a little bit of JavaScript, some CSS, and a few thousand PhDs, and a few billion dollars in cash and we can build your fancy Outlook email client and we can do it better than you ever did. Without you. We don’t care whether our users are on Windows 95, or NT, or XP. Or if they’re on a Mac. Or have downloaded a free copy of Linux. All we care about they is that they’re on a modern web application platform. Such as Firefox. Which, also, by the way, is free.
And so it took a Google to built the best email client. But Bloglines and del.icio.us are the work of individuals on shoestring budgets. The third generation of web applications is here. And the days of the desktop are (finally) numbered. Microsoft should start to worry. Gmail is going to cast a very long shadow indeed.
You may think I’m speaking nonsense. But just remember reading this when Google releases their Gedit word processor that puts the rest of those other text editors to shame…