There was an uproar in Wednesday’s class after a few of us raised our hands to the question, “Who doesn’t have a Gmail account?” All oxygen momentarily went out of the room while the majority gasped a collective, “Why not?”
I am paying $6.95 per month to keep my earthlink.net email name. I’ve had this email name for, well, ever. I don’t expect, now with social media tools on the rise, I’ll ever have to worry about people not being able to find me, but still. I’m sentimental about my email name.
Gmail, however ubiquitous, is in my mind, a temporary account that high school juniors set up with their “real names” when they want to appear all professional for college admissions officers. But, the majority of APOCers think Gmail is a necessity. When did Gmail become the default email client?
There are times when I sit in class perplexed at how much the computer world has changed since I left it ten years ago. What stuns me the most is how inexplicably positive and trusting everyone seems about the Internet. It’s an Al Gore-ish mentality, as if, hey, we built the internet, it’s always been there, duh!
In the pre-Google world, Bill Gates’ dream was a computer on every desktop (running Microsoft software, of course!) and software so seemlessly integrated that it operated “like a toaster.” Apple and Windows went part of the way in making that happen with graphical user interfaces. But, who would have guessed that we’d be building an entry point to computers based on natural language search? Isn’t Google now just reinventing the wheel? But instead of the computer on the desktop, it’s “data set” into the cloud.
As Ashlie Chan and Scott Slesinger presented on collaborative tools such as GoogleDocs, BaseCamp and ZoHo, I drew a parallel. One of these products touted a feature where you could create folders and organize your documents into them. Wait! This is called a “file system” and it’s existed on computers since their inception. Ok. So there’s a whole generation of users who have grown up with their entry point into computers as the Google search page. And as Google and others push open source/cloud computing, they’re rebuilding users’ experiences back up from scratch. At least, that’s how I see it.
Wow, I couldn’t imagine paying for web-based email! I understand keeping your email address…it becomes part of your identity. Obviously, having Gmail allows for Google functionality within email. I have over 8000 emails in my inbox that I can search easily, and I’ve barely touched the capacity of my data storage. I’m going to convert you…I’m a Gmail evangelist!
Aha! Ok, I also pay for my email address because it pushes through to my Microsoft Outlook client which has cool features that I’ve used forever. Things like the Out of Office Assistant or the ability to apply rules to my email such as whenever Julie Epstein sends me an email, please put it immediately in the Trash because she’s too much of a Googler.