I recently had an exchange server failure and immediately switched my mail to all begin flowing into gmail, personally and for my company. I even got an invite for the gmail hosted domain email but declined it because there are no gmail checkers that work with it yet. I have to say my wife and I are doing just fine running the company’s communications from gmail.

The only thing I am missing is an OSX menubar app that can check 2 or more gmail accounts RELIABLY and report when new messages come in. Anyone game?

However, the biggest failing of GMail for me, and the aspect that stops me from switching to it full-time as a primary mail interface, is Google’s stubborn insistence in only offering the “conversation” mode.

Yes, I know the way it’s implemented to remove quoted text is very clever. And yes, I realise that if Google gave the option to just view email in chronological order, nobody would use the conversation mode, because people always use what they’re most familiar with.

But the fact is, I just don’t find it as easy and intuitive as a stream of incoming emails. I’m sure the designer of the system would argue that it provides the same functionality, because as new emails arrive, the conversations float to the top of the list.

But the multiple “from” names is confusing. For example, there’s a conversation listed in my Gmail right now that is from “Dan .. David, Dan, Sim.. (8)”. That’s just not helpful.

It’s even more confusing because it’s not possible to tell who the most recent message is from.

For example, I have a conversation from “Brad .. Dan (7)”. And here’s the sequence of messages:

1. Brad Pecza
2. Phil Sweeney
3. Simon Wright
4. Dan Warne
5. Phil Sweeney
6. Dan Warne
7. Brad Pecza

How do I tell from the Gmail conversation names that Brad has contributed a new message to the conversation? I would have guessed from “Brad .. Dan (7)” that Brad posted the first message, and I posted the last.

Also, Google being so cool and all, why can’t they index attachments to your email? That would make GMail’s instant search infinitely more useful.

But there are three significant differences between Gmail and - for example - Fastmail, my primary email service:

(i) When I delete a message in Fastmail, it’s gone. In Gmail, it lurks around in their backup system and is still used as part of their data collection and processing. It’s clearer to me in a Fastmail account that I retain the ownership of my data.

(ii) Every ISP can look at your mail, but very few actually do as systematically as Gmail. See Suyog’s comments about the “map address” feature.

(iii) Fastmail doesn’t process my email and another data to make a profit for its other business arms. It doesn’t have any other business arms.

None of this makes Gmail an evil thing. But it does mean that it is not a “free service”.

It’s a transaction. You gain access to an innovative and useful service, but you “sell” (or give or surrender) your data to Gmail in return and Gmail uses that data for its own purposes.

People should understand the cost better.

BTW, loving your work @ TUAW :-)