

Rising Tide: Email startups are hot - brezina
http://venturebeat.com/2007/10/16/four-startups-ready-to-change-the-face-of-email/

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mdemare
Good! It's about time! Gmail has lost its glamour a long time ago (in internet
years). I'd like an integrated address book, calendar, rss reader, smarter
views (think iTunes), account protection, guaranteed backups + real customer
service, search by date, spam filters that can distinguish between my friends
are viagra ads, etc, etc.

And I'd pay for it! Actually, I prefer to pay, because paying turns me into a
customer instead of a user.

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nickb
Gmail will get a facelift in Nov... along with a ton of other social features.

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brezina
Google is the new Microsoft. They won't really do anything revolutionary
anymore. They have become too conservative.

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tx
The potential problem with web-based email startups is that good AJAX email
experience requires fast response times. Google can afford multiple data
centers with thousands of servers powering gMail making sure UI response is
nearly instantaneous.

A little company with $3-4 million in the bank will most likely feel sluggish.
A good example is Plaxo. I like them a lot, always have been. But I simply
cannot use it because their UI makes me feel I'm on a dialup.

