
Why Google wants to replace Gmail - nkurz
http://www.computerworld.com/article/2838775/why-google-wants-to-replace-gmail.html
======
cromwellian
Sigh. So many fallacies. Let's take one: Google wanted to replace Gmail with
G+? Umm, no. It's a complete non-sequitur.

The purpose of Inbox isn't to "mediate" something for the purpose of mediating
it. Elgan seems to suggest that first Google decided they had to intrude with
meditation, and then came up with the idea of Inbox to justify it. The reality
is, mediation falls out of the architecture of email anyway.

Most day to day interpersonal communication has moved away from email and into
chat apps. Your email outside of work is largely an incoming federated
asynchronous dumping ground for receipts, bills, notifications, and other
things. It's become unmanageable for many people, a nuisance.

Inbox is an attempt to improve the experience of email given the reality of
how it's used. _All email is mediated_. The way RFC822 email works is, MTA's
transfer messages between services, and MUAs are responsible for the
presentation of that email to users. MUAs mediate mail, for example, IMAP4
SEARCH and folders are mediation mechanisms for mail. Mail clients are free to
present data from MUAs in any form they want. The fact that people have
largely copied the same 'From,Subject,Date' table format that's been with us
for the last 30 years isn't part of any spec, it's for lack of trying.

Inbox changes nothing about the unpinnings of mail (SMTP), what it wants to do
is change the user interface that presents the mail so that it has superior
summarization, sorting, searching, and clustering. That requires some form of
mediation unless done completely on the client side, but doing it completely
on the client side imposes some performance downsides, especially on mobile.

It's not as if Gmail doesn't "mediate". It spam filters, it has priority
inbox, it automatically puts stuff into tabs like "Promotions". Even providing
indexing and searching of mail is a form of meditation.

Elgan has penned an opinion piece that tries to impute some reason for Inbox
other than what user interface designers and product managers have been aiming
for -- usability goals. The implications about wanting to find excuses to
mediate and take away control are utter nonsense.

~~~
giantess
I don't think you're grasping Elgan's meaning of "mediate".

He mostly means "monetize", in that Google is a company built entirely on
slipping paid placements into things while disarming people's aversion (or
even realization) that they're being advertised to.

Gmail is mediated in the technical sense, but Gmail Adwords is hardly an
efficient channel into which subtle paid manipulation can be injected. If
Google started adding ads into emails in transit everyone would flip. This is
suboptimal for Google.

Whatever Inbox is today, it's a break from the email model that Google can
freely evolve into a channel optimized for injecting paid content, in a way
that people won't be outraged over. When everyone is using Inbox, Google calls
the shots over what you see and true "mediation" can begin.

> Inbox is an attempt to improve the experience of email given the reality of
> how it's used.

No, Inbox is a Product by a company that holds a monopoly on Internet
advertising. They're not in the business of improving the experience of email
with a free product. They'e ultimately in the business of finding more subtle
and effective ways to deliver ads. If you refuse to believe this, then
congratulations to Google for a mission accomplished.

~~~
cromwellian
You are absolutely wrong on that last point. That is not how products are
developed at Google and it is not how Inbox was developed. I work on Inbox,
and I have never once, ever, in three years, seen anyone mention how this will
be used to enhance ads or monetization. The entire focus, every single design
doc, every single product manager meeting, has been on improving the
experience of email for the user.

The ads division is mostly firewalled off from the daily concerns of people
developing products at Google. They supply cash to the treasury, people think
up cool ideas and try to implement them. It works just like startups, where
you don't always know what your business model is going to be. Gmail started
as a 20% project, not as a grand plan to create an ad channel. Lots of
projects and products at Google have no business model, no revenue model, the
company does throw money at projects and "figure it out later" how it'll make
money.

Do you think Johnny Ive, when designing the Apple Watch is concerned more with
the business side of how they'll up-sell different watch bands to make money,
or do you think he is absolutely focused on delivering a product experience
that is fantastic and that if they do a good job, the business will do well?

Someone may figure out how to shove ads into Inbox later. There are separate
teams who figure stuff like that out. But those people are not the ones who
control the product features, purpose, or design goals. They don't come to us
and say 'Hey, we want to sell more ad space in Gmail, do you think you could
come up with a UI to cluster emails so we can surface more ads?' That is not
how things work. Products start with ideas to solve user problems, not with
ads.

Notice, G+ has been out for years and still doesn't show ads. Do you think G+
was designed to show ads? It was not, otherwise it would have shown them
already. Someone will retroactively figure out how to do it at some point. In
the same vein that Twitter was launched without knowing how they'd put ads in
it.

Products at Google, from Search, to Mail, Calendar, Docs, et al are designed
primary to help users. If we do a good job, we will retain our user base, and
someone will figure out how to convert that to revenue, be it ads, or direct
payments.

Ads are a necessary evil, but they are not the primary motivating force
driving designs or features, either inside Google, or in the wider startup
community.

~~~
freshhawk
You are making a distinction that doesn't matter to people who don't work at
Google. Of course the products are designed by those building them primarily
to help users, that's how you run a dev team properly.

But the strategic decisions about what projects get funding and promotion and
integration into the google ecosystem and cross promotion, etc. take these
things into account. So the end result is that, like every other company on
the planet, how revenue is generated affects how products are made. The fact
that it's indirect at Google is actually the norm.

"they are not the primary motivating force driving designs or features, either
inside Google, or in the wider startup community"

If Ads are the primary revenue generator and the company is long lived then
they are one of the primary motivating factors, it's just good management to
hide that from the passionate makers who build great things because it is a
distraction and a fucking downer.

~~~
cromwellian
If the distinction doesn't matter, then why is the parent article and you
imputing motives and intent to Google? Follow the evidence then, treat Google
as a black box, and measure the result, rather than speculate on "intent and
strategy" to which you aren't privy.

So, when you see Inbox by Gmail being even more intrusive with ads than
regular Gmail, you can raise your arms in the air and declare that you were
right all along -- "I told you so!"

I feel like a person who wrote a novel and based one of my characters on an
old woman who worked at the corner store, but yet a literary critic reads the
"hidden meaning of the text" and insists the woman really represents my
mother. And then when it's pointed out that the character is based on a real
person who is not my mother and the critic is simply wrong, it's claimed the
woman must secretly represent my relationship with my mother anyway.

You're basically asserting that years of product meetings, in which ads are
not discussed, and which the only concerns are how to improve user workflow
and usability in email, in which we do countless user studies getting feedback
from experiments, and then making changes in the system so that people tell us
it's working better for them, all of this really is an engineering and product
team being manipulated by strategic decision makers.

And while we think what we're really doing and working on is making it easier
to manage your mailbox and get at information quicker, we don't realize we're
playing right into the hands of a Machiavellian plan by the executives/board
to use those same mechanisms for even more intrusive ads, and they haven't let
us in on the secret.

Or, maybe we're just trying to make the mail experience better so that people
don't get sick of gmail or mail altogether, and go off and use WhatsApp,
social network "mail", or some other communication mechanism not ruined by a
deluge of noise. Maybe we're concerned that if we don't make things better,
users will go elsewhere.

Or maybe, after 10 years, we just thought it was time to give gmail a refresh
as it was getting long in the tooth.

All are better and more plausible explanations than the idea that this is a
monetization plan for gmail. I personally don't believe mail can ever be
monetized effectively like that. Personally, I think mail ads are pretty
ineffective and not huge revenue generators.

~~~
freshhawk
Ah, I think we are talking about slightly different things, and it seems you
still aren't catching the meaning of "mediate" being used here. I don't think
Inbox will be more intrusive or be more annoying because of ads. I think the
user experience, like the user experience of gmail, will be great.

The reasons for impuning the motives of Google here are political and
consequentialist, not about user experience or software quality.

It's about the consequences of having a 3rd party organize and filter your
communications according to it's own incentives rather than yours, it's a
discussion about power.

It's about the politics of service providers putting themselves in the middle
of p2p communication in order to surveil them (to monetize the
software/service with ads in this case, although of course the NSA is happily
given a copy).

It's not about thinking people at Google are mustache twirling villians or
bizdev douches who ruin things by plastering ads on them, it's about the
crappy direction that well-meaning people are taking the internet.

------
joelrunyon
> That's why Google killed Google Reader, for example. Subscribing to an RSS
> feed and having an RSS reader deliver 100% of what the user signed up for in
> an orderly, linear and predictable and reliable fashion is a pointless
> business for Google.

If you understand this - you start to understand most of Google's decisions
(even if you might not like them).

~~~
dwyer
I understand it, I just don't buy it. Reader was a great opportunity to apply
machine learning. When left neglected to a couple of days, my feed reader
becomes a huge pain to sift through. There's a lot of room for innovation in
this space, a la Inbox.

I'm not accusing Google of anything, but their treatment of Atom/RSS can be
likened to Microsoft's old Embrace/Extend/Extinguish strategy. I honestly
believe that in some ways it's worse off now than it would've been had Google
not got involved. Killing Reader was at worst malicious and at best
irresponsible.

~~~
joelrunyon
This is sort of interesting double-speak on Google's part.

1\. Kills RSS - forces people to receive updates from people / blogs /
companies you want to follow in email.

2\. Wow, that inbox is looking pretty messy - we should help clean it up!

3\. We made a nifty little app to help keep your inbox clean (and filter out
those annoying companies you used to subscribe to via RSS).

4\. Our customers like their inboxes clean - so if you're a company and you
want to talk to your customer - you better pay for a spot.

RSS + Email were dumb pipes. Google's doing everything in it's power to
control those pipes either y eliminating them (RSS) or using their near-
monopoly to shift people to a new standard (gmail/inbox). Now, this is all
smart on their part, but not necessarily great down the road for consumer or
companies.

~~~
Karunamon
_Really_? You _actually think_ email became a mess just because Reader was
shut down? It's not like there are about elventy hojillion competitors in that
space to choose from!

This smells like the "new coke" argument to me.

------
tehabe
1\. People should try to understand what Wave actually was. It was an
experiment to test new features. Nothing more, nothing less. Many of those
features are found in Google Drive and Docs now.

2\. I don't think Google wants to "replace" Gmail but change how we use email.
(If the end product will be called Inbox, Gmail or something completely
different is not important.) I see Inbox in the same way I saw Wave. As an
experiment. The features which work will be merged in one way or another into
Gmail. The others don't.

3\. Google already changes Gmail. The smart label were just the first step.
The aim is, that you don't create filters yourself but that the algorithm does
it for you. Inbox is a second step in this direction.

4\. One loser in all this are open protocols. Those were never meant for this.
So either someone develops a new IMAP or open protocols will disappear. Like
with Hangouts and XMPP.

~~~
tmalsburg2
You say that Wave was just an experiment, nothing more, implying that it was
never meant to be a product and to attract users. It didn't appear this way
when Google announced that Wave would be discontinued. Instead of saying "hi
everyone, thank you for participating in this experiment" they provided this
as an explanation of the shutdown: "Wave has not seen the user adoption we
would have liked."

------
bronbron
I'm not sure I find this article all that compelling because I think it's
founded on a faulty premise:

> Email is the "dumb pipe" version of communication technology, which is why
> it remains popular.

Email might be a dumb pipe. Gmail is anything but that.

Data mining personal emails is an advertiser's dream. The second I start
sending emails to my spouse about purchasing a house, lo and behold Google can
show me an ad for homeowner's insurance. Given correct semantic analysis, it's
incredibly persuasive and highly targeted advertising.

It's arguably akin to wiretapping or spying on my text messages - and lest we
forget, there was a huge class-action lawsuit against Google that argued just
that.

> Carriers resist becoming "dumb pipes" because there's no money in it

There's a boatload of money to be made in email, even as a 'dumb pipe', if
you're an advertiser targeting ads at people based on the contents of those
e-mails.

Further, and this I could easily be wrong about, isn't the whole American
telecom industry the complete antithesis to the argument "there's no money to
be made as a dumb pipe"? Even if net neutrality is maintained, I don't see
anyone realistically arguing that Comcast will become nigh-unprofitable in the
near future.

Maybe there's no money to be made as a newcomer onto the scene, and
competition can be fierce at the lower tiers, but Gmail is certainly an
established player in the e-mail game.

~~~
syedkarim
To support the statement that dumb pipes can be incredibly profitable:
Intelsat. They openly admit they are a commodity business focused on MHz and
Mbps, and have no problem consistently hitting 70% margins.

~~~
otterley
Businesses like Intelsat's have high barriers to entry (literally!). If the
business were easier to get into, competition would be fiercer, and the
margins would be quickly erased.

~~~
syedkarim
I don't disagree that competition would destroy those margins, but isn't a
barrier to entry just a barrier entry? And the telcos like ATT and Comcast
will still have the good fortune of being on the other side of the barrier,
no? Whether it's launch costs, thousands of mile of cable, or spectrum rights,
fat margins are supported all the same.

~~~
tomkarlo
It's well established that high barriers to entry reduce competitive pressures
on margin. If nothing else, it discourages outsiders from trying out new
business models that drive down prices, because it increases the amount of
capital necessary to test out a new approach (and the capital is harder to
raise if you're using a new strategy.)

Consider Uber vs taxis - if there were massive entry costs to the cab /
private car category, a company like Uber would have trouble raising enough
money to get launched. So the existing cabs wouldn't ever experience the
competitive pressure from Uber, because it would never enter the market.

------
tindrlabs
I love the dumb pipe -- I'm finding it more and more as a product developer,
that you have to mix helpers with the dumb pipe.

For example give user 100% control, while supplying actions that shortcut what
would typically be a long human activity.

As soon as you begin relying on the automagical world without a good set of
controls for the user, your users begin to have more questions and concerns
about how the sausage is made.

------
underbluewaters
When I first started using Inbox I thought "Neat, it's all the Google Now-like
stuff that they had incorporated into Gmail, but done a lot better". Whether
Google rummaging through your email is something desirable is a serious
question, but let's not pretend Gmail did anything fundamentally different in
this regard.

Inbox was probably launched as a separate product because replacing Gmail with
this interface could have sparked a mass exodus by users resistant to change.
I personally like that I can switch between the two products when I need to do
something quickly in an interface I'm already comfortable in.

------
futuravenir
I haven't ever heard the term 'dumb pipe' before, but I think I'll have some
difficulty getting it out of my head now. This is a really interesting take
and it seems to make a lot of sense. Is there validity in it? Is gmail a much
less lucrative business than Google+ per minute spent there? Will Inbox
bombard us with things Google thinks we want to see that will ultimately be
paid advertisements? Only time will tell.

~~~
joelrunyon
More likely they'll differentiate between friend email & promotional email (or
emails from services you actually signed up for) and then charge those same
services you signed up premiums in order to show up in your inbox (think
facebook, but instead of fan reach, it happens in your inbox).

------
otterley
I disagree. At the end of the day, Google's business is selling ads to the
highest bidder. Gmail is an ad conduit, but Google Reader was not.

Gmail isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

~~~
joelrunyon
You misunderstood the point of the article. Gmail is an ad conduit - but it's
a glorified contextual display ad conduit. There's only so much upside there.

However - selling email advertisers prime position for their precious emails
and conveniently "bouncing", "hiding", or marking any non-paid emails as
"spam" is much, much more lucrative.

He's not arguing that gmail isn't an ad conduit - he's arguing that they're
not efficiently monetizing the email sector as best they can (and Inbox is
another attempt to improve that).

~~~
magicalist
What?

This isn't the point of the article--nothing in it even implies anything about
people buying a spot in your inbox--and selling an advertising email slot
guaranteed not to fall into the spam folder would be the _dumbest_ move an
email provider could possibly make.

We also only have to look as far as the fact that sometimes email from Google
themselves gets put in the spam folder to see the likelihood of this coming to
pass.

~~~
joelrunyon
"Buying a spot" is hyperbole, but that's the direction it's headed (not saying
that will be the exact iteration). The point of the article is that Google is
moving / transitioning businesses into areas where they can effectively
monetize it (and gmail is a great tool, but doesn't bring in the desired cash
flow atm).

> and selling an advertising email slot guaranteed not to fall into the spam
> folder would be the dumbest move an email provider could possibly make.

Explain your thinking here?

~~~
magicalist
> _The point of the article is that Google is moving / transitioning
> businesses into areas where they can effectively monetize it_

Except it's not the point. The article points out that it's moving to mediated
consumption of email instead of just a good interface on "here's all your
email". There's no argument about cash flow in the article, and you'll have to
actually demonstrate that they're moving in that monetization direction to
assert it.

Meanwhile I'm not sure what a non-hyperbolic version of "buying a spot" would
be, so you'll have to specify for me to respond to it.

>> _and selling an advertising email slot guaranteed not to fall into the spam
folder would be the dumbest move an email provider could possibly make._

> _Explain your thinking here?_

Google makes money if people choose to use their products. Since so many
people already use Google products today, there is some lock in due to
convenience (all my email is already in there, I have an Android phone at
least until my contract renews, etc), but offering a spam filter that doesn't
work as long as someone is willing to pay would be a death blow.

The Promotions tab contains advertising in email, but it's the advertising you
signed up for. For some reason this blows people's minds, but people really do
sign up for those email updates from businesses to see new products and deals.
Having a way to organize those emails is not some sinister new advertising
plot by google.

Not to mention that an offer by google to make sure spam bypasses the spam
filter for only 1 cent per 1000 messages or whatever is kind of going to get
noticed.

------
contingencies
The real change was snailmail/phones to email (because store and forward, read
at my leisure, global, offline workflow is a primary design element, can be
sent automatically, free). That's a hard feature set to compete with.

We already have functional tools to solve the nominal 'my inbox is full'
problem.

Spam is a bigger problem - CPU required to scrub it can be significant for a
well established email account, and the complexity cost in running this
infrastructure yourself pushes everyone to federated commercial services which
has become a geopolitical fail equating to zero privacy.

There are people working on this ... I just hope they can succeed. Any of the
various projects want to check-in in this thread with status updates?

------
magicalist
> _I 'm predicting that Google will end Gmail within the next five years....Of
> course, Google may offer an antiquated "Gmail view" as a semi-obscure
> alternative to the default "Inbox"-like mediated experience._

Way to really go out on that limb.

Being an "algorithm business" isn't necessary or sufficient for the argument
being made here. I can't tell if this is a "google wants all the eyeballs"
argument or a "if all you have is a hammer" argument, but, either way, it
doesn't follow.

------
krick
Although he has many fair points, jumping to the assumption that Google would
shut down gmail doesn't seem to be very careful. He is talking about why
Google wants to kill email and his reasoning is right — too bad not everyone
understands that. But the real question is not if they _want_ , but if they
_can_.

Now, can they? It's too complicated for me to say something clearly. They are
not the only mail hosting providers and I'm not even sure that gmail is the
leading one amongst "common people", that is "your customers". If your
customers use email, _you_ will be using email. If you use email, and your
colleagues use email then turns out everybody around uses email and your
company shall be using email internally too. If your company is using gmail
services and gmail shuts down, your admin will be starting your own mail
server in a hurry. In that light I would say I'm very much wanting gmail to be
shot down, because it means no more excuses to not setting up your own SMTP
server.

So I believe Google could gently move some part (maybe even major one) of
their users to some service of their own, but if it will be far enough from
email, being more like "recommended to you" feed, then people eventually will
feel the need in service that could "just deliver that fucking message,
goddammit!" and Google will lose niche they are leading at in favor of niche
where they will be more like competing with Facebook and, probably, losing.

If email persists then, they will lose ability to read emails of millions of
people basically for nothing. So, no, I don't believe they will shut down
gmail. Not as long as email exists at all.

------
spinchange
Seems like Elgan is saying Google is like a cable company and their goal of
organizing the world's information is analogous to a cable company's marriage
of content & carriage and bundling services to follow the "dumb pipe" metaphor
all the way through.

It's implied that Google is doing this organization for us not because there's
room for innovation and improvement, but because they simply want to insert
themselves into our lives anyway they can.

I think it's more likely that Google doesn't want to throw the baby out with
the bathwater, they want make a better bath tub. If that reinforces their role
as middle man, fine, but it isn't like Inbox is a superfluous solution in
search of a problem! And it isn't like Gmail doesn't already have a lot of
intelligence and monetization built in to it on top of the basic protocol that
make it a business winner for Google anyway.

------
ams6110
Email existed for decades before Gmail came on the scene, and it will exist if
Google kills Gmail. If Google thinks they can be successful in creating a
walled garden internet where they mediate all the communication, they should
re-read the history of AOL.

------
takeda
This might sound controversial but I believe it would actually be better if
Google would close down their service.

There is too many people using it for their email which creates unhealthy
imbalance, also the shut down would not be as painful since there are plenty
of other mail providers. For that reason though they won't do this.

I agree with the authors suggestion regarding that Google does not want any
service that acts as "dumb pipe".

It explains what happened to Dejavu (currently Google Groups), or current
separation of Google Talk from the rest of XMPP network.

It seems like Google Voice will be next, I am starting to think that they used
it for training their voice to text functionality, but since now there are
other services such as Google Now/Voice Search they probably no longer need
it.

------
shadowmint
No one in this entire thread agrees. Why are we even talking about it?

Stop upvoting this link bait rubbish to the frontpage HN.

------
Thesaurus
Why are people allowed to post links to computerworld on here? The site is
right behind buzzfeed in zero content click bait "list-articles". I really
hope the admins start moderating bottom feeding "news" websites from HN.

~~~
skyjacker
It's the same reason Google employees can vote each other up to support and
defend Google. It's all self-serving.

