Gmail and Hotmail

Google's Gmail was
announced last
week

on April Fool's Day. It's free email with a gigabyte of storage.

Throughout the day, I kept
wondering, "Could this be an April Fool's joke?" Since they
announced on April 1, I was essentially thinking about Gmail the whole day.
Heck, I've been thinking about it so much that I decided to write this blog
entry about it, and Gmail isn't not even available yet to the general public. Brilliant

marketing.

Anyway, Kevin Fox who works on Gmail posted
some screenshots

to tease us all.
Some others.

It also looks like someone named Paul posted up a special message for his S.O. on the

Gmail homepage.
If you click the "Happy Birthday April!" link
at the bottom of the Gmail homepage, you see
the picture
here: [image]

. That's nice.

Which brings me to an observation about MSN. This
is similar to
my previous
rant about Office HTML
, drawing on my
pre-Microsoft past of being a web guy.

Comparing those Gmail screenshots above to what we currently have in Hotmail, I
notice:

  • Gmail, like most of Google, feels like a web site.  It's mostly

    text,
    links, and buttons with very few pictures.  I'm sure it's fast.

  • Hotmail, like most of MSN, feels like a computer program, in this
    case Outlook.  It's prettier than Gmail, looks more futuristic, and
    feels more powerful.

But, I sometimes feel that MSN doesn't get the web. As an example,
here's part of Hotmail's main page after you login. What parts do you think are

clickable?

[image]

I'd guess the red text and the blue text since they're different colors from
the normal black text.

Answer:

[image]

Wow, was I off.

If Hotmail just stuck to the default web color settings, we'd get blue,
underlined links, and I'd know exactly where to click. How simple would that be?
Every time I run into something like this, I think, "Why do we need
something so complicated?  I'd prefer a simpler web site that was easier to
use."

But that wouldn't be MSN. Despite
what some say,

I think Microsoft does a great job innovating.
MSN in particular has made an incredible transformation these past few years despite

issues like the one above.
My current MSN favorite is MSN Video,
essentially the only place on the web where I can watch TV clips for free.
It's great, and nothing like the average web site.

Hotmail and Gmail.
MSN Search and Google.
Exciting times ahead.