Why the Love Affair with Gmail?
Gmail—everyone seems to know what it is, and a huge number of people use it. Hands-down, it’s recognized as the best ‘deal’ in the free webmail scene. But why?
A screenshot of Gmail's conversation view
In short, it comes down to Google’s core values. Among them are “Focus on the user and all else will follow,” and, parphrased, “don’t be evil.” Running with this direction, Google’s team (and a huge user community) turned on email on its side by acknowledging two core things: 1) people have conversations, not messages, 2) humans don’t always think linearly and 3) keep powerful features easy.
Staying in the conversation
Gmail offers something few other email clients have been able to touch: effective threaded conversations. What is a thread? Imagine passing a note back and forth in class—writing a reply on the same page that you received a message on. Gmail pieces together the messages going in and out of your address to provide a cohesive view of a conversation—even if the messages are weeks apart—so that the context of messages is clearer. This way, instead of wading through pages of ‘quoted’ messages, which are often hard to read, a user can collapse and expand messages which came before and after whatever message they are reading. Often, this makes each message shorter, too, as introductions and conclusions are less necessary.