34019 writes "The original Gmail engineer, Paul Buchheit, reminisces on the creation of email, and how he designed Gmail in hopes of it improving the way we communicate. From the article: 'Of course that wasn't the only reason why I wanted to build Gmail. I rely on email, a lot, but it just wasn't working for me. My email was a mess. Important messages were hopelessly buried, and conversations were a jumble; sometimes four different people would all reply to the same message with the same answer because they didn't notice the earlier replies. I couldn't always get to my email because it was stuck on one computer, and web interfaces were unbearably clunky. And I had spam. A lot of it. With Gmail I got the opportunity to change email - to build something that would work for me, not against me.' Email Turns 34 Log in/Create an Account | Top | 166 comments | Search Discussion Display Options Threshold: -1: 166 comments 0: 159 comments 1: 122 comments 2: 85 comments 3: 34 comments 4: 18 comments 5: 7 comments Flat Nested No Comments Threaded Oldest First Newest First Highest Scores First Oldest First (Ignore Threads) Newest First (Ignore Threads) The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way. It's true (Score:3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 22, @03:40PM (#13853569) We were plotting against Paul. We were trying to destroy his life, bit by bit.-- Paul's former email [ Reply to This Gmail is to email as... (Score:4, Interesting) by jg21 (677801) * on Saturday October 22, @03:44PM (#13853583) ...Socrates is to Bette Midler. [ Reply to This Re:Gmail is to email as... (Score:4, Insightful) by Glonoinha (587375) on Saturday October 22, @03:57PM (#13853643) (Last Journal: Saturday October 01, @11:40AM) Quite honestly, if GMail let me drag something into a folder and it would disappear from what is effectively the root, it would become the end-all, be-all of email. Yes - I know I can do stupid shit with tags and whatever ... but at the end of the day, when I fire up email, I don't want the root of the inbox filled with every damn email I have ever received. For whatever reason, perhaps as simple as not wanting whoever is standing over my shoulder when I fire up email see the last 50 emails I got (subject lines, or senders, or whatever) - let me drag that shit out of the root and when I want to see it, I will go to wherever I dragged it. And no, archive isn't the same.Hotmail sucks ass, and Outlook Express sucks ass, but despite their being the penultimate of ass-sucking when coupled together - they let me keep the inbox fairly clean so a bunch of incriminating emails aren't on display when I fire up my email. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Gmail is to email as... by Anonymous Coward (Score:3) Saturday October 22, @04:33PMRe:Gmail is to email as... by Jarlsberg (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @06:46PMRe:Gmail is to email as... by gfody (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @09:11PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Gmail is to email as... by Pneuma ROCKS (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @05:03PMRe:Gmail is to email as... by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Saturday October 22, @05:09PMRe:Gmail is to email as... by Spit (Score:1) Saturday October 22, @10:39PM3 replies beneath your current threshold.1 reply beneath your current threshold. You're all invited! (Score:5, Funny) by QuantaStarFire (902219) * <ed,kehoe&gmail,com> on Saturday October 22, @03:45PM (#13853590) E-mail is throwing a birthday party! It's next week, the same day as Spam.Unfortunately, they agreed that Spam should send the invites. Expect them in your mailbox soon along with the free drugs and Nigerian relatives. [ Reply to ThisRe:You're all invited! by slavemowgli (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @04:12PMRe:You're all invited! by kinzillah (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @04:31PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. the aol (Score:1, Funny) by ToddFFW (889756) on Saturday October 22, @03:45PM (#13853594) wow... i wish i was on the AOL 34 years ago. I bet I could download the whole AOL over my modem in just one minute! [ Reply to ThisRe:the aol by AndroidCat (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @05:29PM History of the term: Snail Mail? (Score:2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 22, @03:46PM (#13853601) Anybody know when the term Snail Mail was first published?I have a postmarked envelope from the early 90's mentioning Snail Mail on the front.Anybody else? [ Reply to This Re:History of the term: Snail Mail? (Score:4, Informative) by esvoboda (166456) on Saturday October 22, @04:08PM (#13853695) (http://www.edsvoboda.com/) You had me wondering about that so I did a search of Usenet posts on Google Groups. I see [google.com] several references to "snail mail" in 1982 but the archive doesn't go back much further. [ Reply to This | Parent Re:History of the term: Snail Mail? (Score:5, Informative) by tepples (727027) <tepplesatslashdot@pineight.com> on Saturday October 22, @05:11PM (#13853988) (http://nonofollow.net/ | Last Journal: Sunday January 23, @12:49AM) As I understand it, "Snail Mail" originally dated to the introduction of ZIP codes. Mail without a ZIP code would be de-prioritized and stamped "Snail Mail". [ Reply to This | Parent Network email is not 34 (Score:4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 22, @03:48PM (#13853607) Acording to wikipedia, network email existed prior to 1971.The main contribution that happened in 1971 was the introduction of the "@" symbol and the use of email on ARPANET. But prior to 1971 there was email being sent between computers.From wikipedia:"The early history of network e-mail is also murky; the AUTODIN system may have been the first allowing electronic text messages to be transferred between users on different computers in 1966, but it is possible the SAGE system had something similar some time before."I don't wish to take away any from what Ray Tomlison acheived in 1971 which was a great contribution to introduce email to ARPA net and make it really convenient. [ Reply to This Re:Network email is not 34 (Score:5, Funny) by commodoresloat (172735) on Saturday October 22, @04:45PM (#13853871) (http://shockandblog.com/blog) Acording to wikipedia, network email existed prior to 1971 That's easily fixed; just edit Wikipedia. [ Reply to This | Parent1 reply beneath your current threshold.1 reply beneath your current threshold. ook... (Score:4, Insightful) by kuzb (724081) on Saturday October 22, @03:52PM (#13853620) (http://ben.nullcreations.net/) The original Gmail engineer, Paul Buchheit, reminisces on the creation of email, and how he designed Gmail in hopes of it improving the way we communicate. Sorry, but I don't buy the google altruistic angle - they did this so they could better serve us ads. This is all about information, and who controls it. I doubt highly that it had anything at all to do with improving anyone's way of life. Google is a corporation, it's primary motive is, and always will be, profit. [ Reply to This Re:ook... (Score:5, Insightful) by ShadeEagle (153172) * <tehshingen@gmailTWAIN.com minus author> on Saturday October 22, @03:53PM (#13853627) (http://www.freeipods.com/?r=9074486 | Last Journal: Thursday June 19, @04:34PM) Doesn't mean they can't make our lives easier while they're at it. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:ook... by Slashdiddly (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @04:31PM Re:ook... (Score:4, Insightful) by tomhudson (43916) <thudson@@@gmail...com> on Saturday October 22, @05:00PM (#13853932) (Last Journal: Saturday October 22, @07:20PM) In 20-30 years, when early idealists within Google are long gone and beancounters have taken over, your data is still there. Near its sunset, Google has the potential of being 100x more evil than Microsoft could ever hope to be. A lot of those advantages are only possible because of shift of control from end user to the service provider. Like any new technology, this is a double-edged sword. A valid point, and maybe a good lobbying point to force ISPs to stop blocking ports 80 and 443 so we can all run our own web servers and store all our data on our home boxes, no matter where we ultimately access it from. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:ook... by Slashdiddly (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @06:26PMRe:ook... by tomhudson (Score:3) Saturday October 22, @07:04PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:ook... by Tallon29 (Score:1) Saturday October 22, @03:57PMRe:ook... by sound+vision (Score:1) Saturday October 22, @04:13PMRe:ook... by Homology (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @04:16PM Re:ook... (Score:5, Interesting) by notthe9 (800486) on Saturday October 22, @04:02PM (#13853663) Sorry, but I don't buy the google altruistic angle - they did this so they could better serve us ads. This is all about information, and who controls it. I doubt highly that it had anything at all to do with improving anyone's way of life. Google is a corporation, it's primary motive is, and always will be, profit.I don't see how Mr. Buchheit's comment that he "designed Gmail in hopes of it improving the way we communicate" negates that Google does things with the intent of making profit. Just because you do something to make a profit, it doesn't mean that you do not have hopes it will accomplish good things.If I designed a bridge, I would hope it would help the way people transported. This does not mean that I am not doing it because I wanted to make money. It does not mean I am claiming some kind of altruism. If people didn't think gmail was improving their life in some way, there would be no one to advertise to. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:ook... by Damer Face (Score:3) Saturday October 22, @05:05PMRe:ook... by Anonymous Coward (Score:1) Saturday October 22, @04:04PMThe evil rich spread wealth by backslashdot (Score:1) Saturday October 22, @04:16PMRe:ook... by Jussi K. Kojootti (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @05:42PMRe:ook... by sylvester (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @07:33PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:ook... by MysticOne (Score:3) Saturday October 22, @04:06PMRe:ook... by Crixus (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @04:11PMSilence infidel! by ChePibe (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @04:25PMWell, he admitted it by Cerdic (Score:3) Saturday October 22, @04:27PMRe:ook... by Larmal (Score:1) Saturday October 22, @05:16PMRe:ook... by tommertron (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @08:02PMRe:ook... by ergo98 (Score:1) Saturday October 22, @07:39PMRe:ook... by ergo98 (Score:1) Saturday October 22, @07:51PM4 replies beneath your current threshold. I try to avoid it (Score:3, Interesting) by jedie (546466) <jedie@pandora . b e> on Saturday October 22, @03:55PM (#13853631) (http://jedie.eu.org/) just like I'm not fond of writing letters IRL I don't like writing E-mail and I only do it when there is no other choice (usually for official stuff or things I want to have a record of). I rather have IM. (or IRC, but that's officially dead...) [ Reply to ThisRe:I try to avoid it by VJ42 (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @04:05PMRe:I try to avoid it by jedie (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @04:26PMRe:I try to avoid it by cgibbard (Score:1) Saturday October 22, @07:20PMRe:I try to avoid it by PlasticMonkey (Score:1) Saturday October 22, @04:10PMRe:I try to avoid it by jedie (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @04:34PMRe:I try to avoid it by PlasticMonkey (Score:1) Saturday October 22, @05:46PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Great! When will it be out of beta? (Score:2, Insightful) by fuzzy12345 (745891) on Saturday October 22, @03:58PM (#13853647) Pardon me for wanting to sign up for it without being 'invited' - a great way for Google to build social web information while maintaining the illusion of a clique.I think Google's innovations are great, but the Everything's Beta syndrome, in email, in Usenet news archiving, etcetera... It's all wearing a little thin. [ Reply to ThisRe:Great! When will it be out of beta? by jupiter909 (Score:3) Saturday October 22, @04:11PMRe:Great! When will it be out of beta? by fuzzy12345 (Score:3) Saturday October 22, @04:19PMRe:Great! When will it be out of beta? by Joe Decker (Score:1) Saturday October 22, @04:46PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Great! When will it be out of beta? by k2dbk (Score:1) Saturday October 22, @04:16PMRe:Great! When will it be out of beta? by SillyNickName4me (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @04:38PMRe:Great! When will it be out of beta? by markx16 (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @04:19PMRe:Great! When will it be out of beta? by Tidal Flame (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @06:51PMRe:Great! When will it be out of beta? by Red Alastor (Score:3) Saturday October 22, @04:20PMRe:Great! When will it be out of beta? by Tidal Flame (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @06:54PMRe:Great! When will it be out of beta? by wootest (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @04:52PMRe:Great! When will it be out of beta? by tepples (Score:1) Saturday October 22, @05:15PMRe:Great! When will it be out of beta? by wootest (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @05:32PMRe:Great! When will it be out of beta? by Tidal Flame (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @06:46PMRe:Great! When will it be out of beta? by wootest (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @07:41PMRe:Great! When will it be out of beta? by dagnabit (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @05:32PM2 replies beneath your current threshold. searching (Score:2) by El_Muerte_TDS (592157) <elmuerte@drunksniper[ ]om ['s.c' in gap]> on Saturday October 22, @03:59PM (#13853652) (http://elmuerte.com/) Just because you can search through your email doesn't make it less a mess, it's just easier to find things.And what is wrong with more than one person answering a question, maybe the 2nd or 5th person has a way better solution. [ Reply to This Strange take on history (Score:3, Insightful) by Jugalator (259273) on Saturday October 22, @04:03PM (#13853668) (Last Journal: Tuesday September 20, @07:20AM) How much in that article summary is a Gmail ad, and how much is about the history of e-mail?Hmm, better go RTFA...Hmm, now wait a minute! It's on Google's blog.And it still just talks about Gmail. [ Reply to ThisRe:Strange take on history by Duncan3 (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @05:09PM Credit where credit is due (Score:4, Informative) by broothal (186066) <christian@fabel.dk> on Saturday October 22, @04:06PM (#13853682) (http://www.geekshow.dk/ | Last Journal: Sunday April 18, @03:52PM) I appreciate all he's done for Gmail, but he can't take credit for their excellent spam filtering. That credit should go to Steve Linford and XBL [spamhaus.org] from the Spamhaus project [spamhaus.org]. As stated before, Gmail uses XBL [google.dk] to filter out spam. Needless to say - the XBL is pretty cool. [ Reply to ThisRe:Credit where credit is due by AndroidCat (Score:1) Saturday October 22, @05:33PM3 replies beneath your current threshold. World's oldest email address? (Score:5, Interesting) by PapayaSF (721268) on Saturday October 22, @04:06PM (#13853683) So, does anyone still have a working email address from 1971? If not, I wonder who has the world's oldest currently working email address? [ Reply to This 100 oldest .com domains... (Score:5, Interesting) by antdude (79039) on Saturday October 22, @04:26PM (#13853779) (http://antfarm.ma.cx/ | Last Journal: Wednesday July 09, @02:16AM) Well, not e-mails but there is a list of 100 oldest .com domains [jottings.com]. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:100 oldest .com domains... by CrackedButter (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @04:44PM Nothing changes... (Score:4, Funny) by jpellino (202698) on Saturday October 22, @04:45PM (#13853868) Apple's # 64, in 1987.Microsoft as usual played catch up in 1991, according to WHOIS records... [ Reply to This | ParentNumber 86... by doorbot.com (Score:1) Saturday October 22, @10:47PMNice list, did a little more research. by burnttoy (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @08:18PMRe:100 oldest .com domains... by rotterdarned (Score:1) Saturday October 22, @09:09PMI had a 1983 account until 1 year ago by spineboy (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @04:43PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.and how much spam does it get? by antispam_ben (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @05:03PM3 replies beneath your current threshold. Outlook is the bane of email (Score:3, Insightful) by fossa (212602) <pat7NO@SPAMgmx.net> on Saturday October 22, @04:07PM (#13853688) MS Outlook is the bane of my email existence. Its inability to group conversation threads encourages replies to include the conversation in its entirety. Its insistence that the reply precede the original drives me batty. I have not used GMail, but that "conversations" thingy looks moderately interesting, if it can display more than a single line of previous messages... Why not an email interface more like IM for conversations? Cut out the redundant headers and signatures. Oh wait, MS Outlook doesn't do the standard "-- \n" signature prefix. Lack of PGP/MIME support just kills me.Can't remember where I saw this:Because it breaks the thread of conversation.Why is top posting bad?Also, I'd like a clearer picture of who sent it, who got it (the Cc: list), and when they sent it. I find this very difficult in MS Outlook which I use at work for various reasons mostly outside my control.On a slightly different note, there is little I hate more than receiving an email that's been forwarded 700 times and having to scroll through a million >>>>> > >> just to see the message (using mutt for these forwards; perhaps MS Outlook doesn't display all that preceding crud, I don't know).In conclusion, Outlook has done more to make email a painful experience than Sat^H^H^HAlan Ralsky himself. [ Reply to ThisTop posting by ZippyKitty (Score:1) Saturday October 22, @04:20PMRe:Top posting by October_30th (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @04:26PMRe:Top posting by fossa (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @05:12PMRe:Top posting by chris_eineke (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @07:52PMRe:Top posting by fossa (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @04:33PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Outlook is the bane of email by esvoboda (Score:1) Saturday October 22, @05:04PMRe:Outlook is the bane of email by billsoman (Score:1) Sunday October 23, @12:01AM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Outlook is the bane of email by AndroidCat (Score:1) Saturday October 22, @05:53PM Gmail turns 34 (Score:2, Funny) by AlbertEin (924430) on Saturday October 22, @04:07PM (#13853693) Maybe google is waiting for gmail to turn 34 in order to promote it to a finale release and left the beta in the past..... [ Reply to This E-mail's not good for critical messages (Score:3, Insightful) by October_30th (531777) on Saturday October 22, @04:12PM (#13853712) (http://slashdot.org/~October_30th/journal/ | Last Journal: Saturday October 22, @11:10AM) E-mail's fine and dandy. However, thanks to spam (or, more specifically, the self-righteous, over-zealous spam blocking lists and filters that have been set up because of the spam) e-mail is not a viable option for delivering critical messages anymore. I still use fax and phone to deliver those. [ Reply to This Re:E-mail's not good for critical messages (Score:4, Insightful) by The Cisco Kid (31490) * on Saturday October 22, @04:28PM (#13853784) Email was never a viable option for guaranteed delivery of messages. Its fast, convenient, easily archivable, and has many other fantastic uses and benefits, but guaranteed delivery of critical messages has *never* been one of them.And spamming leeches as well as the negligence of certain software makers is directly the cause of the need for admins of servers to restrict the flood. If it *wasnt* for the blacklists email would already be dead - there would be ten thousand spams for every desirable message, and that would just be in mailboxes of the casual/occasional users - regular users would get far more. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:E-mail's not good for critical messages by October_30th (Score:1) Saturday October 22, @04:37PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Gmail MIME handling behind Yahoo/Hotmail/MS... (Score:4, Interesting) by agulliford (682381) on Saturday October 22, @04:16PM (#13853728) (http://insprit.com/) Maybe he could celebrate by unscrewing Gmail's MIME handling. That wouldimprove the way we communicate. Gmail does not appear to handle recursivemime, such as a multipart/related inside a multipart/alternative. Yahoo,Hotmail, Thunderbird, Microsoft all seem to manage it ~ Why can't Gmail?Example:From: someone@domainMime-Version: 1.0Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="[BOUNDRY]"This is a multi-part message in MIME format with text and recursed Mime alternative.--[BOUNDRY]Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; name="message.txt";Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bitThis is the text message. Gmail does not even show this.--[BOUNDRY]Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary="[BOUNDRY2]";--[BOUNDRY2]Content-Ty pe: text/html; charset=us-asciiContent-Transfer-Encoding: 7bitContent-Disposition: inline;<HTML>This is the HTML message with pictures. <IMG SRC="cid:whatever"></HTML>--[BOUNDRY2]Conten t-Type: image/jpeg; name="file.jpg"Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64Content-ID: <whatever>Content-Disposition: inline;/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQEASABIAAD/4QAWRXhpetc --[BOUNDRY2]--[BOUNDRY] [ Reply to ThisRe:Gmail MIME handling behind Yahoo/Hotmail/MS... by g0at (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @04:54PMRe:Gmail MIME handling behind Yahoo/Hotmail/MS... by agulliford (Score:1) Saturday October 22, @04:57PMRe:Gmail MIME handling behind Yahoo/Hotmail/MS... by g0at (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @05:05PMGmail works fine by agulliford (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @06:20PMRe:Gmail works fine by sparkz (Score:2) Saturday October 22, @07:39PM Anybody want a gmail invite (Score:1, Redundant) by F1re (249002) on Saturday October 22, @04:21PM (#13853757) (http://www.arilan.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday August 21, @06:26AM) I guess everyone that wants an invite has one by now but if there is anyone else send me an email to cdonges at the mail provider we are talking about. [ Reply to This1 reply beneath your current threshold. It works for you ... (Score:3, Interesting) by roubles (716740) on Saturday October 22, @04:34PM (#13853811) '... With Gmail I got the opportunity to change email - to build something that would work for me, not against me.' It works for you ... but why are you pushing it on all gmail users ? Why does any message with the same subject get marked as part of the same conversation ? This is not always desired, and can cause a lot of confusion. This behavior should be configurable. I know the gmail has a "delete-nothing" philosophy, but can we still have a keyboard shortcut to move messages to trash ? I know google is all about searching ... but sometimes sorting is more intuitive and effecient - especially when there are a boatload of search results ... how about providing the ability to sort email based on certain fields? Don't get me wrong. I love gmail. It's right up there with pine and mutt as far as usability is concerned - and thanks to firefox/mozilla, I can use it seamlessly across platforms. I have learn't to live with it's quirks. But my point is gmail is still lacking in the area of customization. It's like we all share Paul's gmail.conf file. Just because it works for Paul, doesn't mean it works for everyone else.