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Comment by ajg1977 | Hacker News Reader

ajg1977

I will be really interested to see this, because as it stands Facebook's messaging interface is barely any better than 2001's Hotmail (you do get a pretty picture with address autocomplete though).

Going from where they are now to anywhere close to being a 'Gmail killer' is a humongous step.

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I heard that Zuckerberg locked Paul Buchheit in a closet and told him he couldn't come out until he cloned Gmail.

It's being put into 'The Social Network 2: Return of the Lawsuits' as I write.

I hear their legal strategy is: "If you invented facemail you would have invented facemail." followed by writing a cheque for a tenth of what they just raised.

"In the scheme of things, it is a parking ticket" ;)

Sorkin, is that you?

"Hey man, want any emails from people at harvard? I have them all. They trust me. Fucking idiots."

Can we stop with the movie references please?

I'd believe it

maybe they'll let him out on Nov15th then: http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/11/facebook-gmail-titan/

Is that why Paul ran off to YC, as soon as it's done?

A humongous step that Techcrunch is more than happy to make.

Techcrunch? What are you talking about?

The title of their article.

"killer" is journalistic shorthand for "rival", they just want the conflict and the attendant pageviews, they don't care who wins or who is likely to win.

Or if there is even a winner. Sometimes people forget that companies compete with each other and we don't all use the same products from the same companies.

TC cited that as the phrase being used inside Facebook. Did you RTFA?

Ok so what step did Techcrunch make and what does it have to do with the either Facebook or the title of the article? It just makes little sense.

Actually, I think the starkness of Facebook's messaging UI is its greatest strength. If they can somehow make real email as simple as that, abstracting away all the decades-old cruft of email that Gmail only partially abstracts away, it will be quite a formidable entry.

Add a script that allows non-technical users to log into their Gmail account and set up a redirect... and things could get very interesting.

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