Hacker News Reader

Comment by xg15 | Hacker News Reader

> The vast majority of people have forgotten that they aren't an email, webapp, cloud storage, or online translation provider.

This is all well and good, but they cornered the market for email, webapp, cloud storage and online translation products (and most importantly smartphones and web browsers). So until there is a viable alternative that the average person knows about, this will not change.

View on HN

Generally speaking, the cornered the market through building good products that beat the competition. Do you remember free email providers prior to gmail? ISPs who you maintained a paying customer relationship with offered worse quotas and outdated web mails.

I remember Hotmail

I remember postmaster.co.uk and hotmail.com, they were around way before Gmail, and were less invasive, but I got my own domain and I serve my own emails since 2000 so I got that covered. I like my emails like I like my newspaper: NOT to read them together with someone else. I do know that emails are clear text etc but it's not fun that I get an email about XYZ and then every website I visit shows me ads about XYZ.

Yes, I remember plenty of free providers (as well as quality paid ones, and ISP ones, for example GMX and Ilse), including with IMAP/POP3, TLS/SSL support, anti spam features, anti virus features etc. Gmail was unique in three ways: it had a huge quota (for that time), and it offered a slick web interface. The other way Gmail was unique was the invite. If you gotta get invited to become part of the (secret) club, that makes it more special.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com