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Comment by twelvechairs | Hacker News Reader

Its a constant wonder how Google and other large companies can't actually realise that their design departments are not doing a great job. You'd think that Apple's successes might actually make them realise that great interfaces (especially if they can outdo the competition) are hugely valuable.

Some things about the new design are defensible, however others are definitely not. My particular pet hate is that all the things that are not mail services (but you can still access within gmail) are splattered around all corners of the screen. Chat is in one corner (along with 'gadgets' - whatever they are). G+ is in the opposite. And in a third (behind a button that is very unhelpfully named 'gmail') are contacts and tasks. Where is the sense in that???

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Apple makes plenty of UI nightmares. Examples include Snow Leopard firewall configuration dialog, the leather versions of iCal/Contacts, the finder, etc.

Don't forget the apple.com online store - I can't even have multiple credit cards on my account.

>large companies can't actually realise that their design departments are not doing a great job

There are obviously a lot of unhappy users with legitimate gripes. But Google would probably be looking at the growth of Gmail to validate what ever the design department is doing. That growth is pretty impressive.

Growth? Gmail grew 3 or 4 years ago. I wouldn't recommend Gmail to anyone now, it's just another Hotmail type service, there's nothing special or good about Gmail anymore.

What really surprised me is how few of my friends get the 'conversation' view even in 2012. After too many awkward conversations and now their 'we've got absolutely no design skills and can't design for shit' redesign, I'm just shrugging when people say their hotmail account has been hacked for the 15th time.

I've been using gmail pretty exclusively for the past 4 years now, and haven't really had to much exposure to other services. But I've been extremely satisfied. Enough to stick around.

So just out of curiosity - what services would you recommend to an inquiring mind?

I use GMail myself extensively, but I can't say I'm happy with it any more. The new redesign brought the general feeling of dissatisfaction to a head.

Interesting, what do/would you recommend? I'm really curious because I honestly can't think of ONE email service that does email better than Gmail.

fastmail's non-free service, maybe? I got it a very long time ago, mainly for the .in email address. It's been no-frills, fast, and (mostly) reliable. I'm still not sure I'd recommend it to a gmail user, but its been a good email account to have.

Careful - don't rely on fastmail for XMPP. I switched to them based on them having that, since I used it a lot with Gmail. Then I found out that fastmail is running some super wobbly XMPP server which kicks you off any time you really get going really quickly in a conversation.

I've opened multiple tickets, and all they can say is "sorry" and "we know about it" and "we're working on it", but actual fixes still haven't come. Having a solid chat experience obviously is not high on their priority list.

Late reply, sorry. I never even knew they had the option of an XMPP server. For what it's worth, I find the mail experience to be both reasonable, and pretty much fat-free, which I guess is all I really need.

I moved my domain and imported all emails from Fastmail to Google Apps because of:

1) Deficient search, the more email you keep, the more you rely on search to find something from few days to few years ago. Incredibly painful with Fastmail.

2) Lack of calendar. It's just so more convenient to have your calendar integrated with email.

3) Lack of Exchange ActiveSync support (as in protocol). This protocol allows to sync email, calendar and contacts from the same account. All these things I want to be synced to my phone. Keeping contacts and calendar in Gmail (because it has ActiveSync support) and email in Fastmail was becoming more and more frustrating.

According to Google(obviously not an unbiased source) Gmail gained around 90M users between 2011 and 2012.

As a publicly traded company, their published estimates of gained users over the past year are probably extremely solid. I wouldn't worry about bias, they would be in heaps of trouble if they lied about these numbers.

Gmail is 3-4 times bigger now than it was then. I think it's approaching 300 million users now.

> But Google would probably be looking at the growth of Gmail to validate what ever the design department is doing.

If past performance is your primary way of to 'validate' anything, you obviously have a very poor understanding of the subject matter and are going to lag behind those who do.

I'm not entirely sure what you're stating here. Businesses shouldn't look at past performances in order to make judgements about future performance? And those who ignore it will have an edge?

No. Thats not at all what I said.

Then what did you say?

andrewfelix was prompting you to elaborate. Just replying "that's not what I said" is completely unproductive - this is meant to be a conversation, not a game of twenty questions. We shouldn't have to guess at your meaning.

Sorry. I thought about this, but it seemed obvious to me. Maybe it isn't. I'll give it a try.

Of course past performance of a product is a factor worth considering in determining the future success of someone in any field. However if you really want to excel at this field, past performance is not likely to be the _primary_ factor (though it could be a smaller factor) in how you 'validate' future worth.

For instance, I can easily measure the past performance of stocks on the stock exchange. However if I really want to succeed in trading shares, 'have the stocks of foobar gone up in the past' is not likely to be the primary way I validate whether foobar is worth investing in.

Hope that helps you :) I didn't mean to sound as indignant as perhaps I did.

With you now. I'd guessed that was what you meant, but wasn't sure.

... incidentally, I still find it strangely novel when disagreements on HN don't turn into Internet Arguments. Makes such a refreshing change from, well, the rest of the web. :)

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