Totally different companies now. They do have an agreement to not compete in most countries though. The only countries both are present are Germany and the United States.
205 karma · joined August 31, 2011
But the biggest drawback right now that I can see, is mobile. Their app does not support threaded conversations or any of the newer features that we've come to expect because of Gmail. You also can't use a third party app like k9. So for me at least, it's not good enough yet to use as my primary account. Really wish it was though.
Although that seems like a bonus as the random seating was the second best method.