gmail benefits

what are the benefits of google mail

[shivaprem]

i really want to know what are the benefits of having a gmail account i have but not using it

[TypicalSurfer]

None, I personally avoid sending anything to gmail accounts because I'm not comfortable with google retaining what I wrote for infinity, nor am I interested in creating content for their contextual ads.

For instance I wouldn't like to send an email of condolences to someone and then they get whacked with funeral and casket adwords :(. The whole thing about Gmail and the way it functions has never given me a comfort level, its half email, half spy stuff.

just my 2 centavos.

[Lipik]

I do like GMail.
Benefits : fast, good user interface, available everywhere you find a computer with internet, almost endless space.
Nice little things : spelling checker, forward, labels instead of maps (once you get used to it its nice), so far good spam filter, good preview for images, pdf and pps-files .

About privacy : yes G computers scan your mail, but for commercial reasons. Your normal mail (Outlook Express etc) can olso been red by your provider, government etc... So that way there is no difference..

[mm1220]

Great search facility which just blows away the search in other clients like Lotus Notes for example.

The innovative use of labels instead of folders.

I like the nifty little RSS feed functionality (web clips).

[inuwolf]

the ability to create custom filters is awesome. you can create filters for anything, not just spam, that will do a given thing (ie: star, add a label, automatically archive, automatically delete) to email with given keywords (be it in the subject, body, or address fields).

no other free email services gives you a feature like this.

[NevF]

Well tbh, I would have said GMail was thee best with 2748mb of space, I use, simple, handy and innovative. Top quality features, they go further into the email technology more than other companies. By that I mean, they don't have the best layout, send & receive email features but they sure have the best behind-the-scenes features.

The scanning for adwords is 100% automative. as regards the pooling of info, millions of emails are sent per day and it is protected from subpoena's afaik

Well, asking for my advice, Yahoo Mail Beta is hitting into GMail producing a service which I so far(layout, features, etc) will nail GMail. it is much better...

so, your not missing *too* much...!

[Hipsoul]

I'm sorry, but besides gMail offering you a free email service,
how does this relate to advertising?

I mean, I already own a proper website / domain name...
so I already have the acommpanying email accounts that come with that.

I have no need for gMail, the same way I have no need for Hotmail or YahooMail...
how can gMail benefit from an advertising perspective?

I gather that's what the initial question was pertaining too.

[gpilling]

I like Gmail a lot, but I would love it if there was a clone that could run on my own server. Anyone know of one?

Also, while in Indonesia recently Gmail took forever to load up. All those nifty features dont work well in places where "broadband" is slower than dial-up. A couple of times I got it to switch to HTML mode, which was fine, but I couldn't figure out how to launch Gmail that way.

Best features to me: search, threading of emails.

[born2run]

I don't quite understand why gmail bunches all email from one sender together (or atleast give an option to not to). It is damn confusing!