Gmail Reveals Google's Achilles' Heel: 'Arrogance'

Search giant is starting to look a lot like the companies it toppled in late 90s: Blodget
By Nick McMaster,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 17, 2009 3:49 PM CDT
Gmail Reveals Google's Achilles' Heel: 'Arrogance'
The Gmail logo.   (Google)

Henry Blodget of the Business Insider recently switched from Yahoo Mail to Gmail, mainly because Yahoo had become “buggy, inconsistent, and unreliable.” For basic functionality—and spam-blocking—Gmail performs well. But he hates the "conversation model" for email. Why? "Because I can't easily find the exact message I'm looking for. Because I have to scroll down to find the new email. I can't change the headline of a message string if I want to just hit reply and change the topic."

But more than the model itself, Blodget hates that Google imposes it on the user. Why doesn’t Google offer the choice to view email in the conventional format? "Only one answer seems plausible, and it's the answer that gets to Google's Achilles heel: arrogance." Google has decided it knows what’s best for users, and that “leaves an opening for someone, somewhere to do what Google once did to Yahoo: Do it better.”
(More Gmail stories.)

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