The Google approach to Email
Gmail combines a fast, intuitive interface that’s extremely quick to learn with all the major benefits of working in the cloud. You can store and search gigabytes of messages seamlessly and access your email anywhere.
It also boasts an intelligent spam filtering technology, with many companies reporting a substantial drop in the amount of spam that reaches end users, and simplifying the need for email blacklists and whitelists.
Google Apps Premier users can modify the Postini configuration to tweak this spam filter with finer granularity. Additionally, file attachments in email are automatically scanned for viruses – although this can never be com-pletely foolproof, it undoubtedly reduces the number of virus outbreaks on the desktop.
For mobile users, Gmail synchronizes seamlessly with many modern smartphones, and is integrated natively into Android devices, with apps available for iPhone and Blackberry. On top of all this, die-hard Microsoft Outlook users are still able to access their emailthrough their preferred client, while taking advantage of Gmail’s strengths running onthe server side, which I consider superior to any Microsoft Exchange server implementation I’ve seen.
For the first Gmail users, the experience was a radical departure from traditional emailservices and problems.
What do you get with Gmail?
- Gmail isn’t installed: it’s in your browser and doesn’t leave mailboxes on your machine.
- Gmail is search-based, so you retrieve messages using searches rather than folders.
- Gmail is conversation-based, so threads of emails back-and-forth are displayed as a continuous dialog updated in real-time.
- Gmail is fast, unlike desktop software than slows down as your mailbox grows.
- Gmail is free and you can get started in minutes.
- Gmail is continuously upgraded: there’s no need to perform messy desktop upgrades.
