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Monday, June 21. 2004Stupid Corporate Descisions
Today I have discovered that Gmail (Google's E-mail service, to those living under a rock) had decided to increase their user base by allowing secondary (referred by existing members) to invite up to 3 of their friends to Gmail. The popularity of the service still seems high despite the privacy issues some people choose to be panicky about as my 3 invites were gone in a matter of minutes. Although Google was clearly not ready for the influx of the new users, since all of the people whom I sent the invites reported seeing an error message saying that the service is temporarily unavailable. This was further confirmed by few other people who got invites from other people.
This however is not really the the most interesting thing. What is quite interesting is that 2 premier free e-mail (and pay?) providers, Yahoo and Hotmail (MS) have blocked Gmail invites. At first I was a little sceptical of this, despite the long thread on this topic on Slashdot, however when I sent one of my friends a Gmail invite to a Hotmail account even after a few hours he didn't have anything, while a regular e-mail arrived almost instantly. It seems like a pretty stupid decision on behalf of Y! and Hotmail since not only does it generate bad publicity for them but it also gives Gmail free publicity and credibility (since apparently the big guys are afraid of it). You really gotta wonder what's going through the minds of marketing drones at Y! and Hotmail who made this decision. Trackbacks
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Dominik on :
Actually, I can't confirm that.. I invited Hotmail and Yahoo users and both worked quite fine. That was a couple of days ago, though, so maybe they changed it in between. Sending emails to Yahoo and Hotmail accounts works still pretty well, though.
D. on :
I think it's mostly there to prevent people from making multiple accounts. Though mind you most people have more then 3 e-mail accounts that they can use.
Dominik on :
Well, I have like 5, that I actively use. I try to keep things separated, like uni-mails just on the uni-account, work mails just on the work account, one for private things, one for web things and so on..
Fanilia on :
Wouldn't know never heard of Gmail (not a surprise) and have msn mail.
Faraz on :
I got invited to use GMail and the invitation was sent to a hotmail adress... ??
NeverMind on :
I also got my invitation on my hotmail account!
not just that, I also made some tests and sent some messages to my hotmail and Yahoo! accounts and both was recived instantly! if some messages failed to reach it's final point, it doesn't mean that the reciver is blocking them! |
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