Why and why not Gmail

I had a small discussion recently with two of my University’s lecturers on Google Mail (Gmail). They asked me if I trust Google with my email, and my reply was why wouldn’t I? After all, I am no one important, with no critical information on my email account.

Gmail user-base increases rapidly with the announcement that they can take business users now, and you can host your domain there for free. The only “catch” is the text ads they serve (which I don’t mind at all), and that we have no idea what Google do with our emails and the personal information it collects daily, and there is a good change that we’d never know.

Then I’ve started thinking why I use Gmail, and what offers that I can not change to another email client. I’ve been using Gmail for the past 4 years and since I’ve never used a “fat” email client. But what does Gmail offers that make it so unique among competition?

It’s a webmail. I can be at my girlfriend’s house, open a browser and check my emails. It doesn’t require any forms of configuration, just your username and password, and you can have access to your emails from anywhere in the world you can get internet access
The search feature is fast. Its faster than 90% of “fat” email clients out there, and most of the times 10 times smarter as well.
Fast and simple user interface. For a web-app gmail is blazing fast, and also faster than most of the “fat” clients. In addition to that its very simple and intuitive to use. The interface is not cluttered, just the basics you need.
No more folders and subfolders and trees. Just labels. Why didn’t anyone think of this before? Folders make your life miserable, and gmail has taken them away.
Gmail removes you the burden of maintaining multiple email accounts, allowing you to forward all your emails there, and even reply with a different from address.
Also removes the burden of maintaining your own e-mail server. Yes, I can use my ISP’s mail server, but then again, why trust my ISP and not trust Gmail?

I could possibly find more to list here, but these are the main reasons that I still use Gmail, and not use plain-old-mail setup. But when they asked me that question they got me thinking. Working for an ISP, I have the luxury to have my own personal server hosted in their data-center for free, so I have the resources to host a few users on my own. So I’ve looked around on what’s available on free (preferably open-source) e-mail server solutions that come with a webmail.

Well the results were disappointing. No open-source e-mail server solution can reach Gmail’s usability. Some projects were too immature for everyday use, others had a very heavy web UI. Well, I can always use Apple’s excellent Mail app, but then again I refuse to use a fat email client, since I want to have access to my mail from the web. Unfortunately, there is no drop-in replacement for what Gmail offers.

What we can do about this? Although I find the thought of developing an AJAX web-2.0ish webmail client, modeled after Gmail’s line of success, very intriguing, it would take a lot of effort and time, which unfortunately currently don’t have. Unfortunately as the situation stands right now, I can’t see myself migrating from Gmail any time now, unless somebody offers me an alternative I haven’t yet considered.