Gmail blog announces Switch To Gmail – a new website that should assist all those who haven’t switched yet. On to of that they added email migration support for another 14 domains – mostly Asian Hotmail, Live, and Yahoo sites.
This announcement is surprisingly close to the recent accusation of Chinese government interference:
“This is a government blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail,” a Google spokesperson said.
Hunch Blog runs a rather massive statistical study of users of different email providers – Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, and AOL. I’ll just copy the snapshot of findings here for my own quick references. But you, you should have a look at the original article.
- AOL users are most likely to be overweight women ages 35-64 who have a high school diploma and are spiritual, but not religious. They tend to be politically middle of the road, in a relationship of 10+ years, and have children. AOL users live in the suburbs and haven’t traveled outside their own country. Family is their first priority. AOL users mostly read magazines, have a desktop computer, listen to the radio, and watch TV on 1-3 DVRs in their home. At home, they lounge around in sweats. AOL users are optimistic extroverts who prefer sweet snacks and like working on a team.
- Gmail users are most likely to be thin young men ages 18-34 who are college-educated and not religious. Like other young Hunch users, they tend to be politically liberal, single (and ready to mingle), and childless. Gmail users live in cities and have traveled to five or more countries. They’re career-focused and plugged in — they mostly read blogs, have an iPhone and laptop, and listen to music via MP3s and computers (but they don’t have a DVR). At home, they lounge around in a t-shirt and jeans. Gmail users prefer salty snacks and are introverted and entrepreneurial. They are optimistic or pessimistic, depending on the situation.
- Hotmail users are most likely to be young women of average build ages 18-34 (and younger) who have a high school diploma and are not religious. They tend to be politically middle of the road, single, and childless. Hotmail users live in the suburbs, perhaps still with their parents, and have traveled to up to five countries. They mostly read magazines and contemporary fiction, have a laptop, and listen to music via MP3s and computers (but they don’t have a DVR). At home, Hotmail users lounge around in a t-shirt and jeans. They’re introverts who prefer sweet snacks and like working on a team. They consider themselves more pessimistic, but sometimes it depends on the situation.
- Yahoo! users are most likely to be overweight women ages 18-49 who have a high school diploma and are spiritual, but not religious. They tend to be politically middle of the road, in a relationship of 1-5 years, and have children. Yahoo! users live in the suburbs or in rural areas and haven’t traveled outside their own country. Family is their first priority. They mostly read magazines, are almost equally likely to have a laptop or desktop computer, listen to the radio and cds, and watch TV on 1-2 DVRs in their home. At home, Yahoo! users lounge around in pajamas. They’re extroverts who prefer sweet snacks and like working on a team. Yahoo! users are optimistic or pessimistic, depending on the situation.
Once again Google demonstrates the proper way to handle issues. Due to their software update, some users temporary lost access to emails. Instead of hiding and silencing, Google published a blog post explaining the issue, as well where and when more information would be available. Not to mention that loss of service is an extremely rare occasion, and loss of data is even more so. This time, it seems, all data is recoverable from tape backups. All it takes is a little time.
Imagine the sinking feeling of logging in to your Gmail account and finding it empty. That’s what happened to 0.02% of Gmail users yesterday, and we’re very sorry. The good news is that email was never lost and we’ve restored access for many of those affected. Though it may take longer than we originally expected, we’re making good progress and things should be back to normal for everyone soon.
In times like that, keeping your users up to date is vital. All the press releases and marketing newsletters in the world won’t buy you a fraction of the trust that a simple blog post during the downtime will bring you.
I was quite surprised today how well the standard HTML (non-JavaScript) version of Gmail works in console browser links. Everything is there – folders, labels, messages in inbox, search, and even compose. I don’t think that too many people are actually using this version, but kudos to Google for still supporting it – in those desperate times, when nothing else works, it’s nice to have at least this front covered.
I’ve been waiting for this feature for years and finally it arrived! For those of us who have multiple accounts configured in Gmail, custom per-account signatures are supported. No more copy-pasting from templates, Greasemonkey scripts, and Canned responses trickery. Go to your Settings and configure a separate signature for each account. And it gets better than that – you can even do rich-text signatures if you use HTML emails a lot.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you to the whole Gmail team and those guys who made this handy feature happen. I wanted this for a while!