[fingerprinter]

This is one huge advantage to GMail for business. When I joined a group/company I could go and read the entire engineering@ or bd@ ML (called Google Groups, I believe) from start to finish. I don't know if other email systems do this but it's something I kinda can't live without anymore.

Doesn't help when people send to non-ML or individual emails, but it works wonders for ML and distribution lists.

[fennecfoxen]

> Google Groups

Google Groups is basically newsgroups - indeed, I believe the product you use in the business evolved out of Google's old Usenet interface - except you read archived messages in Google Groups over a crummy web interface instead of something with RFC standardized protocols and formats and a variety of high-performance native clients specifically designed for browsing that sort of thing.

That said, the search is better.

Now get off my lawn.

[peatmoss]

> crummy web interface instead of something with RFC standardized protocols and formats and a variety of high-performance native clients specifically designed for browsing that sort of thing.

This feels like the paradox of the new generation of tech tools. I find the new stuff much more accessible, but much less deep. And that's thinking of Google's web stuff that, on balance, is much better than others'. Search is magical, but I find myself much less productive than I was with some of the old generation email / newsgroup software, in spite of the fact that I've now probably logged more hours using the new stuff. Maybe I'm just less obsessive about really learning the tools as I've gotten older, or maybe the tools just have less depth.