[notyourday]

> Agreed and I will add that a huge reason Google is used by so many was very effective spam filtering. A huge reason why hosting your own email is hard? Getting filtered by Google because of the massive amount of spam they are blocking.

No. It is the domain. No one else in this business has a short pronounceable *mail.com

[wyqydsyq]

> No. It is the domain. No one else in this business has a short pronounceable *mail.com

Except for, oh, I don't know, maybe https://mail.com/ ?

[reader_mode]

Wow, you get this popup on the site :

    Note: Your browser version is outdated. We recommend using the new Firefox Browser. Download now for free!

My browser is up-to-date, their "download now" link takes you to their own download page with a custom Firefox download. They seem like call center scammer level scum. Wonder why Mozzila is allowing them to use their trademarks like this.

[notyourday]

They aren't really in a serious email business.

[bryanrasmussen]

the name is not as good as hotmail, mainly because the standard pronunciation is geemail, meaning that back when the name was not well known you could theoretically say gmail.com to someone and they might think you had said email.com if they were a little hard of hearing or your enunciation was not clear.

the implementation however was much better than hotmail or any other web-based email at the time.

To argue the name was the important aspect is to argue marketing is more important than the quality of what is being marketed, an idea that HN is generally not very open to.

[notyourday]

> the name is not as good as hotmail, mainly because the standard pronunciation is geemail, meaning that back when the name was not well known you could theoretically say gmail.com to someone and they might think you had said email.com if they were a little hard of hearing or your enunciation was not clear

gmail became a brand nearly immediately via initial scarcity of invitations. Hotmail and yahoo mail sounded like idiotic kid email addresses. Webmail never tried doing email. Pobox.com did only forwarding and was too linked to the physical mail in the mind of people. Same went for mailboxes.com.

> To argue the name was the important aspect is to argue marketing is more important than the quality of what is being marketed, an idea that HN is generally not very open to.

Yet the only successful companies are the companies with great marketing and an OK ( or more product ).

[bryanrasmussen]

>gmail became a brand nearly immediately via initial scarcity of invitations

yes, to us (the techies), but there are billions of people in the world who didn't know who or what gmail was for a at least 4-5 years. I specifically made the observation of geemail sounding like email because I had that experienced less than a decade ago giving the address to a dentist's secretary in Denmark.

>Yet the only successful companies are the companies with great marketing and an OK ( or more product ).

first of all I'd say Google had a great product and ok marketing for a few years, nowadays they have great marketing, an ok product, and built in market dominance.

So I suppose I can accept that good marketing is a prerequisite but not sufficient.

That said what do you mean by successful? I mean great marketing being required for successful makes you think that the only successful companies can be ones you've heard of, because how successful can a company be that you've never heard of.

And on that note when I tell people I used to work for Thomson Reuters and nobody knows who that is I suppose this means Thomson Reuters is not a successful company?

[notyourday]

> yes, to us (the techies), but there are billions of people in the world who didn't know who or what gmail was for a at least 4-5 years. I specifically made the observation of geemail sounding like email because I had that experienced less than a decade ago giving the address to a dentist's secretary in Denmark.

I would say you have to look at the alternative names - hotmail? yahoo.com? gmail sounds like a fantastic choice.

> That said what do you mean by successful? I mean great marketing being required for successful makes you think that the only successful companies can be ones you've heard of, because how successful can a company be that you've never heard of.

Your target customers know who you are.

> And on that note when I tell people I used to work for Thomson Reuters and nobody knows who that is I suppose this means Thomson Reuters is not a successful company?

Random people are not customers of Thomson Reuters and Thompson Reuters is not in a market of converting them. Those that consume news content as a part of their product know who Thompson Reuters is.

[bryanrasmussen]

>Your target customers know who you are.

I guess if that is the requirement I would say adequate marketing is required to succeed.

[Talanes]

Yahoo tried to make Ymail a thing, but that was long after they'd lost most their market to Google.

[notyourday]

No one took @yahoo.com addresses serious.

[Tyr42]

hotmail.com? Just as many syllables

[notyourday]

Terrible, potentially offensive, branding.

[u801e]

hotmail.com seems to meet the "short pronounceable *mail.com" criterion.