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by JohnFen 619 days ago
OK, but that can't be realistically described as solving an "impossible problem". The problem is how to associate emails into threads -- which was solved before gmail came around.

What you're talking about is how those threads are presented to the user. That's just a UI decision, not solving something difficult.
1 comments
saurik 619 days ago
Many people consider(ed) the problem of how to present email in a way that they understand -- not a crazy tree exposing the underlying reply structure -- difficult, as they had never experienced such.
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JohnFen 618 days ago
They may not have experienced such, but threading presented this way was already a well-established thing before gmail. Not so much with email as with newsgroups, but still.

Also, some people considering a problem "hard" is an entirely different thing than a problem being widely considered as "impossible". This was not anything close to an impossible problem.

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