Friday, December 12, 2008

Yahoo mail to Gmail

I'm one of the many users who migrated from yahoo mail to gmail. btw, I've been holding this gmail id for more than 3 years while I've started using it only now. In the beginning gmail was really bad (to be frank, silly) that I was taken aback when I first registered. gmail has improved a lot since and then and still is improving.

Now, the major reason for me to move on to gmail is security. In the recent articles that I've read and from my personal experience, I believe that google takes more care when it comes to security of your account. I was very impressed with the login details that gmail provides (not sure if everyone has seen this). I can see a list of IP addresses from where someone (suppose to be me) logged into my gmail account -- impressive!

Here is my personal view of these two mail services:

Y! mail

Pros:
  • excellent interface thru ajax with tabs, shortcuts, drag-drop etc., (gmail is nowhere close to this).
  • and thats it for the free version :(
Cons:
  • less secure
  • no concept of labelling (or tagging) as opposed to moving to folders.
  • no support for pop server
  • limited space 1GB (well actually I never reached even close to 1GB in ymail)
Gmail

Pros:
  • more secure
  • labelling mails (this is confusing to people initially)
  • single signon (google account is also a openID)
  • nonstop increase in storage (already 7.5GB)
  • pop3, imap, mail forwarding and lot more services for free
  • libgmail - application programming interface for gmail (this is on my hitlist)
  • APIs make it possible for other apps to integrate freely with gmail - like iGoogle
  • i can definitely find few more if I think for a while
Cons:
  • poorer interface (when compared to ymail)
  • I really thought for a while, but could not come up with more cons.
Now you know why I moved to gmail. But that is not the end of the game. The main problem is about how to transfer the old mails from y! mail to gmail. This is very crucial otherwise, I will have to endlessly maintain two email accounts -- i hate that. That is a separate topic as to how I moved my mails onto gmail.. will write on it later !

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