Yahoo's Geek Statue

Philipp Lenssen writes "Yahoo put up a life-size alpha geek statue in honor of the Yahoo Mail team, which they think beat the Gmail team. The statue's plaque says it's presented "in recognition of tremendous intellectual efforts put forth in order to defeat Gmail", and: "Not since the code breakers in Britain's Bletchley Park deciphered Germany's Enigma code during World War II has so much brainpower been focused on kicking an enemy's ass." Flickr has a photo." It's a nice little article on the difference between two of the net's superpowers.

I've got news for them...

[Daytona955i]

They lost... I've got both a gmail account and a yahoo account and I must say I like the gmail one better. The interface is just much nicer in my opinion.

First Post!

[wundabread]

Also, how is it that they "defeated" Gmail? I have accounts with both and find Gmail superior.

I want one

[MentalMooMan]

I have to say, that's pretty cool. But did they really defeat gmail? I haven't heard anything special about yahoo mail until now.

Re:I've got news for them...

[WindBourne]

gmail is simple and it works. What amazes me is that Yahoo has not asked users which they prefer. This is almost akin to Borland saying that OWL is better than visual (IMHO, OWL was better), or Dr Dos declaring its DOS better than MS-DOS. In each case, the product may have been better, but the vast majority of users said otherwise.

Launch for New Yahoo Mail?

[gabeman-o]

I've heard so much about the new Yahoo Mail interface except I haven't heard a launch date. Am I missing something?

Didn't Yahoo! have webmail first?

[eples]

Did I miss something? Yahoo! had webmail for like a decade, then GMail put it to shame, then Yahoo! ... well did they really update their interface much? It looks and works the same to me.

And now they're giving out statues? Whatever.

They beat a Beta? Ok ...

[dlasley]

If they can a) back the claim to have beaten GMail and b) demonstrate an understanding of how to maintain their competitive advantage *after* GMail is out of Beta, _then_ I will be more interested in paying attention to either crying "We're #1!"

Re:I've got news for them...

[bogado]

No they didn't loose they are measuring their incredible success in volume of emails per second that get throw the system....

Re:They beat a Beta? Ok ...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no! Google doesn't get to hide behind its beta status! No, sir!

Re:I've got news for them...

[cuerty]

He is a neutral Internet user, he is the target of both systems: he is the judge, he isn't just the only one.

Anyway I've found that Gmail interface it's more confortable to use at work and for tech stuff (like mailing lists) while Yahoo's one is more confortable for the normal user, the one who store photos about their trip to the coast and stuff like that.

Re:I've got news for them...

[QuietLagoon]

"Not since the code breakers in Britain's Bletchley Park deciphered Germany's Enigma code during World War II has so much brainpower been focused on kicking an enemy's ass."

This statement is a joke, right?

Is it possible to mod the start message of a thread as "funny"?

Re:Here, have a trophy.

[clap_hands]

You're misinformed, I'm afraid. Most of the Polish techniques relied on exploiting weak indicator systems used by the sender to convey the start positions of the Enigma rotors to the recipient. The indicator system was changed in May 1940, obsoleting the Polish techniques. British codebreakers responded with other methods, primarily the Turing-Welchman bombe, which required a short "crib" of known plaintext (most of the Polish techniques were ciphertext-only attacks).

I would also question whether the Polish mathematicians (Marian Rejewski, you're thinking of) actually introduced new theorems into mathematics. I believe that the theorem which is sometimes called "the theorem that won World War II" was already known. Rejewski's insight was that this branch of abstract mathematics could have an application in cryptanalysis -- something that nobody had ever thought of before.

Re:Here, have a trophy.

[nuggetman]

IIRC, doesn't Google offer a free cafeteria with a rather amazing selection? Not having to buy a lunch (and maybe dinner) every day cuts down the cost of living a fair amount

Rich Text

[cciRRus]

gmail : k.i.s.s. interface, allowing for rich text
yahoo : no rich text possibilities found

Actually if you had used the Internet Explorer, you would be able to enable the rich text capability of Yahoo! Mail. Ahh I see, you must be on Linux.

Re:I've got news for them...

[diegocgteleline.es]

You know, the whole point of Gmail is NOT deleting things. A "delete" button is against gmail spirit: You don't want to "delete things", you just want to get the things you want, and you don't need to delete the non-important emails to get them, you just need a way to ignore them (gmail)

Yahoooooooo, are you listening ?

[itsme1234]

...because I have a couple of ways in which you could really, really improve your service. I might even consider switching back to you.

1. insane captcha when SENDING mails. There shouldn't be any captcha for sending emails, especially when I have the account for 5 years or so and I sent like 233 mails in total. But no, what if I'm spammer ? You know, when I click "send" I expect to be able to just walk away (and one time I did !) but the mail hasn't been sent because of this crazy captcha. AND I have to admit I failed the captcha at least two times. There's no IQ test, just that you have more than one option to "read" the damn thing.

2. crazy spam filter. I'm getting mail from people who use ONLY the web interface and send like 2 emails/month and it's marked as spam. Is it that hard to flag the mail sent internally as NOT-SPAM (that is if the sender is not reaching a threshold of emails/day/hour/whatever) ?

3. crazy, moving ads (sometimes offensive or sexual). Slashdot is getting there too

4. I understand I have to click thru' as much as possible to get more money in displayed ads but the emails are in yahoo "one click too far" compared to Google

5. please don't silently change my outgoing emails: don't change "medieval" to "medireview" for my own protection, don't add ads (or at least let me see the ads before), etc

6. lack of features (free features, that is): google has pop3, forwarding, 2+G and the ability to send email from any address (as long as you can receive email on that address).

IE5 Vs. Netscape 4.x.x.x

[JesseCluster]

Does anyone remember when IE 5 employees slapped that 10/12 foot giant "e" on the Netscape campus to proove that they "won" the browser wars...?

http://news.com.com/2100-1001-203835.html?legacy=c net/ [com.com]

It was just a dumb prank that prooved to be a self fullfilling prophesy for a good many years. Maybe this is just the kind of one-up-manship Yahoo needs to make it's employees at least, believe they are actually harder working or more dedicated to their craft.

In any case my allusion above should be enough to show how ridiculous anyone calling themselves the winner in these kinds of battles. IE is hardly superior to most of it's competition these days.

Yahoo!'s Motivation

[uan]

There is one basic motivational factor that seperates Gmail from Yahoo! Mail: serving the customer.

Google Mail listens to feedback and designs their webmail to most benifit the user, while Yahoo! Mail clearly has their motivation elsewhere. Also, Yahoo would not even be motivated to improve their webmail interface if it hadn't been for Google releasing their far superior webmail service.

Their sources of motivation is what seperates the good(Yahoo) from the great(Google).

Publicity

[erica_ann]

It's all about publicity anymore...
Sure, publicity has a factor.. and some even thrive off of negative attention.

But, in the end, its quality that counts.. not the publicity. Word of mouth will spread faster than any statue, prank, or publicity.

If a company wants the word spread.. they should invest in quality and consider the user.. not publicity competitions

Why hasn't anybody else said this yet?

[RowboatRobot]

Why has nobody else picked up on this yet? It's obvious what Yahoo is doing. They're marketing to a demographic [thebestpag...iverse.net](maddox.xmission.com). It's trying to build an image for itself. Companies do this all the time. They figure out what their target demographic is (in this case, they think their desired audience is a bunch of fun-loving technically-inclined computer users) and they market to that demographic. In this case they're trying to hook on the kind of people which work hard to spread gmail and firefox just out of loyalty. They're just pathetically posturing and pandering to this audience, but they don't even know how to do it. All they can do is just jump around like an annoying 5 year old trying to get attention. And when I say jumping around trying to get attention, I mean something like this: "Hey check out cool we are! We're so hip and funny [slashdot.org](slashdot) and in touch with today's teechnology and cool stuff [slashdot.org](slashdot), forget gmail, look at us! Look how cool and funny and hip and fresh we are, and how we put a cool, fun spin on technology! Google's just a bunch of old fogeys. But everyone here is just a bunch of cool and smart dudez having a good time!" It's pathetic. They don't even have attention, because they've been so stagnant and moronic and lazy for the past, oh, I dunno, 4 years, that they've lost all loyalty form anyone who's even slightly technically inclined to bigger and better services (and remember, those are the people who really help a website get attention). But Yahoo is finally feeling that it can't just act like a lazy monopolistic conglomerate anymore, because it's realizing that its shares are slipping to the cooler, fresher, more in touch, and much more useful google. Yahoo realizes that if it doesn't get its ass in gear, its going to be losing its members to google soon. So, like the stupid, slow, lazy, and out of touch corporate conglomerate it is, it tries to get the attention that google has from being cool, fresh, and in touch. Yahoo tries to get this attention by making itself out to be cool, fresh, and in touch. By jumping up and down and saying "look how cool I am! I'm so cool!" The difference is, google looks cool without even trying. Google is cool not because it spends time trying to bolster its personal image (although it does focus on image some) of being a relaxed, good natured company. Google is cool because it is a relaxed, good natured company. It doesn't just pretend to have those plastic balls all around, or have that big, open, cafeteria. That 20% of all employees time which must go to projects of their liking isn't all just a hoax. Google is actually a company based on relaxed, good natured principles. But yahoo, which I'm sure is still based around a traditional business model, with CEOs and departments, and 8 levels of management and corporate beauracracy, a company whose goals are mostly sluggish and monopolistic paradigms (such as being the king of online TV [wired.com](wired.com), which it has now failed miserably at due to iTunes jumping out of nowhere and kicking its ass.), is most obviously not cool and fresh and funny and funky. This is all just showy propaganda. Yahoo's upper management have just given the OK for the marketing department to play up this major 100+ employee corporation as being this cool, fresh, hip group of fun tech guys just cooperating for the heck of it to create good stuff. That is everything yahoo is not. I imagine we'll see more bullshit like this as yahoo makes more and more desperate attempts to get a hold on its slipping popularity, perhaps some of them may work. But all the make-up in the world won't hide the fact that yahoo is an ugly, decrepit, slow moving and out-of-shape hag of a corporation. Unless yahoo chan

Re:This is Wrong

[johansalk]

What hatred?!

Everything I have written about you can find everywhere if you cared. Even those who stand up for Churchill don't deny his faults "Much has been made of the implicit hypocrisy of Churchill in declaring such sweeping rights of self-determination which in no way affected his attitude toward the British Empire. This criticism is certainly valid..." http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cf m?pageid=281 [winstonchurchill.org] "

Read his book "The River War - An Account of the Reconquest of the Sudan (1902)" in which he admires the efficiency of a European power at wiping out the "barbarians" and "savages" that dared resist it and defend themselves "Thus ended the battle of Omdurman--the most signal triumph ever gained by the arms of science over barbarians. Within the space of five hours the strongest and best-armed savage army yet arrayed against a modern European Power had been destroyed and dispersed, with hardly any difficulty, comparatively small risk, and insignificant loss to the victors." http://www.nalanda.nitc.ac.in/resources/english/et ext-project/history/riverwar/leftframe.html [nitc.ac.in]

If you find "hatred" in what I said, it is Churchill you hate!

The Nazis and Soviets had their faults, no doubt, but Churchill's "evil empire" rhetoric was bullshit! Hitler was no less "evil" than Churchill was, by any means. In fact, man for man and cause for cause, Hitler is far more respectable than that patrician pig.

Re:I've got news for them...

[orasio]

You suspect.
They research.
Most Human Interfaces specialists will tell you why "archive" is better than "delete".
All actions should be reversible when possible. "Delete" is not reversible. That is a usability nightmare. getting rid of that function for good would even be nice.
If you look at standalone mail programs, they don't delete the mail, they send it to a "Trash" folder. That way, you can undo that action easily. When you need space, you have to explicitly empty that folder. The problem is that now you lose that "undelete" operation. You might say you don't need it, but the reason that they have it is that people use it. The problem with common approaches to the trash bin, in my opinion, is that it's not clear for the user _when_ you actually lose the "undelete" option, specially if you have filters that delete messages older than _X_ days.
With a new name for the trash folder ("archived"), Google keeps the functionality (one-button move-to-trash) but fixes it a bit (naming it "archive" helps understanding the importance of apparently unimportant mail.

Re:I've got news for them...

[Servants]

If you look at standalone mail programs, they don't delete the mail, they send it to a "Trash" folder. That way, you can undo that action easily. When you need space, you have to explicitly empty that folder. The problem is that now you lose that "undelete" operation. You might say you don't need it, but the reason that they have it is that people use it. The problem with common approaches to the trash bin, in my opinion, is that it's not clear for the user _when_ you actually lose the "undelete" option, specially if you have filters that delete messages older than _X_ days.
With a new name for the trash folder ("archived"), Google keeps the functionality (one-button move-to-trash) but fixes it a bit (naming it "archive" helps understanding the importance of apparently unimportant mail.

So if Google feels that it's valuable to keep apparently unimportant mail, why not simply cease to expunge old messages from the trash?

The alternative they've chosen, as you say, is to use the archive folder as a trash can. Which makes it a rather strange place to keep messages I know I actually want to archive, since all the chaff interferes with search. Wouldn't three folders -- archive (never delete), trash (also never delete, and exclude from search by default), and spam (delete after n days, and exclude from search by default -- have been more elegant?

Personally, I don't have a need for the archive folder at all; my messages pretty much stick in my inbox forever, and it appears to have exactly the same properties as the archive (never delete, search by default). But I also have no objection, as the feature requires no extra clicks out of me, and I understand some people like keeping their inboxes small as a kind of to-do list.

That said, I do like basically everything else about GMail. Labels and rules work very well for me.