We made Inky from scratch -- without building on top of GMail, Outlook, etc. -- partly to avoid the lock-in, but primarily because it's hard to imagine fundamentally changing the email user experience without touching any of the code for the mail platform itself. The downside, of course, is the usual trade-off: by not layering on top of somebody else's already-debugged stack, we have to make our own huge raft of code work right.
The analogy to Lotus Notes should be a wake-up call to CIOs everywhere; our analysis of the enterprise email/messaging space makes it clear that the big companies still using Lotus Notes are doing so primarily because they have too much investment in the Notes ecosystem ("intranet web sites" built on top of Notes, etc.) to switch. They come up with an internal estimate of the cost to convert all the stuff they've built on the Lotus platform over to something else and realize that figure exceeds the likely N-year savings from switching. So, conversion project not approved by CFO. Next!
We (streak.com) spend a ton of time optimizing performance and memory usage. Not all extensions do this though.
If you're interested, there were 2 great talks at this years Google IO on how some gmail engineers spent a year reducing memory usage (and thus increasing performance) by a factor of almost 4x for power users.
The one thing Google will need to address is GMail's memory usage - it's bad enough on its own, but once you start adding extensions to it... I no longer keep GMail open unless absolutely necessary.
[Edit: link corrected]
(Unless they fix several issues with scrolling, especially in firefox.)
Can you imagine Gmail as the new Lotus Notes? Specially as third-party vendors flock in to fill the gaps? The potential for lock-in is absolutely dizzying; moving away from Gmail once you have your whole workflow automated would feel like going back to punch cards.
Of course it remains to be seen whether this is just a first move by Google towards a big goal or whether Google is just playing with new Gmail functionality to see what happens.
Think it something like -- the core-emailing is there within gmail, but extend the functionalities via services. Some external app uses to build services on top of emailing.
Something like -- Hootsuite on top of twitter, Hootsuite manages and adds value by its own apps.
Think: we have Gmail powered apps? A link on top like: my-installed-apps -- to easily navigate and find newer apps for your workflows.
Build and think platforms and API's. Not consume API's :)
Look at Streak (http://streak.com),
Right Inbox (http://rightinbox.com).
ActiveInboxhq (http://www.activeinboxhq.com/index.php)
Any company can compete with many Google products if they have a product that is almost as good, if not better, with way better customer service.
What most people want from Gmail is a sleek, reliable and fast email client. The Google+ integration is already annoying enough, please stop bloating it with more features.
* show more contextual advertising
* track you as you travel around the web (since you're more likely to be logged in)
* use other Google services - especially Google+
So by adding proprietary features that only mean anything when viewed within Gmail itself, it's a big win for them. Also, once people become used to the microdata, they can gradually reuse it in other Google services. For example - complete a Google form straight from an email, that then does something special on an App Engine product.
The email problem isn't figuring out what the sender wants me to do with each message, it's figuring out what I want to do. This is e-junkmail and has less to do with making the recipient's life better and more to do with advertising.
Pop-up blocker for email, anyone?
"Today, we are introducing schemas in emails to make messages more interactive and allow developers to deliver a slice of their apps to users’ inboxes.
Schemas in emails can be used to represent various types of entities and actions. Email clients that understand schemas, such as Gmail, can render entities and actions defined in the messages with a consistent user interface."
I haven't looked into this in any depth but it doesn't necessarily seem Gmail specific (a good thing) but it does mean even more clicky buttons in an interface where I can't easily see what those buttons actually do (less good from a security/phishing standpoint).
[1] http://googleappsdeveloper.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/introducin...
Gmail, as an email client, has always just been adequate. It isn't reliable at notifying me of incoming mails without the installation of extra software or downgrading to Chrome. And the real killer, it doesn't support multiple accounts in anything like a usable way.
I'm putting "logged in Google" in the same box as Facebook, and only using it in a separate browser.
I particularly like its identity support.
I can't stand Thunderbird.
