While I agree that GMail is not by any means a "walled garden" or any such nonsense, GMail was certainly NOT the first webmail service to allow POP3 access. In fact, several webmail services allowed at least POP3 access, and even IMAP access, before GMail even came into being.
As for corporate motives, "evil" or not, none of these corporations are operating on altruistic principles. They are in business to make money - if not, they would/should be non-profits. That said, they do what they think they need to do to achieve business goals. Some are ruthless, some try to pursue reasonable means of doing business, others believe they are being reasonable (really!) while in fact are just ruthless. Obviously, discussions of corporate agendas is fair game in a discussion forum such as the Java Posse forum. But the notion that any of these guys are "morally superior" to other corporations is a philosophical discussion at best. On Mar 16, 12:12 am, Reinier Zwitserloot <[email protected]> wrote: > No, it's *NOT* a walled garden at all. It is the opposite. Google was > the first company that let you get at your web-based email via POP3/ > IMAP. This was absolutely unique and that combined with the 1GB meant > that almost everyone believed it was in fact an April Fools joke > (GMail was announced on april 1st). Separate from google's moral high > ground or lack thereof as a company, calling GMail a walled garden is > insulting. It tore down the walls of web-based email. It was and is a > *fantastic* feather in the cap of the open internet. > > As far as IMAP servers go, gmail isn't the best out there, but being > slightly non-confirming to spec does not a walled garden make. The way > gmail handles its IMAP is public information and nobody is going to > get sued or impeded in trying to release a tool that reads into / out > of this slightly non-conforming IMAP clone. > > Let's not lose sight of what 'walled garden' means in this discussion. > > On Mar 16, 12:16 am, Peter Becker <[email protected]> wrote: > > > GMail often doesn't show you your own mail if you post through IMAP. > > Most of the time, actually -- but not always. > > > GMail is another walled garden -- it works well as long as you use the > > GMail interface, but the IMAP interface behaves weird in some regards > > and the fact that renaming an email subject renames a whole thread for > > GMail UI users is ridiculous. The walls are pretty low, though :-) > > > Peter > > > On 16/03/10 03:45, Karsten Silz wrote: > > > > Hi, > > > > I thought I had posted this interesting reading about a sorry > > > development yesterday, but I must have been mistaken. > > > >http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/technology/14brawl.html -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
