I disagree. I never saw an ad for gmail. The initial exclusivity was a gimmick, but it was dropped pretty quickly. As I recall any user could invite 10 people, including their own email accounts. Also I got like 25 more invites for reasons I can't remember after 3 people signed up with my codes. If you couldn't find someone with an invite code, you weren't asking the right people.
I remember having to actively manage my storage space on Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. Some email clients would delete your email unless yous said otherwise or paid after like 60 days. Google gave way more for free. And the promise of "more storage" has continued, because I've only had to manage my email space once in a decade, mostly deleting daily reports that included big attachments. Also I'd have to sort through spam emails, which I don't think I even have the time for today. And then there were no annoying banner ads.
That's similar to the whole reason Google search caught on. They had a clean interface, fewer ads, and slightly better results. They did next to 0 advertising back then, unlike Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, and Alta Vista. They just released a marginally better and significantly less annoying product.
The few products Google hasn't killed succeeded because they were legitimate improvements before their time or at least "good enough" alternatives back when people trusted Google more than Microsoft or other companies.
Hotmail and Yahoo mail were the primary contenders at the time. Both featured banner ads at the top. Because CSS and HTML were in their infancy, the height was generally fixed, and on smaller monitors it could take up 1/3 of the screen or more.
As I recall, Google had no ads. A small text ad, maybe, but I think that was added later. They also did a much better job of removing spam from my inbox. In addition they offered a lot more storage for free, which was actually a concern at the time. I'd have to go through and purge my email because simple emails with images were forcing me to manage my old emails. This became a problem over time with Hotmail, which I used, because I wanted to save some emails for their historical value or value to me.
Gmail jumped right on common features like folders and tags, and continued to expand further than other free email clients with better search functionality, easier multi-account SMTP and POP management through a single account, which I use for my 15 email accounts to this day, and automated filters that allowed me to make sure I saw certain emails or didn't see others unless I wanted to.
I think for most people it was just a clean interface, more storage, and better spam. But it also had features for more advanced users that made both tech amatuers and pros prefer it.
Not leaving Twitter, just not reading or posting and using alternative platforms.
Not to play word police, but I think that's what people meant when they said 'leaving'. But if you mean that it's not necessarily forever, I understand what you're saying.
You mean like every study I've ever read? I can't recall the last time the conclusion didn't say something like, "In our study X appears to be associated with Y, but more research is needed to understand the relationship."
You're right, though, that this article leaves many questions unasked. We know that people who are schizophrenic are far more likely to smoke cigarettes, but there is evidence to suggest they're more likely to smoke before their first episode as well. So is tobacco causal? Probably not. Instead, there are probably precursor symptoms to diagnosable schizophrenia that drive tobacco use: anxiety being the main one. Anxiety and marijuana has already been studied with conflicting results, probably because it's hard to determine out whether people with anxiety are drawn to marijuana (or heavier usage) or whether heavy usage causes anxiety.
There are reasons to think marijuana use can cause schizophrenic episodes - sometimes a first episode - but that use may not increase the risk of developing the disorder when viewed in a 20-year window. In other words, it happens sooner. So according to the article the number of schizophrenia cases linked to cannabis use disorder increased by 4x. I'd like to know whether schizophrenia diagnoses overall changed significantly.
I am not saying there are no risks. But I am agreeing that the article does a bad job of analyzing the science.
If the state law and city law conflict, shouldn't state law take precedence?
I'm actually not too upset about what the sheriff did. How many people do you think would do differently if they had to take out a $150k loan to cover their predecessor's obligations and then had the chance to feed inmates for less?
My takeaway is the state law clearly needs further modernization. First, it doesn't matter if it costs more. A direct personal incentive to feed people as cheaply as possible directly incentivizes low food quality. There should be some standard of food quality in a developed country. Second, if up to $750k (maybe more) is up for grabs, the sheriff's position because too valuable, which entices corruption. Not that they can't and aren't already be crooked, but they don't need further incentives.
These incentives aren't theoretical. There was a sheriff arrested for essentially starving inmates while pocketing $220k. Of course he only spent a night there.
Only on HN would you find people seriously arguing that focusing on product development is a good reason to remove analytics from a site. I've worked almost exclusively at companies where the product is the website, and initially this idea struck me as laughably naive. But let me be fair and think through this.
Tech startups do definitely have this problem of focusing on website analytics where the product is NOT a website or app. If we're generous we can assume many people here develop for these kinds of companies. Some waste a lot of time looking for up-and-to-the-right arrows for investors or trying to be data-focused when data about the website isn't actually all that important. Many of these companies might actually be better off with no analytics to waste time on. I'd still argue it's better to check in every once in a while to look for problems and ask yourself some questions.
The idea of removing analytics where the product is an app or a website is silly. This would be like arguing a grocery store shouldn't track what people are buying from their stores, and instead just source good products. You need to do both. What are you going to do when I ask what is or is not working? Tell me your feelings? Shake an 8-ball? Aside from detecting problems, analytics can be a jumping off point for innovation if you're smart about it. What can we do that's more like what's working? How can we improve this page type?
There are for sure people who over-focus on analytics (often on the wrong data points) instead of creativity, but these are not mutually exclusive. If I were to list the millions of dollars I've earned and saved via analytics this would be a very long post. Sadly, most of those millions were for other people, but it's a very valuable tool for optimizing and creating if you use it correctly.
Long story short, Google is using its search dominance to provide unfair advantage to other Google and Alphabet products. This is primarily done through features or "snippets" competitors cannot earn or even pay for.
Many of the details are not yet public. The individual investigations (some being conducted by states) are said to focus on multiple issues, but the one with the most discussion and evidence centers on the issue I described.
For example, google a flight you may take regularly, or just "LAX to JFK". Your first result after ads will probably be a Google widget. Can sites like Kayak or Expedia get that widget? No. Can they compete with Google showing real-time prices right in the SERP? No. It's the definition of anti-competitive behavior.
Google originally argued they don't advantage their own products. They've since admitted they do. Meanwhile they company is moving into more and more verticles and squeezing others out using its search engine as the weapon.
The vast majority of qualified traffic comes from search engines, and for my sites it's more like 95-97% Google. Many have argued the 90% market share figure is too low, because Yahoo and Microsoft include their internal searches to sound better. If Google decides to create a search widget competing with some function of my site, even if Google's version is really shitty, my business suffers badly. This isn't theoretical. Go Google "speed test." Your first result is a Google widget they added to search results. Ookla IMO has a much better product. But Google's widget is first for basically everyone who searches for a speed test. The M-Lab/Google test caps out for me well short of my real bandwidth. But I guarantee Ookla's traffic took a beating when Google decided to insert their own product at the top.
Unfortunately, Google has a lot of lawyers, and it's also reported that Barr is trying to rush this thing forward to provide a win for Trump. The actual career lawyers are arguing they can build a solid case, but they need more time. My fear is we'll see this thing rushed through and the changes will be cosmetic. And I do think Google's actions are a real problem. The most recent testimony before congress was pretty shocking. Facebook and Alphabet execs were basically admitting to anti-competitive behavior.
"LAX to JFK" - at the top, after 3 ads, I see links to Expedia, Orbitz, Kayak, Travelocity and Skyscanner. Then comes the flights widget. Then Expedia direct link, another widget - this time a COVID alert for how many flights are still operating this route - quite useful and well placed. After that many more direct links.
I don't see anything wrong. It's a good response page. If they didn't provide the widget the page would be worse, I would have to dig through all the links and filter the noise to find information.
There's an assumption that people come to Google in order to find websites. No, they come for information. They can get information in many ways. People are not there just to provide sales to organically ranked sites.
In a few years voice interfaces will probably replace text for search. In a voice interface, you have to provide the answer directly in plain language, not a link to a website. What would the displaced websites do, sue for monopolistic practices again?
The entire screen is filled with the Google Flights widget. There are no ads from competitors or organic results visible on the screen at all unless you scroll down.
For the longest time to competition was a click away. Now its a drag away. Google is providing the information you likely want, and your can still type in or use a bookmark to go to your favorite travel site.
Problem is that Google can easily bulldoze their way into any market just by creating their own service and then putting at the top as a widget. They did that with flights as you can see here and they were sued for it 8 years ago already, although I think that case is still active.
On the other hand I don't think it's OK to put limits on their creativity and efforts to improve user experience. If they want to make a topic specific widget, why not?
If you type 123+321 it will say 444 first, then display search results. That's how it should be, they don't have to protect the "123+321" keyword market.
Ah, you replied just as I did! I too share this sentiment that people are going to Google not to search for a plethora of websites, but for answers.
You can still certainly look at websites if you want and Google does not bury them or delist, but the widget is very useful and probably answers a high amount of the incoming queries.
The information comes from the websites. If the websites die, due to lack of traffic, the information suffers or disappears.
I agree that users just want their information, but unless Google plans to start generating, fact checking and sourcing data and content itself, it would do it well to not burn it's bridges with the content creators.
You picked a fairly good result page, but there are plenty of examples of unattributed scraped information being the first block users see. It's often scraped incorrectly too, and frankly I think Google are getting ahead of themselves as it can be wrong or unrelated data but stated as fact right there. They don't seem to realise they are taking on a role as information curator, not gatherer, with this type of work. Their scraping, machine sorting and tagging is good, but if you are trying to be a source of truth you need to be better than good.
> The information comes from the websites. If the websites die, due to lack of traffic, the information suffers or disappears.
Actually no, the widget for flights is Googles own service, it wouldn't disappear just because other sites disappear. They have already been sued for putting it on top though. Google gets sued quite a lot.
>In a few years voice interfaces will probably replace text for search.
I was thinking that wouldn't work because that would mean search results would tend to be crap, but then I realized that for most search the results are crap so why not use a voice interface!
Seeing as how some of these comments about their search results claimed the Google widget dominated while others said that competitor results were plainly in top spot, it seems that Google selectively does both one and the other for the sake of plausible deniability while also giving itself a certain discreet edge for Google products in its own supposedly unbiased search system.
A factor to consider is that Google Search is a mess internally, I worked there. There isn't a regexp deciding whether to show a widget or not, they use machine learning for that. Likely it considers something else it knows about you to decide whether to show it or not. There are so many data-scientists creating models based on outputs from each others models that I would be surprised if there aren't a lot of strange subtle interactions going on.
I see where you are coming from, but...I don't see how its the responsibility of a search engine to provide fair and unbiased access to the web's ability to answer your query.
Ex. speed test - Google's responsibility is to the customer who wants to most likely conduct a speed test. Displaying an in-result widget that does so completes the query that the user requires.
The line is certainly drawn if you searched "in-home IoT device" and Google showed its own Nest/Home products at the top even above ad space without paying for it, but the example you provided doesn't really break it for me.
Google doesn't prevent you from finding Ookla, doesn't bury it or delist it, doesn't stop you from going direct to the site... I don't see how that is going to hold up in court. There are competitors to Google that can offer a user a search experience that gives them lots of choice on how to answer their query, Google is just choosing (and customer's are probably responding to it as well) a better way to answer the query.
Posing this as a hypothetical argument, I'm open to being convinced otherwise.
While this is a commonly understood argument on HN, this doesn't appear to be the Federal Government's argument at all.
Instead, they are arguing that Google should be forced to share user data with rivals (like Bing).
This might surprise many in the tech community - even those who are sympathetic to the idea that big tech is too big (because it seems a terrible idea).
However, it appears to be a fairly common lobbying point. Notably in Australia a similar argument against Google in the news field is seen where news organisations don't get access to audience preferences for advertising.
TL;DR: The government appears to be looking to force Google to share personal data with other companies which is likely to be the opposite of what many consumers want.
I wonder if sharing "user data" with Bing would even make it more useful. It seems like the biggest problem with Bing and all other search engines is they are still >22 years behind Google in their search algos.
I think you're confusing internet marketing with the people who talk about internet marketing.
Marketing done right is basically the 'what people want' in 'build things people want' with a focus on what they're actually willing to pay for. I routinely kill ideas because the market is too small or profitability is too hard to achieve. Understanding your audience then building content and product around it is harder and more valuable than HN seems to believe. I've been very successful by developing this skill and learning how to build things. Good marketers have domain and industry specific knowledge that doesn't go viral in marketing circles because it's too specialized. I'm also not about to get on a public forum and tell my competition how I'm beating them.
Internet marketers who idolize internet marketing speakers are insufferable, I'll give you that. It comes from a good place of wanting to learn by listening to the experts. Unfortunately, these experts spend more time talking about how to be like them rather than how to build something people want. I think this also comes from a good place: let me help you achieve success like I have found.
Meanwhile the more technical marketers roll their eyes, get to work, and quietly make their companies money.
I know this is a bit cheeky, but HN sometimes has this comically simplistic view of other professions. It's as bad as the older C_Os who refer to all of dev and IT as "computer people." As someone who is both a developer and a marketer I can tell you both fields have depth and value, and neither is easy to do well.
Success often hinges on making something people want. Marketing done well is hugely helpful in determining both what people want and whether they perceive a product as a solution to their problems, and it can help guide product development with marketing analytics and other user data. I don't think I'd ever have been successful without a marketing background.
To take it back to the original point, I will never move to AMP. I spend a lot of time speeding up my pages through simplification, caching, and any other trick that makes sense (deferment, lazy loading, minification, combining, etc.) But there are a lot of reasons to not want your link to start with amp.google.com when someone shares my page.
* Any links to that URL rely on the good graces of the search engines to "count" for rankings and continue sending traffic. This is especially worrying if I decide to change standards. Will my rankings tank? Will the crawlers get totally confused and think I have a bunch of 404s? Both have been reported. These are not risks I'm willing to take with my sites that took so much work to build and promote.
* When someone shares my page I want my URL to be clear - not some google.com URL. That's both confusing for the user and bad for building a brand. Even if it was a cname to my own subdomain I'd feel better, e.g. amp.mysite.com
* Aside from the reason above, the lock-in is philosophically problematic. I intentionally use cross-platform apps on my phone because I don't want to be locked into an ecosystem. I don't foresee switching to Apple, but I didn't foresee switching to Android either. The point is that I could. This freedom is important to me.
* I don't trust that Google is committed to me and my content. Just look at the YouTubers getting screwed over by Google's lazy copyright policy. What makes you think they're going to suddenly staff up and/or care more on web content?
Anyway, as a writer, marketer, business owner, and web developer: fuck AMP.
> I don't trust that Google is committed to me and my content.
This * million. The only thing I can reliably trust google is that when I type a search query, results will be meaningful.
Regarding them keeping my data secure, not selling out to NSA, dropping support for things on a whim, kicking users out of their platform, I can’t really trust them.
Google or anyone else.
It’s just not their core business. They don’t really make much money from AMP. It feels like some VP’s pet project to get a big fat stock bonus.
If you run a serious business. Stay the hell away from AMP.
> This * million. The only thing I can reliably trust google is that when I type a search query, results will be meaningful.
Even that is pretty dicey these days. Search for `keyword1 keyword2 obscure_but_important_keyword3` and `obscure_but_important_keyword3` will just get dropped from your query.
Yes! wtf is it with this these days? double quotes in google search used to have meaning... now you just get spammed with completely irrelevant crap and only a few instances of results with that word hidden after the first 20. It's like they are trying to hide from you that there are only a few _real_ hits.
Except double-quotes work only as suggestion, they haven't been enforcing a verbatim search for quite a while now (AFAIR there is/was a "verbatim" switch hidden somewhere in Search Tools).
DuckDuckGo has improved a lot for me the past year. I used to retry my query on Google when the results were not enough but I don't need to as often now.
Same for me. I've had DDG as the default search engine for a while now. Initially mostly for the instant results and bang shortcuts, but these days I find myself using !g very very rarely.
Same here as well. And I've been finding DDG to even given better results increasingly often, at least on the sample of searches that I've used multiple engines for.
The one thing I really miss is insta-results for things like 'population of USA'. On the other hand, I think Google was going a bit too far with that and started giving insta-results that at times were subjective, or even simply wrong.
Time for the next step: An open source search engine.
I've been using findx.com as my default search engine lately. I still use the find on google option often though, since it's not nearly as good as DDG (There is a search on DDG option next to the Google one as well).
> The only thing I can reliably trust google is that when I type a search query, results will be meaningful.
> Regarding them keeping my data secure [...] I can’t really trust them.
Really? I trust Google more than pretty much any other company to keep my emails secure, for example. Very curious what companies you would consider trustworthy from a security standpoint, unless by security you misspoke and really meant privacy.
I trust Fastmail because I pay Fastmail to provide a secure mail service.
I also have a gmail account. Google is upfront about stating they read my email through gmail. Many times I’ve seen Google use dark UI patterns to hide their tracking and snooping. E.g. location tracking on Android or the way they ignore thr Do Not Track header.
Even though they might not sell data directly, they are insistent on gathering it for their own hidden interests.
> The only thing I can reliably trust google is that when I type a search query, results will be meaningful
Even this is getting less reliable, image search at least.
Reverse image search (from what I can gather from using it) used to try and match the image to existing images it knew, then tried to tell you where it came from and what it was based on data it gathered from the page it came from.
Today it appears to use a machine learning to decide what the image is, then show similar images of the same object with the same visual appearance.
The difference to the end user is before if you searched using a still of a film it would almost always successfully identify it and provide links related to the film and the location of the still in particular.
Today if you do the same then Google will identify the picture has a woman in it using ML and return a search for the word "woman" with just random stock photos of women in similar images then the search listings will just be links to Pintrest boards containing the searched image.
I honestly don’t care about the NSA; nothing I am doing would even be remotely interesting to them. I am more concerned about my privacy being exploited by advertisers, banks, credit bureaus, political campaigns, and over-zealous local governments.
You also need to assert that you will never care about the NSA. If, in the future, you decide to take up a public role of any sort, the NSA already has decades worth of dirt on you.
They're not really. They just don't care enough about the privacy of all the people that don't matter to them. It's still troubling, because there is every reason to expect that people that have done nothing wrong will have someone poke around in their data for the wrong reasons, but I don't have a problem understanding why people are prepared to disregard them - most people will be noise to the NSA. Meanwhile most people are potential revenue to a marketer.
> I know this is a bit cheeky, but HN sometimes has this comically simplistic view of other professions. It's as bad as the older C_Os who refer to all of dev and IT as "computer people." As someone who is both a developer and a marketer I can tell you both fields have depth and value, and neither is easy to do well.
I don't think this is the real root issue you're thinking of. I don't believe HN has a simplistic view of marketers (to contrast, I'd say it seems to have a simplistic view of management). Many people here, myself included, would never deny that the job of marketer is difficult, challenging, and has a lot of depth. The issue we have is with the job itself.
> Success often hinges on making something people want. Marketing done well is hugely helpful in determining both what people want and whether they perceive a product as a solution to their problems, and it can help guide product development with marketing analytics and other user data. I don't think I'd ever have been successful without a marketing background.
This is perfect. This is exactly what marketing should be! Problem is, it's rarely it.
The marketing as we usually encounter it, on the receiving end, isn't about "making something people want". It's about "making people want something". This simple transposition of words is the point at which marketing turns from objectively valuable into malicious and exploitative, and ultimately the source of hate against the whole field.
You wrote that marketing done well "is hugely helpful in determining both what people want and whether they perceive a product as a solution to their problems, and it can help guide product development with marketing analytics and other user data". Yeah, sure. Except it's motte-and-bailey again, because we all know that's not what's going on. The data isn't used to optimize the product to deliver better value, it's used to optimize the product to trick the buyer into purchase. And analytics aren't just guiding product development (in either direction), they're also resold on the side, so that someone else can better trick the buyer into purchasing something else they don't need.
The social contract between the individual and the firm is: the individual gives the firm money, in exchange for the firm delivering value. Marketing, as implemented in practice, is the art of maximizing the money received while minimizing the value given back (because value costs money to make). Hence the hate.
Desire is not a bad thing, and the reason why someone wants something doesn't matter after the point at which they want it. I'd much rather people have agency over their decisions than complain about an entire business concept.
Also products are definitely getting better all the time. Feedback is a part of marketing and personalization to predict consumer needs is the next wave. Tricking users is not a viable business model for any legitimate company.
Then a lot a profitable companies aren't legitimate.
Just yesterday I saw a documentary (in German TV) about magazine ads for overprized health products with little to no actual health benefit (like a shoe insert which, literal quote, "instantly cures 100s of chronic ailments"). These ads always have testimonials from doctors, but when the journalists tried to find those doctors, they always turned out to be stock photo models.
That's marketing at its worst. But also the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of marketing.
Maybe marketing is similar to infrastructure. When it's good, it's invisible; so you only notice it when it fails.
Yes, clearly a health product with no health benefit and marketed falsely is not legitimate, and in many places there are rules against false advertising.
I'm not sure if you're trying to disagree with my comment or making a different point...
> Desire is not a bad thing, and the reason why someone wants something doesn't matter after the point at which they want it.
It matters if they didn't want the product before your marketing campaign, and started to want it after. Desire itself is not a bad thing. Inducing desire in people is a completely different topic.
> I'd much rather people have agency over their decisions
Sure. And marketing as an industry mostly works to override people's agency. That's what all the tricks from Cialdini's book do. That's why the industry is so keenly weaponizing research from psychology and cognitive sciences.
> Also products are definitely getting better all the time.
That's a tangential topic (and a big one), but I very much question the thing those products are getting better at. It somehow never is about maximizing value to the buyer. Quite the opposite, actually - everything from white goods through tools, clothing, cars, to software, is getting less useful, more disposable, less repariable, of worse quality, and locked behind DRMs and service-instead-of-product schemes.
Why does it matter? You haven't answered that, other than seemingly stating that you don't like it.
No, agency is not overridden. That's a crazy stretch. The most advertising can do is create desire, but a person still has to make the decision to act. Otherwise you're talking about mind control and if we had that then the world look very different.
Re: product quality, you're just making quite a lot of subjective statements so I'll skip it.
Do you need them to just announce to the world that your product exists and solves a particular set of problems? Or do you need them to break through the noise caused by all the other marketers? ;).
It's a self-sustaining industry. If you squint, it's basically rent-seeking.
Information about lost pets or belongings has nothing to do with marketing, and is usually published using in different sections of any communications medium than ads are.
Huge restrictions of available forms of marketing would be a good start. Done top-down, this levels the playing field, and reduces the advertising expenditure companies need to make - as most advertising costs go towards cancelling out equivalent spending from your competitors.
I'm not thinking "five-year plans", I'm thinking GDPR + more restrictive laws on advertising content + ban on city billboards, ban on leaflets, + other regulations intent on heavily restricting all other forms of advertising.
> Product discovery is not why advertising is done.
Actually, it is. What do you believe is the purpose of ads? More importantly, how do you interpret the fact that any product release is based on an advertisement campaign?
Word of mouth. Also, pull instead of push. I could walk around the shop and discover a new product on the shelves. Or, pick up a catalog with local companies. Or, pick up a magazine dedicated to companies announcing their products in particular domain. Or these days, Google for a solution to a particular problem.
Product discovery should involve me consciously, purposefully looking for a product, not all possible products trying to come to me all the time.
Family, friends, people living in the neighbourhood of your business. If it's any good, it'll spread. If it isn't, it doesn't deserve to spread.
> What is the shop owner incentive to promote your product this way before he can be sure that he will sell some of your stuff.
It can be either way for the shop owner; your product might turn out to be a flop, or an overnight success. Stocking shelves is an active process, an exploraition vs. exploitation problem.
> Your local car manufacturer?
Word of mouth. Regular (i.e. not rich) people don't buy cars off adverts, they buy off experiences of other car owners. This works well enough in practice already.
> Without ads, how would those magazines be monetized?
Companies would pay to be put in them, obviously. Also, without ads being prevalent everywhere, people might even be inclined to buy them. The difference is, it would be people who choose when they see ads, not the advertisers.
> SEO = Marketing
SEO == fucking up the Internet by greedily exploiting imperfections of search engine ranking algorithms. It is indeed marketing, and something I'd love to see disappear. I hate SEO, and have been on the receiving end of SEO practices (i.e. blogspam) in the past.
It speaks to a poor understand of kids, schools, and reality. I think we often underestimate kids and their intellectual capacity, but this is just ridiculous. I started outlining how bad this would be for kids, but the list was getting so long that I had to stop. Let's just rely on common sense here.
I never felt I was "ravaged by capitalism," but I was never forced as a kid to compete in cutthroat markets where I was pretty likely to fail against adults who had fully-developed brains and more experience in every relevant field.
Yes, let's get kids more hands-on experience. But the feeling of failing as a kid is brutal. Don't set them up to fail. More importantly, let's teach them critical thinking skills so they can adapt. Focus less on facts and more on solving problems and finding their own solutions. This is possible without forcing them into a high-stress environment where many adults (with far more experience in markets and as consumers) fail.
I remember having to actively manage my storage space on Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. Some email clients would delete your email unless yous said otherwise or paid after like 60 days. Google gave way more for free. And the promise of "more storage" has continued, because I've only had to manage my email space once in a decade, mostly deleting daily reports that included big attachments. Also I'd have to sort through spam emails, which I don't think I even have the time for today. And then there were no annoying banner ads.
That's similar to the whole reason Google search caught on. They had a clean interface, fewer ads, and slightly better results. They did next to 0 advertising back then, unlike Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, and Alta Vista. They just released a marginally better and significantly less annoying product.
The few products Google hasn't killed succeeded because they were legitimate improvements before their time or at least "good enough" alternatives back when people trusted Google more than Microsoft or other companies.