the name is not as good as hotmail, mainly because the standard pronunciation is geemail, meaning that back when the name was not well known you could theoretically say gmail.com to someone and they might think you had said email.com if they were a little hard of hearing or your enunciation was not clear.
the implementation however was much better than hotmail or any other web-based email at the time.
To argue the name was the important aspect is to argue marketing is more important than the quality of what is being marketed, an idea that HN is generally not very open to.
> the name is not as good as hotmail, mainly because the standard pronunciation is geemail, meaning that back when the name was not well known you could theoretically say gmail.com to someone and they might think you had said email.com if they were a little hard of hearing or your enunciation was not clear
gmail became a brand nearly immediately via initial scarcity of invitations. Hotmail and yahoo mail sounded like idiotic kid email addresses. Webmail never tried doing email. Pobox.com did only forwarding and was too linked to the physical mail in the mind of people. Same went for mailboxes.com.
> To argue the name was the important aspect is to argue marketing is more important than the quality of what is being marketed, an idea that HN is generally not very open to.
Yet the only successful companies are the companies with great marketing and an OK ( or more product ).
>gmail became a brand nearly immediately via initial scarcity of invitations
yes, to us (the techies), but there are billions of people in the world who didn't know who or what gmail was for a at least 4-5 years. I specifically made the observation of geemail sounding like email because I had that experienced less than a decade ago giving the address to a dentist's secretary in Denmark.
>Yet the only successful companies are the companies with great marketing and an OK ( or more product ).
first of all I'd say Google had a great product and ok marketing for a few years, nowadays they have great marketing, an ok product, and built in market dominance.
So I suppose I can accept that good marketing is a prerequisite but not sufficient.
That said what do you mean by successful? I mean great marketing being required for successful makes you think that the only successful companies can be ones you've heard of, because how successful can a company be that you've never heard of.
And on that note when I tell people I used to work for Thomson Reuters and nobody knows who that is I suppose this means Thomson Reuters is not a successful company?
> yes, to us (the techies), but there are billions of people in the world who didn't know who or what gmail was for a at least 4-5 years. I specifically made the observation of geemail sounding like email because I had that experienced less than a decade ago giving the address to a dentist's secretary in Denmark.
I would say you have to look at the alternative names - hotmail? yahoo.com? gmail sounds like a fantastic choice.
> That said what do you mean by successful? I mean great marketing being required for successful makes you think that the only successful companies can be ones you've heard of, because how successful can a company be that you've never heard of.
Your target customers know who you are.
> And on that note when I tell people I used to work for Thomson Reuters and nobody knows who that is I suppose this means Thomson Reuters is not a successful company?
Random people are not customers of Thomson Reuters and Thompson Reuters is not in a market of converting them. Those that consume news content as a part of their product know who Thompson Reuters is.
the implementation however was much better than hotmail or any other web-based email at the time.
To argue the name was the important aspect is to argue marketing is more important than the quality of what is being marketed, an idea that HN is generally not very open to.