Google+ will replace email, period. | Hacker News Reader

Google+ will replace email, period.

frafdez.posterous.com

7 pointsfrafdez23 comments

"Everyone look, <New, unproven technology> will replace <Popular, proven technology>!"

The problem is it never does actually replace the proven technology. Makes for a good blog post, though.

I think it could. Now with Oauth becoming more and more of a standard for signing up/in to sites and the wide adoption of RESTful API used for messaging, it could work.

Glad you liked the post.

> Oauth becoming more and more of a standard for signing up/in to sites

I think I actually see that less than I did a few years ago. OAuth was hard to implement, and not that easy to use, so a lot of people got turned off by it.

I'm curious to see where BrowserID will go.

> Most people realize that email is currently flawed. There’s too much of it. It’s an endless stream that is nonstop, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Wow, this is exactly what I thought about my Facebook stream. Too much garbage that I cannot easily filter out, like I can e-mail.

For sending quick notes to my mom, or even my coworkers, maybe. But what about using e-mail as an identity when signing up somewhere? What about creating throwaway accounts? (e.g., sendmespam@lishin.org) What about creating accounts for my business to contact customers? (e.g., donotreply@cannedgoat.com)

Canned goat might actually taste pretty good. :) You might have something there. Kidding aside, why not ask Google to add temp accounts associated to a main account? I would love to have temp emails/identities that I can create and reply to from only one account. Like Visa or MasterCard have temp credit card numbers. Then when I'm done, just toss them out. Maybe you could associate an email/identity to a circle. I think it's early but I don't see many roadblocks.

Sure, all the problems I listed are solvable. In fact, they've already been solved - by e-mail.

The bitching about having to sort e-mails and manually add filters? You have to manually add people to circles, too. And what happens when someone who's not in one of your circles shares something with you? At least currently, there's no way to filter them based on anything.

"But we can just add filters to Google+!"

We already have filters in e-mail.

I feel like I sound like a grizzled old man ("we used to code uphill both ways in the snow!") but I really don't understand how G+ is superior to e-mail.

You've got good points, but I think Google plus ties alot of functionality into one service, or at least it seems like that is the direction they are taking. Imagine when you can do more than email can today. Share google docs while "huddling" then turn around and post something interesting you found to everyone. I'm not saying it's the be all end all, but it's a step in the right direction.

Google+. Gmail. They can be integrated.

If Google+ was going to replace e-mail on account of its circles, then LiveJournal would have replaced e-mail a decade ago, thanks to its friends-filtering.

A little different this time around. API's weren't as popular as they are now.

It lacks the fact that I can't communicate (even with Facebook's penetration) to probably a 25% of my friends.

Atleast 50% of my friends don't really get into the social networking. Either not having accounts or checking it once a week/month. I would say 95% of the people I now have email addresses and I can communicate with them.

When ever I see stats its always x amount of people use this per month. And I thinks for the same reason that exists in my friends. They don't care to much for that much about these sites.

I would guess over 90% of the content on FB is from 10% of my friends. The rest aren't so excited about it. So far none of my friends are really using Google+, and the ones that are I could say less about the content they are posting.

So I think you are misguided, and are under estimating how little interest a business is going to have towards storing there business data on what for many (including several of my own products) is a competitors system.

I think you misunderstood the point of the post, it's not that G+ will change everything today. It won't. It can't. It just started and most of my friends aren't on it either, but the technology and the UI they have come up with is quite enviable and we may be seeing the future of electronic communication. G+ is very well positioned to change email given the popularity of Gmail. Forgive my seemingly impetuous post, but I think we may be seeing the future.

Except for the obviously flaw where Gmails isn't as popular as you suggest. Having a lot less users than either Yahoo mail or Hotmail. Heres two links to verify that statement (second from google itself):

http://www.campaignmonitor.com/stats/email-clients/

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-uhu-fZwXC60/Th6LbbZFv_I/A...

I'm not saying change isn't coming. I just don't think a Google social network will be it. Hell even there 18 million user announcement is quite average... thats under 10% of gmail users.

Considering MS has been spotted toying with implementing Social networks directly in Windows 8 (and with their share of FaceBook + Windows Live + Desktop OS we are talking massive users base).

A decent implementation could destroy all competition. The only ray of light there is MS history of failure.

I think people regularly underestimate the inertial power of established technologies. Once something gets built into a technology stack, it becomes hard to change, even when you have complete control of your stack. When it is built into the general "stack" of technology and culture at large, it becomes monumental to shift it even slightly.

Coincidentally, I believe that this will be the greatest drag on the "singularity"-- legacy systems, and the cultural atmosphere which stifles the adoption of alternatives.

I agree, but systems are disrupted everyday. Look at banking and how paypal, square and others have changed the way we bank. Email will change. Not everyone will stop using it, but things will change. Maybe not so soon with G+

Email is free and open. Anyone can implement email according to standards, and differentiate their service any way they want. You don't have to have a gmail or facebook or twitter or whatever account to use email; you just need an account somewhere. You do need one of those accounts to use gmail/plus, facebook, twitter etc.

If G+ is replaced by something as open as email, implementable by anyone, then yeah, maybe. But not until.

Understood, but remember that the mass market doesn't care about open standards. They care about a tool that works for them. Open Office isn't used much by the mass market, but Google Apps is. The more someone uses the service, the greater the probability that someone will come around and standardize the protocol. But, I agree it may take a while.

Right. I'm not talking about the public caring about open standards though, what I mean is anyone at all can run an email server, and they all interoperate, so everyone's email talks to everyone else's. The public doesn't know how that happens, but the utility of email between everyone in the world is much greater because of that. No one wonders if anyone's email can talk to each other.

Email, obviously, is one pro example of what I'm talking about. A con example is your Docs example, you only get that on Google (and maybe MS is in early days, I don't pay too much attention to them), and yet it is counted in the "success" column, I think.

I somehow don't see big companies ditching Exchange for G+...

You might be right, but there are alot of small and mid size companies that solely use google apps for everything. This isn't that big of a stretch. If people adopt it, then MS will surely come up with their own solution. Look at what they had to do to compete with Google apps.

No, no, no, you're thinking of Wave. Google -Wave- will replace email. Remember?

You know, I forgot :)

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