Archives for "Email: 2006"

Gmail for Your Domain - Suggestion

October 17, 2006 / Email , Google / Comments (0) / #

I've been using Gmail as my primary email software for a couple of years now, for the following reasons:

  • I find it has better spam filters than Outlook.
  • Google pre-scans the messages for viruses.
  • I can get my emails from any computer.
  • I can use my Gmail account as storage and backup, by mailing documents to myself.
  • I have not yet had to delete any old messages as the storage levels are so high, and continually increased.
  • I can view PDF or Word attachments as HTML, so I don't have to wait for a separate application to load in order to read documents.
  • I can make messages appear to be sent from any other email accounts for which I can verify ownership.

Some months ago, I got a Gmail for your Domain account, which I was excited about. Now, instead of just appearing to send emails from my Mediajunk account, I could do it for real.

Why should it matter? Well, sometimes my messages go into the recipients' spam folders, because the receiving programme realises that they have been sent from Gmail, not Mediajunk, as claimed. Other recipients see the message "sent by gmail on behalf of mike at mediajunk", which has confused some.

Anyway, I was all set to migrate to my hosted Gmail ... until I discovered that I couldn't merge my existing Gmail messages with my hosted version. For me, not having this ability renders the hosted account useless. It would mean effectively creating a new email account, and having to log in separately to my old Gmail address to find any old messages.

I have requested this feature many times and I see that others have too, looking at relevant boards. Apparently there's a workaround, but it's not a solid option.

I made one more probably futile attempt today, when I saw this Gmail suggestion box posted on Digg.

So come on Google, please integrate this really obvious feature!

Sidebar: it's probably no coincidence that Google has put a halt to development of new products (via Digital Inspiration), and has decided to concentrate on making existing products more interoperable.