A Short Rant on Webmail Services

By Jeff Ubois
in

While Zimbra, OddPost (now part of Yahoo), Scalix (running OddPost’s code), Webmail.us, Fastmail.fm, and Gmail have all set new standards for web-based email access, it’s striking to see certain other companies stand still. For example, RIM’s webmail service ought to be a positive embarrassment to the company. From its lack of compatibility with Firefox and most Mac-based browsers, to the inability to easily re-sort messages, to the bad quota management (the Cingular version of RIM’s service allows a mingy 25 Mb), RIM’s offering is one of the worst. It wouldn’t even be hard to fix - it’s not like standards are a secret, or like disk space is expensive. While RIM’s main service and handhelds are certainly nice, its webmail is a last century product. Is it just NTP that has been distracting them?

Published March 2, 2006