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Is Google's Gmail a winner? 7 June 2004
Sometime soon (they won’t say exactly when), Google is going to launch a new free email service, which it calls Gmail.
Gmail is currently available to a few thousand testers, and many of them are euphoric about the new service:
“Gmail appears destined to become one of the most useful Internet services since Google itself… once Gmail goes live, Hotmail and Yahoo won’t know what hit them.” David Pogue, New York Times
“The more I use Gmail, the more I appreciate it. It's the most powerful Web-based e-mail tool you'll find. It's going to be a huge hit.” Mike Wendland, Detroit Free Press
Google’s mail service provides subscribers with 1 gigabyte of free storage, 250 times more than what’s available from services like Yahoo or Hotmail. Its ads are less obtrusive than those of other services, and subscribers can use Google’s search technology to find important topics in their mailboxes.
With 1 gigabyte of free storage, you’ll never need to delete an email. With Google’s search technology, it will be easy to quickly locate those previously hard-to-find messages.
For those establishing a brand new email account, Google’s new service will be a clear improvement over current offerings – they’ll get higher performance at no cost.
For users who already make use of a free email account, the total value of Google’s Gmail is less clear. Here’s how Gmail looks for existing email users in the four factor framework of innovation success:
Google Gmail for existing users – high benefits, high barriers
Compared to its competitors, Gmail excels primarily in the benefits and ease-of-use areas. Gmail can’t compete on price, since all these email services are free.
Gmail runs into trouble on the barriers side of the framework. There are significant switching costs for existing users: not only will they have to learn a new system, but they’ll need to move all their addresses to their Gmail account, and then they’ll have to tell everyone about their new location at Google.
There are certainly a small group of users – the “early adopters” -- who will appreciate Gmail’s performance and will switch their email addresses to Gmail as soon as the service becomes available.
But they are only a small portion of total potential customers. I have my doubts about the eagerness of the rest of the world to use Gmail, because it’s bothersome to switch email providers.
For most users, I expect that free email services like Yahoo or Hotmail are “good enough” – they provide the same basic functions as Gmail at about the same price.
The potential market for Gmail is thus much smaller than its early press would indicate. After the early adopters get their Gmail accounts, who will come next?
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