Google ??? Yahoo ??? Others ???
Sunday, August 5th, 2007Recently, most of internet user should have known about what are Google and Yahoo. They are two “giants” internet company that provide many internet applications/services for everyone, both for free and not. And, unconsciously, we seldom realize that our lives become more and more dependant with them.
For example, what will be happened if we are trapped with the following scenarios:
- Google suddenly stops their free based email? Or in more moderate way, Google server farm is attacked or destroyed by someone?
- Yahoo Mail and Messenger server is destroyed and all buddy list disappears?
Personally, now I am more attached with Google rather than Yahoo. I am able to get more featured services from Google rather than Yahoo and the best thing is, all of those services are free. The one thing that made me unable to leave Yahoo is only Yahoo messenger service.
I’ll try to explain my reason for each service below, but please be noted that this is only my personal opinion.
Google absolutely wins. Google not only provides free email, but also including POP3 and SMTP access. Google also provides free hosting for your company email. For comparison, you need to pay Yahoo to get POP3/SMTP access.
- Messenger
Yahoo Messenger (YM) is still the best. The main reason is YM came first, so most of us already have a big list of friend inside our YM. The second reason is the client availability and attractiveness. YM has more features such as buzz, emoticon, status set, yahoo phone, etc. Google is still in third position for this messenger thing because if Skype can provide the client for handheld device such as Symbian-based phone, many user will move to Skype. I prefer Skype because with Skype I can have very reliable chat in addition of the voice telephony. Skype can gives acknowledge for all sent text messages. In Yahoo, sometimes we experience that some of our message is not successfully delivered.
- Photo sharing
Google has picasa and Yahoo has flickr. But same as email services, I still don’t understand why Google can provide the service for free but Yahoo/Flickr still requires us to pay something if we want to upgrade our account.
- Voice call to legacy network
Skype is still the preferred choice. Yahoo provides it but I’m not sure about Google.
- Document sharing
Google already provide it but I don’t think Yahoo does.
So, back to the original question, can you live without Google and Yahoo?
Of course there are many other free based services out there but will you ready to move your email, your photo, your contact to the new service provider? And will you ready back to the old time when we need each userid for each service because all of those services are provided by different company?
-rendo-
