Webmail developments that changed e-mail for good

Webmail interfaces used to be the poor cousin to desktop e-mail clients. They were clunky, slow to load and lacked the intuitive features such as drag and drop that make e-mail a slick and efficient tool for business users.

But providers have wrestled with these problems, jumping on improvements in web and browser technologies and generally innovated at a pace. And whilst they haven't completely changed everybody's perceptions of webmail, they've made a few developments that are not only luring more users, but also starting to influence developers of desktop e-mail software.

Gmail, of course, was the primary game-changer. The dominating webmail service, it's hard to believe it was only introduced in 2004. Gmail did three things to affect the evolution of webmail as we know it:

• Gmail made search fast. It's what you'd expect from a search company; with hindsight the staggering thing was how long it used to take other e-mail clients to find a message from a text string.
• Gmail provided a massive inbox. Back in 2004 the limit for free Hotmail accounts was a measly 2MB storage. Google didn't hold back: they unleashed their cloud infrastructure to offer huge storage limits with the promise 'never delete another e-mail'. After that, most rivals quickly found some extra disk space to offer users 
• Gmail introduced most of us to threaded conversations. This has been revolutionary in how new e-mail clients are choosing to organise messages.

All in all, this was a winning combo that quickly won over users and had webmail competitors scrambling: 

• Hotmail has come a long way since then, although Microsoft will doubtless never attempt to integrate this with business offerings in the way that Google has done with Gmail. It's resolutely a consumer-targeted offering, hence why it's still laden with Flash advertisements in a 'fun' yet cumbersome interface.
• Yahoo Mail's new version speeds up the user experience and is the first mainstream webmail service to allow third party extensions.
• AOL, meanwhile, is restoring its webmail service under the codename Project Phoenix. The clue's in the name: this moribund webmail service clearly intends to roar back into flame!

But could Facebook be the next game-changer? The interesting thing about their hyped e-mail service in development is the promise to make inroads against spam - although there's aways time, and we're sure spammers will find a way.

Will we be advising our Bristol IT support clients to move to web-based e-mail? The answer might depend on how keen you are on cloud infrastructure generally. There's certainly a strong alternative to running your own Exchange server in the form of Microsoft's Business Productivity Online suites.

And some commentators have suggested we'll even see social e-mail on the business scene soon, powered by the likes of LinkedIn - but don't hold your breath while you're waiting.