Slaughters.com

I thought I was lucky to get a gmail invite a few months ago. I promptly emailed all my buddies from my new account to express my excitement.

That was premature. As I recieved responses to my first sent gmail, I entered the hell that is the gmail experience.

You can't file anything. The idea is that you search for messages. I guess google doesn't understand the fact that many people begin their search for an email by clicking on the folder that represents the subject matter they're looking for. I mean if I want to find mail from my friend 'bo', do i really want to see all email with the string 'bo' in it??

You absolutely cannot tell whom you've responded to. I try to reply to all email that requires a response. But with gmail, I have no idea what I've responded to and what I haven't. They have read and unread filters, so if you reply to something immediately after reading it, you can assume that your read messages have already been addressed. But if you're not sure, then you're going to need to "search" for your own email address and look for a response to the email in question. Oh my god.

I spent years trying to get a job at google. Each time my current dot-com employer went belly-up during the late 90s and early 00s, I sent mail to google's hr department begging for an opportunity for an interview.

I eventually learned that google is quite proud of the number of PhDs they have on board and try to keep up that percentage.

Well, with gmail, I think the PhDs have run rampant, because gmail is about as easy to understand as a thesis on "the methodological role of structure and processes in the linguistic lexicon" - oh, and about as useful.