It's just a small enhancement, but an enhancement that will shave a few seconds, and few mouse clicks, off the attachment process.
It's also an example of how application "disruption" typically happens these days. Attackers generally start out "low" on the functionality scale, offering an alternative that generally does not have all the functionality of the market-leading application.
The attacking applications tends to be derided as "okay for consumer use" or "just a toy" in other cases, but that isn't the point. Over time, features get richer and the differences between the attacking application and the market leading application begin to narrow. At some point the attacking app starts to compete head to head with the leading app in one or more customer verticals.
And that is what this smallish new feature is, another small step towards feature parity.
1 comment:
Gary,
You make a great point about how incrementalism in feature deployment positions the attackers to compete later as peers. I migrated my business's email to Google Apps after Google made a series of enhancements that eliminated the reasons why I wanted to remain on a traditional desktop e-mail app.
Looking at features like GMail Drap and Drop, I am curious to see how integration plays out in the web/cloud model. Users have accepted the sacrifices that accompany integration in terms of closed, proprietary systems in the desktop world. It would be great to see open, standards-based integration moving forward.
Jeff Loughridge
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