Linked List: August 16, 2009

Sunday, 16 August 2009

Gmail Passes AOL to Capture Third-Place in Web Mail ★

Just eked past AOL, still behind Hotmail and Yahoo Mail in total users. But, in terms of mindshare, Gmail utterly dominates. Many of my friends — technically knowledgeable, demanding email users — use and love Gmail. None of them use Hotmail or Yahoo Mail. Raw user count is the wrong metric; Gmail has already won.

Google is like Apple in this way. It starts by taking over the premium end of a market.

‘The Most-Introduced Vehicle in America’ ★

Ed Wallace in BusinessWeek on how GM doesn’t understand how to sell cars:

There’s a fundamental rule of a successful business: “underpromise and overdeliver.” That concept has been around since the Studebaker Brothers were building wagons for the Civil War. After the war ended, they codified their business ethic in Studebaker’s motto: “Always give a little more than you promise.” Nothing better sums up GM’s wrongheaded thinking than its execs’ promise that the company will return to technological superiority once they finally bring the new Chevrolet Volt to market. […]

Why won’t it be knocking socks off? Because by the time dealerships actually receive their Volts, the impulse buyers will have been seeing the vehicle for almost three years. To GM’s most cherished buyer demographic, the Volt will be old news by the time the first one hits the streets.

GM could learn a lot from Apple. (Via John Siracusa.)