Going google - progress report

After some months in internal debate (internal to me, that is), I've decided to go google. And last weekend I shifted 6 year's worth of stored email up to gmail.

And I have to say, it's looking good. It's quicker than IMAP (certainly when dealing with big chunks of messages), and the spam handling is at least an order of magnitude better than mine. And the interface is pretty nice.

We don't need no goddam folders.

Previously, I'd been using a middling complex procmail setup to auto-file everything I wanted to keep into auto-named folders, with the folder names generated from the from: address, and all actual mail folders grouped in folders according to initial letter. So all mails from bill.gates@microsoft.com were filed in the IMAP folder /b/bill-gates . This made it considerably easier to find old mail when I wanted it, without relying on me to manually file it correctly (which would have been a non-starter).

So when I transferred to gmail, I kept the folders as labels. Big mistake. Because searching 12,000 messages via gmail is so quick, there's no need for filing. So I spent two hours removing labels from everything. Big win. Preceded by a coupla hours of big loss.

Instant Messaging.

I realised on Tuesday, once I was settling down to actually using the thing, that if you're using the chat widget which lives in gmail, the conversations are archived in with your email. Which is expletively neat. What's rubbish is that the chat I had with a person who clicked on the 'chat with' button on the blog wasn't automatically archived. 'Cos actually I needed to keep that. Happily, I'd not closed the window yet.

Now part of the reason I'm doing this is about changing the way I work. I've had enough of relying on installed applications for run-of-the-mill stuff, and the work that goes into managing that.

The other part is that I need to be better informed as to how well this can work. I'm seriously swayed by suggestions that institutional IT support should let the likes of google focus on providing commodity applications like email, word processing and document sharing, and we focus on providing better and better access to those services. 'Cos google are just gonna do it better.

It's important to me that I point out here that I'm not outlining my employer's policy, nor speaking for my employer. These are my own versions of other's thoughts. Not my employer's. Is that clear enough?