Gmail Makes Hotmail Switching Easier

@Ryan M. Moore:

That's right.

If someone else grabbed the handle you want, you're SOL unless you negotiate a transfer with the current user. That might involve money if the other party cares as much as the handle as you do.

Since Gmail's beginning, Google has prohibited the use of very short e-mail handles as spammers hit those addresses extremely hard.

Anyhow, don't hold your breath for Google.

Maybe you can find your handle at ymail dot com.

Deprong Mori

@Dilpickle1:

You are never going to use Gmail then. Your only option is to contact the user of the Gmail handle in question and negotiate a transfer. If they care as much as the screenname as you do, you can probably forget it.

And it's not Google's fault that the screenname you want isn't available. If it's already taken, well, someone else got there first. Google also bans the use of really short handles due to spammers hitting these addresses extremely hard; that's been the case since Gmail's inception.

Deprong Mori

@tombuch:

You're right about AOL's amazing growth and popularity during its heyday, but some of your facts are incorrect.

They were actually the last major service to add a web browser. What AOL people used as a desktop client to access the content and features of AOL's "walled garden". In fact, AOL was so inept at creating its own web browser that it acquired Netscape Communications whose browser was eventually incorporated into the service, long after AOL subscription base started their precipitous decline.

Once the web grew, it became clear that the offerings of AOL's "walled garden" were terribly deficient, even if they were packaged in a pretty manner.

AOL's mail protocol was non-standard, a subset of the official mail protocol, so for many years, AOL users were not able to view standard e-mail from the outside, again more of a community messaging service that true e-mail. At the time, other services (smaller ISPs, BBSes, groups like The Well, Prodigy, Compuserve) were offering real standards-compliant e-mail and the full Worldwide Web experience which rapidly eroded AOL's dominance.

Deprong Mori

By doing this import, do the emails stay on the previous address or are they deleted?

Can't wait for my account to have this option... I will finaly be able to backup my yahoo mail !

If you ask me, more mail companies would do well to offer easy ways to import old mail information. I wonder how many times people have wanted to switch, but wouldn't due to the fact that they're so tied into their current account, with contacts and whatnot. The less complicated you make it, the easier it's going to be to convince someone your service is worth it.

jquack

@Alexander Ljungberg: but you have to pay for it.... Gmail = free

Will this allow Gmail to Gmail migrations? I've been wanting to switch my primary account for a while, since even if I send as the account I would like as my primary, sometimes the originating address shows anyway with that "on behalf of" wording.

@JacquelineToad: You can export your Google contacts to 2 csv formats (one more compatible with Outlook) and vcard.

[www.yippiemove.com] has been offering a 2.0 service that does this for quite a while. It works both to, from or between Gmail accounts and supports a bucketload many more email services.

@JacquelineToad: Not sure about the contacts, but you can access your GMail via POP or IMAP and pull all your e-mail. I've been meaning to set up a service on one of my "always on" machines to download all my mail as a backup... just haven't gotten around to it.

AnonJr

I've had Hotmail for years. Its not really that bad if i sync with thunderbird. I tried to make the switch to gmail, but i cant have the screenname i want. So they can gtfo, Im not having a gmail account.

Dilpickle1

Do they offer the reverse: export mail and contacts?

JacquelineToad

I've been using AOL since 1993 and have had a gMail account for a few years, but have been struggling with making the transition, primarily because of the loss of contacts and old mail. I began the process last week by painstakingly moving contact information by hand, and have already remastered more than 100 of my contacts into gMail. Now comes the dilemma...do I keep going or trash the work already done and wait for the rollout to my existing account? I'll probably keep going due to growing frustration with AOL.

As an aside, when I started using AOL in 1993 they had something like 700,000 subscribers and were growing faster than any other service. They were the first with real and easily usable email through the internet, and the first major service with a usable web browser. And they had the biggest dial-up program (although they struggled with growth). AOL really set the standard and was a strong innovator 'in the day. Heck, in 1993 Google didn't even exist! That goes to show how the mighty can fall, and the obscure start-up can rise through brilliant innovation and consumer outreach.

tombuch

This is great! All the while I wanted to import my Yahoo mail to Gmail, especially now that YPOPs! keeps having a hard time working with Yahoo mail. Hopefully, the settings for my Gmail account would include import soon!

still doesn't mean i can get the gmail name I want...

Ryan M. Moore

@Deprong Mori: "...In fact, AOL was so inept at creating its own web browser that it acquired Netscape Communications whose browser was eventually incorporated into the service, long after AOL subscription base started their precipitous decline..."

I thought AOL acquired Netscape but didn't actually use it. It kept with some branded version of IE.

paintbox

I would have to do some major spam purging before I moved over all of my other accounts to Gmail. Especially my AOL account. That one has probably about 90% spam, 10% useful saved messages.

@Ryan M. Moore:

You *want* a fairly long/unique gmail name. People are idiots and enter the wrong email address into forms ALL the time.

There's this one teacher in the US who has the same email address as me but with a "3" at the end of it, and I must get about 60-70 incorrect email addresses per year because of her, and this is after three years of her being aware she does it.

hmmmmm, why new mail for only 30 days? I guess this means after 30 days, yahoo users who switch to gmail (without paying for premium yahoo for pop3 access), will no longer be able to feed their yahoo mail into gmail, correct?

Hi Kevin! When you promote Gmail (the finest of webmail), just to be fair, you should mention Gmail's data retention policy and more importantly, lack of data purge policy. Google has no reason to delete valuable marketing data, and certainly has the space to retain it.

In other words, let people know that once your emails and contacts are in a Gmail account, it may never, ever, be deleted.

[mail.google.com]

--"Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in."

Ironic that I came to lifehacker directly today. Google Reader (my normal pathway here) is down. As is Google, Gmail, 2 of my blogs (on blogger).

I love Google, but I can't really even get work done when they go down, and this one seems pretty comprehensive....

@natenovs: I chatted with Yahoo support a few months ago about the lack of POP access that you mentioned. They said that they would not allow this Gmail feature on non-premium subscribers. I'm attempting it anyway with a new Gmail account. The service is down at the moment, with a cutesy message about the feature being "lost in outer space..." I'm not kidding, that is what it actually says.

nka

@fjpoblam: ...just a matter of setting up forwarding on the *other* email account, so's email *there* goes to your new gmail account. Transparent to the sender.

If I recall correctly, gmail has ALWAYS had this: the ability to forward one email account to your gmail account, importing its contacts in the process, then "send as" that forwarded email account. No?

@Deprong Mori: when i try to recover my password on the account, like if i owned it, it says "There are no Google Accounts currently registered to the username Dilpickle1@gmail.com."

Dilpickle1

@Dilpickle1: I use hotmail with outlook connector on multiple PC's, and it works brilliantly. I am not an idiot, so don't get any spam either, so I have no reason to switch to gmail to be honest.

falter

@Dilpickle1:

Some how I don't think you will be missed.

mb01930

is there some sort of legal issue here. i know yahoo doesn't allow POP access for their free users - so how is google getting these mails? it's ok when a yahoo user is using a freeware app to pull stuff down for their own use, but when a major company is promoting screen scraping and taking data from yahoo, it just feels fishy.

natenovs

@jaxun: "Existing Gmail users will eventually..."

/sheepish/

@jslizzle: Alas, it is not showing up as an option in the Apps for Education edition, either. Which SUCKS, because I have spent months convincing staff members here at work that Gmail is the way to go for the agency mail platform, and that I could migrate them away from all their personal AOL accounts without a lot of hassle. This would have made it MUCH easier. Of course, AOL could have made it easier, too, by making mail and address export FAR more straightforward.

Instead, Apps users are behind the curve. Again. I am feeling a gradual, steady reduction in my Google Gruntle.

@paintbox: Har, yer right, @paintbox, ever so right. You just can't kill the beast.

yay, now its time for me to tell all my friends and tell them to switch :)

Oscar Ayala

I just signed up for an account and have no import option.

:(

Reply hazy, try again?

bobjase

@Max Harris: I *still* can't access my Gmail today.

Is this feature available in premier Gmail??? (the one that costs $50 a year, you get 25 gb storage). i can't seem to find this feature.

jslizzle

I love gmail. Except when they go down. Like most of the AM. Like enough of google that the google analytics portion of this site kept me from reading and commenting.

Not disgruntled, just annoyed.

Max Harris

@Borateen: Well you know what they say....." you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave" :-)

paintbox

@fjpoblam: And Yahoo will forward to Gmail or whomever. Mighty big of them to do that. My ISP will do it too, if I request it. They must love me... they're willing to set me free. :)

paintbox

@nka: This is just a side note. I've had free POP access through Yahoo, because of having had an account there for nearly as long as I've had one with my main provider. I think Yahoo only started getting stingy later on, while earlier comers kept their free POP access.

paintbox

I read this and started a new GMail account so I could have my AOL contacts in non-proprietary purgatory, tried to import my contacts, didn't work... ...I know it sounds like they just rolled this feature out today, but still! The sooner I can fully detach myself from AOL, the better.

LeslieClio

@kikolani:

Isn't there a way you could forward and preserve original headers so google to do the SPAM-handling for you? I seem to remember something about this a while ago.

jupiterthunder

@paintbox: Define later. I've had my Yahoo! account since 1995 and I don't have free POP.

jupiterthunder

@Junkan:

The failure of YPops is pushing me to transition to Gmail. Well, in part. I wanted a new address for my job hunt that would say "I am a teacher" and make me a little bit more memorable. I figured if I'm going to do it anyway, now is a good time to figure out why everyone is so in love with Gmail. It gives me a clean account to use that won't have any other stuff cluttering it up.

jupiterthunder

@bobjase: go to settings > accounts > Get mail from other accounts, that should do the trick, i am using premier gmail so it might be differnet for free gmail

jslizzle

@jaxun: i am the web master for the company i work for and I had to migrate everyone over to premier gmail, it was a nightmare, eventually , using IMAP, i exported peoples email/ contacts to Thunderbird then exported the the thunderbird stuff over to gmail it was the easiest way. and it made all the email folders people set up into labels, which is basically the same thing as folders. but yeah screw google for not giving paying google customers the stuff they give out for free

jslizzle

@jupiterthunder: hmmm...... I wonder now if it was a member promotional that got me the free POP. I started using Yahoo mail in maybe 2001. I may have caught them at a time when they were being more generous to get more people to sign on. Anyway, not long after that, newcomers were having to go premium for POP access, while Yahoo left me alone.

paintbox

@Deprong Mori: Actually AOL's first web browser was in AOL 2.5 as a result of their Booklink acquisition. They launched a standalone ISP offering called GNN as well which used a proprietary tcpip stack. This was all circa 1995.

Also, not certain how Compuserve and Prodigy eroded AOL's dominance. AOL bought Compuserve and to be honest, I don't recall what happened to Prodigy..

bcjenkins

I signed up for a new Gmail acct just to test this new feature. I'm happy to report that I was successfully able to import my Yahoo mail to Gmail. I do not have Yahoo Mail Plus, just the free Yahoo. In addition, and to my amazement, Gmail preserved my Yahoo mail folders via corresponding labels with the same name.

I did however have to drag all of my mail from my folders, to the Yahoo Inbox before Gmail would import the messages. Despite this, the folder names were maintained. I don't quite understand how Gmail knew that some messages in my Inbox came from some folders, but I aint complaining.

I temporarily switched to the New Yahoo Mail to more easily move all messages from folders to the Inbox, and then switched back to Yahoo Mail classic so Gmail could import the messages. I'm not sure if Gmail will be able to import messages from a non-Yahoo Mail classic account.

Anyone else try this on a new account and had similar or different experiences?

nka

@jslizzle: There is a workaround. Create a new "proxy" gmail account, essentially a throwaway created strictly for the purpose of being the middle man. Migrate mail and contacts from a Yahoo account, enable Pop, then point the target Google Apps account at the proxy.

I am encouraged by the fact that it has at least allowed me to set up the transfer from a free Yahoo account. I had given up and was about to pay for a premium account just so I could get mail out of each Yahoo account and be done with it. If this works, I am going to take back MOST of the grumbling expressed above.

@Ryan M. Moore: I got in early, so I got just the one I wanted. Of course, I have the same one for hotmail and yahoo. That said, when comparing other web based email to Gmail there is just no comparison. User name or no, it's worth the switch.

magnoliasouth

@paintbox: Same here, I'm yahoo since 1997 but I don't have a free POP.

I know that some yahoo extentions do have free POP service like @yahoo.fr users.

I always like a good google/gmail tip.

TheDudeDean

I used remail.me, which costs $5, but gives you a lot of control over who gets your new email address, and what emails are forwarded.....that gave me a fresh start on the new email with no junk.

MurrayFanuimor