Gmail..Never delete a message!

What makes Gmail different?

Well everyone's first answer would be it was the first to offer an enormous amount of storage way above the previous offerings. A not so less obvious answer would be that "Google really knows how to make people impossible to switch". Email should presumably be one of the most sticky applications EVER!. Yet, when gmail arrived I was just able to forward my few messages in my 2 MB hotmail inbox to a new gmail account and redirect all my incoming mails at my hotmail address to gmail and there I was distributing gmail as my primary address, thereby having no reason left to visit the hotmail page again. How much time did the switch take..Less than 5 minutes give or take.

One of the most interesting ulterior motive Google had at the time of offering such a behemoth email space and "Google's infinity plus one storage plan" offering the capability to never delete a message or in other words.."Even if you decide to make a switch someday you will have to come back several times a week to gmail to access your several GB's of previous mails and attachments which I have safely secured for you" i.e. making a switch virtually impossible.


To create a high barrier to switch from a service, things like the following would play a role

1: Make sure to keep what a user thinks is most personal and very important to him i.e. things like ALL the messages from friends and family, clippings, messages marked important, anniversaries, birthday reminders etc. saved in the backend.

2: Provide an ability for user to access those anytime, anywhere in the most easiest manner possible.

3: Make sure the user gets what he needs and only what he needs at any time so that he cannot easily retrieve and export all the info in one go and start using other similar services.

PS: "Keep Innovating" and outbeating competition so that you don't need to rely on the above 3 :)