Do you judge people who don't use Gmail or their own domain name?

EQ Admin

EQ Forum Admin
Staff member
If you see someone using an email address that isn't your preferred email service provider (in my case, Gmail), and that someone also isn't using their own custom domain or work email address, do you make any assumptions about them?

For example @gmail.com vs @aol.com vs @yahoo.com vs @hotmail.com etc
 

Big Dan

EQ Forum Moderator
I judge business people by their email address. I don't know why but if you own a domain and cannot be bothered to at least setup a domain based forwarder into Gmail it makes me wonder about your marketing savvy.

aol.com users are usually the least technically inclined. I cringe when a support ticket comes through from an @aol.com address. It means I'll probably have to teach them how to drag and drop. :p
 

foggy

Valued Member
aol.com users are usually the least technically inclined. I cringe when a support ticket comes through from an @aol.com address. It means I'll probably have to teach them how to drag and drop. :p

:rofl:

In my case, I don't have business contacts, i.e. no people with businesses are my contacts, but I do contact some of my customers by email. And since most of my email communication is of the 'personal' or casual sort -- family, friends, customers -- it's not surprising that none of them has his/her/their own domain. And none has a premium provider (FastMail, Runbox, etc.) One uses AOL; several use Gmail, several Hotmail/Outlook; a couple Yahoo; and so forth. My only judgement from this is that my contacts don't obsess over email (like I do ;)).

In general I would guess that 1) many AOL users started with them years ago and just never cared about trying anything else, 2) Yahoo users are those who, after getting their first computer, realized they needed an email address, did a search (on Yahoo?) and found it at the top of the search results, 3) Hotmail users went with the service provided by their Windows PCs, and 4) Gmail users are those who a) wanted to try something new and different when it first came out, b) want to thumb their noses at the other providers, esp. MS, c) want to have their email experience integrated with other communication/documentary needs and use Google's range of services for it, or d) asked friends for recommendations of a good email service and kept hearing about "Gmail" and decided to try it.

I don't know... is all this too 'judgmental' on my part? :D
 

foggy

Valued Member
Addendum: I just decided to log in to my AOL mail (I have the AOL account for the feed reader not the mail) and play around with it a bit. It's not really too bad. I just may use it for a while as my online 'mail station' to see if I'd like to use it more long-term. At least I already know how to drag-n-drop. ;)
 

EQ Admin

EQ Forum Admin
Staff member
If you come across any interesting/unique features (or questions, of course!) please feel free to post them - AOL :)
 

Big Dan

EQ Forum Moderator
Addendum: I just decided to log in to my AOL mail (I have the AOL account for the feed reader not the mail) and play around with it a bit. It's not really too bad. I just may use it for a while as my online 'mail station' to see if I'd like to use it more long-term. At least I already know how to drag-n-drop. ;)

hehe. Most of the webmail solutions have stepped up their game quite a bit thanks to Gmail's competition. I had a couple of at @aim.com accounts and the interface look pretty decent. I didn't give it much more than than cursory glance though. Mostly because I'm happy with Gmail and maybe some snobbery; I'm not going to be *that* AOL user.

I remember in the early days having to explain to a few Aol'ers that email addresses weren't just a screen name. the @ and server name after it was foreign to them. As the original AOL client addressed email to 'screenname' not 'screenname@aol.com' lots of people didn't know any better or realize they could email people at other providers.
 
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