Pros & Cons of Google's Free Web-Based Applications vs Yahoo's Free Programs

First Impressions

The first night after I started using Google's web-based programs (Documents & Spreadsheets, Calendar, Personal Homepage and Gmail) went something like this...

Anytime there was a lull in the conversation, I kept repeating to Jim:
"I LOVE Google... I just love Google."

...Because I was so excited about all the possibilities that I could envision by using Google's web-based applications.

Google's got a great reputation, and I figure they have the end-user's happiness in mind most of the time, so I was thrilled to finally make the switch and to Googlize most of the things I do online.

But then.... after a couple of days trying out all these web-based programs and learning about all the features, I was surprisingly disappointed by a number of details that Google seems to have overlooked at this stage in the game.

Are Google's web-based apps the end-all-be-all that so many people claim them to be?...
Close, but no cigar.

Are Yahoo's web-based programs all that and more?...
In many ways, yes.

At this point, I'm not loyal to either of them, and I'm still searching for the best way to do all my stuff online. For the time being, here's my $.02 about Google's web-based programs.

The Things I Need/Use Most

The primary reason I canceled my Yahoo plus e-mail account (which would've streamlined everything I did in terms of emailing) was because it wasn't possible to check ALL of my (non-yahoo) email accounts at one time.

I've also been a regular user of Yahoo's calendar on a daily basis -- mostly for scheduling my "to do list" for website stuff (when to write about this, when to write about that... based on holidays, or other pertinent dates). But I also used it for my personal day-to-day calendar of events to some degree, as well.

The biggest thing that I've used in Yahoo for years now is the Notepad feature. I used those online notes to save every little thing I'd ever want to use in a future article on one of our many websites. I also kept many of the articles I'd started, but still needed to research more in Notepad. It was the handiest thing in the world, since my Yahoo Notepad could be accessed from any computer.

The Pros & Cons of Google's Programs

Here are some of Google's shortcomings, as I see them. (Keep in mind that I'm still fairly new at using Google's apps, so there may be some things I just haven't discovered yet. I'll add to this post in time as I learn new things about Google's programs.)

Google Calendar
PROS:

• You can share calendars among friends (or, in our case, spouses).


• The schedules of those you've shared calendars with and be viewed -- in an integrated manner -- with your own calendar. And they're clearly identifiable (by color).


• It's so easy to add a new event.


• Imports are a cinch with Google Calendar. (I exported by yahoo calendar as a csv file, then imported it into Google Calendar.)

CONS:

• You can't categorize calendar events based on "work-related, pets, kids, holidays, etc" (in yahoo, they call it "event type").


• You can't tell whether an event is slated for a.m. or p.m. in the calendar view itself -- it drops off that minor detail & only shows the numeral. (UPDATE: it shows a "p" next to the numeral for P.M. events and nothing next to the numeral for A.M. events.)


• You can't search for "suzie" and get instances such as "suzie's birthday" -- you have to specify "suzie's" in the search bar.

Google Documents & Spreadsheets
PROS:

• It's practically identical to Microsoft Word, so it has a number of advanced features & capabilities that Yahoo's text-based Notepad doesn't have.


• It uses tags to group things, and as a result, it's fairly easy to jump from one category or another.


• It automatically "saves" your the document you're working on every couple of minutes.


• It's a cinch to upload any current document you have on your computer -- this makes it great for sharing with others online, or just having access to it yourself from any computer.


• You can spell check on the spot.


• You can search within your documents using CTL+F, whereas in Yahoo Notepad, you cannot. (This only applies when using the Firefox browser. For some reason, in Firefox, you cannot search within text boxes. At this time, the data stored within Yahoo's Notepad appears in a text box, while Google's does not. This saves more time than you might imagine.)

CONS:

• You have to manually 'de-select' anything that you've previously "selected" & acted upon (like changed a tag name, renamed the file, etc), rather than it be de-selected automatically for you. As a result, it slows you down to have to go back & unselect stuff before you move on to making another set of changes to another article or articles that you wish to "select".


• You can't tag a document at the same time that you write it & save it. Instead, you have to go through a whole other step of "selecting" that doc, then "applying the tag".


• Multiple tags cannot be selected from a drop-down list like individual tags can be. Instead, you have to type them individually from scratch and separate them using commas. This allows for errors and duplication: "Did I call that tag 'car' or was it 'cars'???" If you guessed wrong, then you have to go back through the whole process of selecting & deselecting & editing a document.


• There's no way to organize things by folders! How silly is that??? Your only option is to "tag" something... but then you just see all of your documents (in my case 200+) in one long list by either title, or by date.


• You can't search for something that has TWO tags applied to it -- it's either/or... that's it. You'd think there'd be more of a relationship-applied search utilized by Google at this point.


• To view ALL documents with a particular "tag", you have to keep clicking "next... next... next", because it will only show you 25 at a time. You can't just view them all in one big long list if you want to. (...Yet when viewing ALL documents, regardless of tag, you get one big long list.)


• Similar to Yahoo Notepad, whatever text you have in the very first line of your document becomes the title of that document. However, unlike Yahoo Notepad... 1) Google cuts off the title at 40 or characters (you have to go through the "renaming" process to make it as long as you want each time); and 2) whenever you change that first line of text in a document, the change is not reflected in the title of the article. In my opinion it should be.


• The only way to change the title of a Google Document is to first "select" the document from a list, then "open" the document, then select "rename" from the dropdown menu, then type the new title in the dialog box that pops up. Why all the extra steps???


• Let's say I prefer to view my list of documents that are tagged "loghomes" in the order that they've been edited. So anything I worked on recently will appear at the top of the list. You can choose to view any list by "edited date", however, after you go in and view or edit any one of those articles from the list... you are taken back to the MAIN list of ALL documents you've written, sorted alphabetically! Now you have to go back in and click the "loghomes" tag (again) to make those appear in my list, then click "last edited" (again) to sort them in the order in which they've been updated.

In sum, there are relatively few options as far as viewing and organizing Google Docs goes. I'm surprised. I'd have thought Google to be way ahead of the curve on this, but Yahoo's Notepad wins in the web-based notes arena... in my opinion... at this time.

Google Personal Homepage
While Google's Personal Homepage is a pretty neat feature -- especially since you can store things in different "tabs" (it's like a browser within a browser!) -- I just don't need it.
So I use this more as a place to store "to-do lists" for both Jim & I. (We're not talking shopping lists here, but rather website stuff. In case you haven't already noticed, we are up to our eyeballs with websites right now -- most of them we write and maintain on a regular basis. Not to mention all our hopes & dreams for future stuff that we plan to delve into... So our To-Do Lists are <>i>definitely quite hefty. (Not that we're complaining, mind you... we feel quite fortunate to be able to pursue what we're most passionate about at this point in our life. (...but do you know of anyone who wants to help write?)

A free program called Web Stickies makes it easy to change & modify the To-Do Lists we store in Google's Personal Homepage in "real-time". It's good, and simple to use. However, for some reason you can only have 3 individual Stickie notes within one Google homepage tab. So, to get around this, I downloaded the Web Stickies program 5 times -- one for each of the 5 tabs that we use to organize our thoughts for 15 different topics... at this time.

The only other modification I've made on Google's Personal Homepage is to add my Google Calendar there. It's not just having the calendar there that I like, but the fact that you can display your "agenda" (upcoming events for the week) in a pretty cool list. This can appear below the calendar itself, or you could turn off the big calendar grid & just show your scheduled events instead. That's a pretty handy for at-a-glance details without having to keep your full-page calendar open at all times.

Overall, I'd give Google's Personal Homepage a big thumbs-up. If I wanted or needed one place to read everything that's interesting to me on the web, then this would be the place to organize it all. But in my world, I simply haven't got the time for leisurely reading... everything is task-based at this point, instead.

Google Gmail
PROS:

• When sending email from one of my "other" accounts to my Gmail account, I've noticed that the email arrives within seconds from when it was sent! That is truly amazing.


• Gmail "automagically" checks all of your email accounts (e.g. all accounts that you've "forwarded", on the server side, to Gmail) at once. (NOTE: When you do this, you can never check your other email accounts any other way than through gmail unless you un-forward them.)


• As long as you use a tabbed browser (like Firefox), and you have your Google Inbox open & currently on top with your Gmail window... then you'll always know when you receive a new email message. This is because the Gmail tab (in Firefox) changes in real-time to show the number of unread messages you currently have.


• I like how you can see the first few lines of text in an email before opening it. It's not a "preview pane" per se, but just a single line of text like this: You see the sender.... the subject of the email... followed by the first line of text from that email.


• Gmail appears to be very smart about what is SPAM and what is not. Items go directly into my SPAM box automatically, which saves me from having to manually send them there. I've checked through them for days now, and only once did a "good" message appear in my SPAM box.

GMAIL BONUSES:
#1: Gmail Notifier is the best! it's an application that alerts you when you have new Gmail messages. It displays an icon in your system tray to let you know if you have unread Gmail messages, and shows you their subjects, senders and snippets, all without your having to open a web browser.
#2: If you use a program like 4t Tray Minimizer like I do, then anytime you hover over the Firefox icon in the system tray (bottom right corner of your monitor), you can see at a glance exactly how many unread email messages you have in Gmail.

CONS:

• The biggest downside of using Gmail, as I see it at this point: You cannot remove emails from the server, after you're read them. Not even after you've deleted them. This means they're adding up in your quota of available Gmail server space and they're not removed from your own e-mail server either! For some reason, Google handles POP email differently than anyone else. (Would appreciate tips if anyone knows a workaround for this.)


• When selecting "All" emails (say, in your SPAM box or your TRASH box), "select ALL" really only means "select the first 25" (because only 25 messages appear at a time in any of your mailboxes by default & you can't change that). As a result, whatever action you want to perform (such as "delete forever" or "archive" or "tag"), can only be performed in chunks of 25, rather than all at once.


• The multitude of open "conversations" (all replies to a particular message which appear together or all emails about a particular subject from one person) is a bit much for me. I prefer simplicity instead. Perhaps this function will grow on me...

Summary

Please remember that I'm using these Google web-based programs for the very first time here. I'm definitely not an expert on Google's programs, and I welcome your expertise if you happen to have more experience than I at using any of these programs.

As far as Google is concerned, I am certain that I haven't discovered the best ways to do things yet, so I'll continue to post updates as I find new things. But at this point, I'd summarize by saying...

• Google's interface is better (e.g. more modern in appearance) overall, and each of the programs I tried appears to be just 1 or 2 steps away from being "perfect".
• Yahoo's programs give you many more options, resulting in a more personalized (or customized) experience and ultimately, more choices and greater control overall.

At this point, I'm trying to use Google's products exclusively. I'm willing to adapt to what I'm sure will become the most popular web-based applications -- eventually. But I've still got a lot to learn. I welcome any tips & suggestions from others who use Google's web-based programs...