Jeff Jarvis says Google email (gmail) is just another portal me-too.

I don't think so, Jeff.

Email has juice. Only telephones are used more.

40% of a company's knowledge is stored in its email boxes, hidden from intranet search engines, locked away on desktops. Email is rich with:

• social information (who is asked about what, who redistributes information to whom),
• time signatures (sent, received, read, forwarded, printed),
• threading and propagation clues (A sent it to B who replied while copying it C who forwarded it to...),
• urls pointing to the web,
• enclosures passed along, and
• entry points, from mobile devices to robots to business software.

evectors' ZOË demonstrates the value of combing through your mail to fuel search and reveal context.

For Google, this has three strategic benefits:

1. Better Google scoring. There's no reason Google can't collect a billion emails by this time next year. A million users times a thousand messages. The urls will inform PageRank™, and in near real time. If you thought weblogs got you Google juice, wait for email.
2. Ad Revenue. Either you'll pay for ad-free viewing or you'll get Google text ads tailored to your emails. A billion page reads of additional targeted inventory to sell.
3. Appliance sales. With Google search, weblogs, and email, Google will give Microsoft mail service a run for its money. Watch Google roll out Blogger in a Box this year, the better to clue the Google search engine to intranet content. A year from now, watch the microcontent of email and weblogs continue to converge, especially behind the firewall.

How does Yahoo differ from Google?

Where Yahoo sells communication, Google sells context.

Where Yahoo brings integration, Google leads with relevance.

Where Yahoo! lets you type up a "buddy list", watch Google tweak your orkut social network with clues from your mailing behavior, and vice versa.

Where Yahoo uses their toolbar to access their many services/properties, Google's toolbar will observe your browser experiences. And that includes now sending and reading email, surfing, news watching, reading and writing weblogs, following and posting to usenet, and shopping. With email, orkut and your toolbar, they now can create a compound profile of your interests.

Context, relevance, experience. Tough to beat.

[a klog apart]