Gmail and Cmail
Act(s)
of Consuming: Using/ Reusing
Product: Gmail
Email Service and Cmail
Price: Free
Price of Simialar Products (different brands):
|
Hotmail
(same provider as cmail)
Free
|
Yahoo
Free
|
Why I chose these brands?:
An interesting realization came to me today; I realized
that the email service providers I use are in themselves brands. That Hotmail,
Yahoo and Gmail are all “brands.” Having come to realize this I had to ask
myself ‘Why do I use these services?’ Something that is interesting about my use
of these services is that unlike many of my friends at Carleton I use two email
providers. Many students have their school email automatically forward to their
other email accounts so that everything is in one place. I on the other hand
keep my Cmail and Gmail account separate have them both forward to my phone. In
this way they are in the same place but I can separate my personal emails
(Gmail) from my professional emails (Cmail). So while I get store offers sent
to my Gmail account, I communicate with professors through my carleton provided
account. In doing so I can keep my emails more organized and easier to access
without worrying about sending an email. This is one of the main reasons that I
have chosen to keep two separate email accounts.
Moreover, it is important to consider why I chose these
two email providers over other possibilities, such as Yahoo. For starters,
since Carleton provides all students with a Cmail account I did not have a
choice in using this service. Even if I did have my emails from this provider
forwarded to another account with a different provider I would still be using
my Cmail account in this way. Since, I would have to use my Cmail email address
anyways for school related emails it did not seem worth it to forward it to a
different service providers mail system. Especially, since I can get both of my
account forwarded to my phone.
On the other hand, I had more freedom in choosing to use
Gmail as a second email provider. I was not required to have a Gmail account by
another party, as was the case of Cmail. However, in order to use a certain
number of Google’s other services one has to have a google, or Gmail, account.
Even this blog which is a Google service requires me to sign in with a google
email.
So
the real question is what causes me to choose google services over others? The
first possible reason is my familiarity with google as a search engine. I have
been using Google as a search engine since I will younger. I found its quality
better than Yahoo, my old search engine, and have never had trouble finding
what I am looking for. Futhermore, as I continued to use Google’s search engine
there were links to other services that I found would be useful in my everyday
life. For instance, google maps to find my way around and map out transit
routes, google books to preview books I wished to take out of the library, and
google scholar to look up scholarly articles. Due to the link structure and my
previous experience with Google I therefore decided that I could ‘trust’ the
quality of the Gmail email service.
Secondly,
Google is also greately popular and many people I know use it. As a result,
there is a bit more pressure to use this service than others. Using google is
almost like being part of a very large “club” of Google users. This “club”
defines itself against users of other search engines such as Bing. The only
person I know who uses Bing is my dad who has a very minimal understanding of
computers. In fact, rather than saying “search it” to someone it is more common
for one to say “google it.” This is common language among almost all of the
people I know and shows how popular or well-known google is. There is also
pressure to use these services because people tend to invite their friends to
use services with them. For instance, people I form study groups with often
like to use Google documents to collaborate on notes.
Lastly,
other companies also pressure, though they do not require, people to use
google. When I first bought my Macbook the google search bar was already installed
as part of the internet window. When I got my new Android phone (also a brand)
I the applications stores that one could download from, that were already set
up on it, were the Samsung store but also the “Google Play” store. These
examples show that there is some pressure, not just from people one knows
personally, but from other companies to use google services.
Works Cited
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