[OU] POPeramail?

[Ledgem]

If I had to guess, the issue with granting POP or IMAP email access is that you lose out on the advertising front. Now, note that I do not use Opera's web mail service, so I don't actually know whether they server advertisements there or not; if not, then my explanation may be a bit off.

Google was able to offer POP mail access because they have a few tricks aside from pure advertisement display. It is known that Google scans through your emails in order to generate key words and such that allow them to use targeted advertisements (and perhaps some of this data can be sold to advertisers and marketing companies, too). And in the past year or so, Google now allows you to use your GMail account to sign in to their search engine and other services - so this data that is collected on you can arguably be brought to bear when you view the advertisements on those services, even if you'd be missing out on the advertisements from their webmail application. (I'd also imagine that the vast majority of GMail users are using the web applet anyway - offering POP access was probably a move to persuade some of the more technically minded users to begin contributing to the data pool.) While Microsoft isn't a company whose revenue is based around advertising, as Google is, I'!
 d imagine that they've found a way to do something similar now that they offer POP access for free. Yahoo started offering POP access relatively shortly after Google did, so I'm guessing that's the same case, too.

But Opera isn't an advertising company, so they don't have that kind of ability. The number of users of Opera's webmail service is very likely much lower than those using GMail, Yahoo, or Microsoft Hotmail, and thus they wouldn't be able to sell or utilize data from scanned emails in the manner that those big three can. As a result, every mail user going through POP generates costs that can't be recouped through advertising, and so the only way to allow POP access without having the company purely foot the bill is to have the user pay for it.

That's how I'd reason it, anyway - I don't work in any of those companies or in any of the sectors associated with marketing/advertising, so I can't say for certain that's how it goes.

Regards,
David

On Thu, 12 Mar 2009 03:25:48 -0400, zl <zlloyq at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thursday, 2009 March 12
>
> Greetings
>
> This is probably only partially (so apologies) the right forum but I
> have to ask:
>
> Does anyone think Operamail is worth it? Really, $30/year for what?
> Not very much by current standards, but you do get POP access.
>
> I asked about this from my webmail operamail account in April
> 2007.(Wow how time flies).
> This was the reply
>
>>Thank you for your feedback.
>>
>>We have discussed this internally, and we are working on improving Opera Web
>>Mail. Unfortunately I can not disclose any details regarding this work at the
>>moment.
>>
>>Kind regards,
>>xxxxxxxx
>>Technical Service Consultant
>>Opera Software
>
> I don't need let alone want the other things in Premium ( eg 25 MB of
> storage) , whatever their attractions, so I see no reason for paying.
> But I would like POP/SMTP.  Happily I am unencumbered :)  by any
> knowledge of the limitations of the Operamail business model, so I
> don't know what effect granting just POP/SMTP access would have, but
> can it really be significant? and what has taken so long? Operamail
> is way behind the curve here.
>
> Gmail of course provides POP and IMAP and a lot more (their business
> model is clearly very different but), and there are other POP mail
> sites which are free or low cost
> e.g.
> gmx.com		5 GB E-Mail Storage And Attachments up to 50 MB free
> bluebottle.com 	250MB storage 20 MB Attachments  US$9.95/year Basic
> 		1GB storage 30 MB Attachments US$24.95/year Premium
>
>
> And,  surely irony of local ironies, the Opera browser mail client,
> M2, cannot "natively" access Operamail. You have to cough up the $30
> (or whatever currency is the one you see) for a POP
>
> So, as Seinfeld would say:	What's up with that?
>
> Cheers
>
> zl
>
> --