Gmail access advantages
One of the major advantages of using Gmail apart from all that’s said before in a corporate (read: office) environment is that it’s not tied to a port number like any other webmail service and unlike any site specific email. You’d wonder why should this be a topic of discussion in the first place. Believe me, it is because: first, Gmail is powered by Google, Gmail resides under a Google sub-domain; and Google does not provide messaging services like that of Yahoo! (for those administrators that think internet messaging opens backdoors to unsecure networks). Also, Google is the de-facto search engine.
So, unlike Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail, Gmail is difficult to ban on a corporate network. Many companies have banned web-based email to restrict employees using them on their network for personal reasons (I know it’s pathetic, but nevertheless). Banning Gmail would normally mean banning Google, and that would be very expensive, even to a company or it’s employees that need a powerful search system like Google for performing (re)search.
Do we conclude that Gmail does have other advantages like these as well?