Did a small oauth project a few weeks back trying to integrate with web mail providers - gmail, ymail and outlook.
Gmail was a bit of a pain, but basically worked.
Ymail - a much huger pain, and extra hoops and far less usable documentation explaining basic workflow - "oauth" libraries continually failed me, and only using the crappy php4-style example code worked. At the end of the day, it didn't come close to being easy to use (and required my users to jump through extra hoops).
Outlook/microsoft webmail? Just didn't work at all . Oauth connectivity worked, as easily as gmail, but they simply don't allow sending at all - no access to the inbox at all. Oh sure I can 'download contacts!' but can't use outlook/livemail to actually handle the sending programmatically.
It really hit me that as bad or potentially bad that google might be in this space, they're 'winning' hearts and minds just because they're less bad than the alternatives. I used to wonder why so many services and add-ons were built on Google properties vs Yahoo and MS, but I wonder no more; Yahoo/MS just don't want to compete in that space (making stuff at least usable for developers). Facebook also seems to fall in to that camp, but right now they don't have any major competition (except from G+ it seems). But FB still has an upper hand with a full platform (however crappy). I suspect when G+ rolls out stronger API stuff, the game will change dramatically.
Did a small oauth project a few weeks back trying to integrate with web mail providers - gmail, ymail and outlook.
Gmail was a bit of a pain, but basically worked.
Ymail - a much huger pain, and extra hoops and far less usable documentation explaining basic workflow - "oauth" libraries continually failed me, and only using the crappy php4-style example code worked. At the end of the day, it didn't come close to being easy to use (and required my users to jump through extra hoops).
Outlook/microsoft webmail? Just didn't work at all . Oauth connectivity worked, as easily as gmail, but they simply don't allow sending at all - no access to the inbox at all. Oh sure I can 'download contacts!' but can't use outlook/livemail to actually handle the sending programmatically.
It really hit me that as bad or potentially bad that google might be in this space, they're 'winning' hearts and minds just because they're less bad than the alternatives. I used to wonder why so many services and add-ons were built on Google properties vs Yahoo and MS, but I wonder no more; Yahoo/MS just don't want to compete in that space (making stuff at least usable for developers). Facebook also seems to fall in to that camp, but right now they don't have any major competition (except from G+ it seems). But FB still has an upper hand with a full platform (however crappy). I suspect when G+ rolls out stronger API stuff, the game will change dramatically.