I just finished a short write-up on IMAP IDLE — a system that’s often called an email “push” technology. Here are a couple of excerpts:

IDLE is not — according to my definition above — a true push technology. IDLE actually requires an active connection in order to work, and that connection cannot be initiated by the server.

[Update]: Yahoo! uses P-IMAP, not IDLE to implement “push”…[ Link: An Introduction to IMAP IDLE ]

…and more importantly, why are they not being criticized for it? I mean they’re not exactly being subtle about it.

• Text ads at the top and right.
• The upper right area has a link to the definition of the search term.
• Stats from Yahoo: 1 – 10 of about 337,000,000 for linux – 0.13 sec
• Stats from Google: Results 1 – 20 of about 999,000,000 English pages for linux [definition]. (0.21 seconds)
• The search results look highly similar — cached being the first option, for example.
• Search bar at top and bottom (intuitive, but horked nonetheless).
• The overall look, i.e. a minimalist feel.

I mean, that list took literally 4 minutes to put together; I’m sure there’s much more. The question is: why doesn’t Google care? Why don’t Yahoo’s proponents care? It’s flagrant, really. It’s essentially saying to the world, in big block letters,

“I suck – a lot. My only option in this search competition is to copy the superior company.”

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t know how I’d compete with Google either, but damn. This is just obscene.