Google Rolling Out Gmail Redesign

Today Google announced a redesign of the Gmail inbox. Citing a high volume of email which makes it hard for users to focus on what's important (or what they want to focus on at any given moment), the new inbox will automatically group incoming emails into categories, which will appear as tabs at the top of the inbox. 'You can easily customize the new inbox — select the tabs you want from all five to none, drag-and-drop to move messages between tabs, set certain senders to always appear in a particular tab and star messages so that they also appear in the Primary tab.' Speaking to The Verge, Gmail product manager Alex Gawley said, 'It became obvious to us over time that this notion that the inbox was more of your master than your servant was becoming more widespread. It wasn't just the people receiving hundreds of emails a day — more regular users were starting to feel stressed out by their inbox.' The announcement notes that if you aren't interested in the new view, you can switch off all the tabs to go back to the classic inbox view.

Comments

No!

[Anonymous Coward]

Please stop fixing what is not broken. Please.

Re:No!

[cayenne8]

Please stop fixing what is not broken. Please.

No shit.

I mean, what is so difficult about reading all my incoming emails in the order I see them...like I've done with email since I first got email on the internet in about '93.

What has changed so much that they need to potentiall fsck up the interface yet again?

I think by now, we've pretty much gotten email front ends and MTA's done about right, not much need for new tinkering that I can fathom.

Re:No!

[gl4ss]

Please stop fixing what is not broken. Please.

my other account had just rolled over to the new(ehm old??) design in last month.

was nothing wrong with the older one either. it's not like I think it's a terribly great idea to write new messages in a fucking chat box on bottom right corner, wtf is up with that? is it making it more IM for fooling the cool kids??

Re:No!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm confused; it says clearly in the summary and the article that people can go back to the classic view if they choose to do so. Therefore, they're simply giving people an option as to how they want to view their inbox, and if you like the current version, you can keep it. So what are you upset about? More options is always a good thing, especially if one option is to keep things the way they are.

Re:No!

[dougisfunny]

I know right? I hate it when I have new options on how to look at things. I mean, when someone sends me mail I want to go get it out of the mail box and open an envelope, not mess around with some newfangled electronical mail.

Re:No!

[twisted_pare]

Optional will be tomorrow's mandatory. That has been the typical beta test to roll out of Gmail updates so far.

Re:No!

[EGenius007]

I mean, what is so difficult about reading all my incoming emails in the order I see them...like I've done with email since I first got email on the internet in about '93.

Yeah, I mean, just like back in '93 when I used to get all those facebook invites to my email. And the craigslist responses. And the messages from my state government about my license plates needing renewed. The updates on the status of my federal income tax return. Messages from PayPal about changes to policies on availability of funds on their system. Notification from my bank about my checking account balance. Statements and bill notifications from all of my utilities providers. Receipts for pizzas I ordered online, as well as information about when the delivery was expected.

You'd almost think that in addition to attracting a larger mass of personal correspondence due to the ubiquity of internet access for the whole world, we're generating more automated messages of varying degrees of import by consuming goods and services that somehow haven't always been around.

Re:No!

[BradleyAndersen]

exactly.

gmail keeps pushing not insignificant changes, and calls them 'optional'. my experience is they later remove the options.

Re:No!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm confused; it says clearly in the summary and the article that people can go back to the classic view if they choose to do so. Therefore, they're simply giving people an option as to how they want to view their inbox, and if you like the current version, you can keep it. So what are you upset about? More options is always a good thing, especially if one option is to keep things the way they are.

Because if it turns out people LIKE it, then the GP and GGP might wind up having to admit they're the outliers and no longer represent the views of the internet. This is an unacceptable solution, as it would be tantamount to admitting that the internet, being a melting pot of humanity never before seen in history, has evolved to something the GP/GGP doesn't recognize, and that, in turn, would be the first step in realizing that they're OLD (with a capital OLD) and behind the times, AND that they can't stop the progress of time any more than the music labels and movie studios can.

Therefore, the objective is to whine loud enough so that the choice to change things is somehow removed. This will preserve their fragile egos, which I'm certain they can agree is worth holding back any possible conveniences, unless they themselves are initiating it, in which case everyone else is old. And the fact that old people can agree on it is all that matters.

Re:No!

[magic maverick]

You'd almost think that receiving large quantities of email from known senders was a solved problem. Oh wait, it is a solved problem.
They are called filters. You can filter mail: from senders (e.g. you-stupid-user@facebook.com); to addresses (e.g. you can give a different address to every site & company (e.g. slashdot.org.2013.may.29@example.com, assuming you own example.com and considering you can get domains for $2 a year, it's easy to own your own domain); based on subject line (e.g. if it's got [BEST SCAT PORN] in the subject); etc.
You filter them into different folders, and then you deal with each folder as you like. Some folders you'll just regularly delete (e.g. maybe all the Facebook junk). Some you'll mark as read, without actually reading. Some you'll scan the subject lines. And some you can open up individually and read (e.g. the scat porn).

Filters, they work. (They may not work with Google Mail, but would mean you should get your own bloody mail system.)

Re:No!

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

LOL, OMG, Email (in general) is broken, and has been, for years. Please start making Email into something new.

Gmail is trying to make sense of the countless amount of pure garbage sent to your inbox, even from your friends, family and co-workers.

Even at work, 90% of the email I get is only valid for the 5 minutes after it was sent, and is usually something I can toss away. In fact I have gotten used to the idea of being able to Ignore entire conversation threads in Outlook based purely on the fact the original message is meaningless to me, but I got CC'd on it.

While Google is trying to organize and make sense of it, I think that email in general needs to change. Its become a kind of sms/message service where people feel the need to try and maintain some kind of real time conversation, and email inbox's are just not designed for that.

I can't comment on the new Gmail until I use it, but email clients have to move beyond just a flat list of mostly useless content and evolve into something a little smarter.

Re: No!

[Grishnakh]

It's no so much the team of developers, as it is their management. Managers are always trying to find stuff to make themselves look important and necessary to an organization, even if it's really just make-work. Managers want ever-larger budgets and ever-larger teams to manage, to justify their existence and make themselves look good and justify a higher salary for themselves, so they push unnecessary projects on their bosses to achieve this. You're not going to find any corporate managers who say "OK, we're all done with this big product's development and roll-out, and we consider it done, so let's plan now on how to scale back the operation to a maintenance mode, and move extra people into other development jobs working on other products for the company." Companies do put things into maintenance mode, sure (remember IE6 when MS stopped all development of it?), but only because the top management directs this, not because the managers who are heads of those product divisions request it.

Re:No!

[brentrad]

You're actually wrong on both counts:

To get rid of the "Important" mailbox in the web interface: Go to your Gmail settings, Inbox tab, and set your Inbox to "Classic".

In the Android Gmail app, go into the settings for your Gmail account, and uncheck "Priority Inbox".

Sounds Horrible

[MightyYar]

I'm very happy that Google is willing to conduct these grand experiments to solve age-old problems.

That said, this sounds just as bad as their last attempt, with the stupid "Priority" email box. All it will mean is that you have to occasionally open a new tab to make sure nothing got misfiled. Just like things that got excluded from the priority email box, and for that matter the automatic spam filtering.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to use that stupid "Priority inbox", it's optional. As long as they keep these experiments optional, I'm fine with it, but Google has a tendency of removing options instead of adding them.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[NJRoadfan]

Use an IMAP client of your choice than.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[adolf]

Yes, basically: It's another spam filter. Has always worked great for me once I got past the newness-deprecating "WTF?" moment.

With minimal training and setup my "important" stuff is the only stuff that that makes my phone notify me of email, which is actually useful to me, while "unimportant" stuff can be read or ignored some time later.

All of this conspires to make email less annoying.

Re:Sounds Horrible

[recoiledsnake]

The point of Gmail is to get you signed into Google.com so that they can track your search keywords across different machines to show ads related to them. e.g. at home and work.

Re:I already make my own categories

[Gavin Scott]

So what's the best alternative to gmail thse days?

Riiight

[Lunix Nutcase]

The announcement notes that if you aren't interested in the new view, you can switch off all the tabs to go back to the classic inbox view.

Uh huh. Until they decide otherwise and force it on people like they did with the current redesign.

Re:Riiight

[steelfood]

"We're Google and we can do whatever the fuck we want because we're so cool and if you don't like it you'll just have to suck it up and deal."

That's how they currently approach every product. And when I say every product, I mean every product. They're not even trying to compete anymore.

Re:Riiight

[Mashiki]

That's how they currently approach every product. And when I say every product, I mean every product. They're not even trying to compete anymore.

That line of thinking didn't work for the automotive industry in the 70's and 80's. It won't work for google either, all it will take is consumers being fedup and an alternative.

"Let me just take care of that for you."

[Anonymous Coward]

It's kind of like having someone come in and reorganize your music based on their own crazy thought process.

At least you can turn it off... for now.

But this is endemic of a larger problem using Google products, they're tinkering with the things that aren't broken and shutting down projects that people use.

There's something not quite right with that attitude.

Re:"Let me just take care of that for you."

[wdef]

It's kind of like having someone come in and reorganize your music based on their own crazy thought process.

At least you can turn it off... for now.

But this is endemic of a larger problem using Google products, they're tinkering with the things that aren't broken and shutting down projects that people use.

There's something not quite right with that attitude.

You got it. It's designer-driven change for change's sake. The same problem as Gnome with Gnome3 and the same problem that MS have with Windows 8. Changes that nobody wants or needs - except bored designers.

Error: tepples@example.com does not use Gmail

[tepples]

If I have to do that what's the point of even having a Gmail account?

To get past the "does not use Gmail" screen when using some other Google services. Android Market prior to Android 4.0, for example, required a Gmail account; an ordinary Google account wasn't enough.

Yes!

[Piata]

There's actually a lot of room for improvement with email. It's one of the more clunky and archaic parts of the web and I'm really glad Google keeps pushing the boundaries on this as they seem to be the only ones doing so effectively. I personally have a hard time keeping my email organized and sorted so any attempts to improve email clients are welcome in my books. Even if the changes aren't necessarily better, trying new approaches and getting feedback on those changes will create an overall better product.

If you want a static and unchanging email experience you might be better served with Outlook. At my job we just switched from Corporate Gmail to Outlook after 6 years and Outlook has hardly changed since I last used it. It's downright ancient!

labels = folders; you == uninformed;

[cblack]

Many people are wrong-headed on this, labels are superior to folders.
With folders, an email message can be filed to one and only one folder.
With labels, any number of labels can be attached to a message.
This means you can have labels like "vendors" and "Project X" and a single message can be labelled as both.
In addition, you can easily set up filters in gmail to apply labels, set read status, etc.
In gmail the idea of "inbox" right now is just a label that gets applied to (most) incoming email. You can archive it out of your inbox by removing that label.

Regarding filtering, if you are going to slam gmail for missing a feature outlook has, at least don't be completely wrong.

You also seem to misunderstand the new mailbox and thinking about "tabs".

RTFM.

Screw it up yet again

[ChrisMaple]

The COMPOSE window is now tiny and can't be resized. What the hell is wrong with you guys?

Don't trust them

[frovingslosh]

The old Compose interface was fine. I find the new Compose interface crippling, there are several things that I do in Gmail that just don't seem to be there in the new Compose interface, at least I can't find them with a lot of searching. Yes, you can switch back to the old Compose interface, I did that months ago. Lately I've started getting messages that the old Compose interface is going away and I better learn to use the new one. Not that I object to learning something new, although I shouldn't have to if the old one is fine, but the new one doesn't seem to support some very basic functions. Of course, this isn't presenting a problem for the people at Google who help us out and support the product, because there is no one at Google who supports the product and apparently no way to even give them feedback on the problems with the new interfaces.