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Google Hopes To One Day Replace Gmail With Inbox
An anonymous reader writes Three Inbox by Gmail engineers today answered questions as part of a Reddit AMA session. Most of the answers were tidbits we've heard of before, but one stood out to us: Google plans to eventually replace Gmail with Inbox. In response to the question "Do you think Inbox will replace Gmail on the long road?," lead designer Jason Cornwell gave the following answer: "In the short term, no. In the very long term, we hope so. Inbox is something new — that's why we're launching it as a separate product. We care deeply about Gmail and Gmail users, but in the long run as we add more features to Inbox and respond to user feedback we hope that everyone will want to use Inbox instead of Gmail. Ultimately, our users will decide." The followup question asks how Google believed one email product possibly target both casual (Gmail) and power (Inbox) users, to which Cornwell replied: "They are not aimed at fundamentally different audiences. Both Gmail and Inbox are designed to scale from low volume to high volume users."
Ultimately, our users will decide.
We now have a new policy at Google!!!
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Gripe about Google all you want, but GMail is a pretty solid product IMO. If they decide to replace it, they had better have *DAMN* good reason to do so, and they need to have the users on board with the change *BEFORE* they do it. Just talking about changing such a solid and deeply absorbed product makes my buttcheeks clench. If they screw it up it means lots of miserable people. I hope Google has seen the Windows H8 debacle and truly will listen to it's revenue-generating eyeballs (not customers, but drivers of ad revenue). Poking the eyeballs, well, in the eye, will hurt their bottom line just as badly as MS boldly going where their customers did not want them to go.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
What we found was that email works as a todo list for many people
Who exactly are these people? I've never seen a single person use email this way.
It tries to turn email into some frankenstein todo list.
You mean it's a merge of a *hugely dumbed down* Gmail with Google Now. The compose window is horrendous, hiding emails from me is stupid, etc. It is all that is terrible about current UX design.
If I wanted a task manager or to do list, I'd have got one.
I want an email program.
Why does Google keep trying (and often failing) to tell its consumers what they want? My theory is because they aren't good at all at asking. (Case in point: nobody using Docs for anything meaningful wanted page numbers in TOCs taken away... WTF!???!!!)
Google is big, rich, and thinky. But they get their uber-nerd on with themselves and don't listen to us mere mortals.
Folders wouldn't work as well as tags for semantic data snarfing. Also it's one of those "competitive features" that they can rightly claim no other email client provides in the same way -- that it also totally effs up IMAP/POP folders and drags you to the web interface as much as possible is a bonus.
You can tell somebody at the Googleplex still smarting over the Wave debacle.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
As an IMAP back end for a real email client.
#DeleteChrome
Dear Google,
Hi. My name is grasshoppa. You may know me from such famous threads as "Windows 8 Sucks" and "Windows 8 User Interface, wtf?". You may remember that I, along with a multitude of others, warned MS about making such a radical change to the desktop. No, wait, that's not quite right; we warned against FORCING such a radical change to the desktop. But we were assured by various astroturfers that windows 8 was the bees knees, the mutts nuts and various other wonderous bits of animals ( thank you, Sir Terry Pratchett, for that phrase ). We were called all sorts of various names for our opinions. Yet many of us stuck to our guns; we knew that a mobile interface force fed to desktop users was a recipe for failure.
Please. Listen to us now. This is a remarkable bad idea. This is the kind of idea your competitors DREAM of you implementing. It's really the only way they can get a foot hold into your market. And make no mistake; a foot hold will be all they need, because once you start down this road ( and, inevitably back track a week later due to overwhelming user criticism ), you have lost your momentum. You have lost the confidence necessary to stay that one step ahead of them. And they will then proceed to eat your lunch.
Who am I? No one really. Just some poor schmuck that will have to work with YOUR end users when you force feed them a UI change. And I'm already resentful for it.
So please. For the love of all you hold dear, PLEASE DO NOT FORCE A NEW INTERFACE on people.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Good at asking??? They DON'T ask. They don't listen. Everything they make appears to be designed by 12 year olds for other 12 year olds. read: they're constantly changing shit for no reason other than to change it.
Auto threading rules. There is no sense in treating each message as a separate object while it is usually part of a conversation.
It just shouldn't use the subject text. It should use the message ID's.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
Didn't you read? This guy finds it useful.
You don't, and neither do I, but Google is trying a new product and time will tell if it finds it's market or not.
Being pissed off at the introduction of a new product is asinine. Unless you're worried that it will replace the product you like (gmail), in which case I'd agree with you, but we're far from that ever happening.
This article is just flamebait. Of course the engineers who are working on a new product hope that it will be successful. Ask the same question to a gmail engineer and he'll give you the opposite reply.