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."

Comments

"Ultimately, our users will decide"

[BarbaraHudson]

Ultimately, our users will decide.

We now have a new policy at Google!!!

Re:"Ultimately, our users will decide"

[jtownatpunk.net]

Looks like that quote got cut off. Should have been, "Ultimately, our users will decide to use Inbox when we discontinue gmail."

Re:"Ultimately, our users will decide"

[davester666]

Well, people have been switching in droves since it was introduced. Only 99.95 percent of users are still using gmail, the rest have switched to Inbox. Once it gets down to 95% or so, we'll feel comfortable with removing the gmail interface because barely anybody would be using it.

Re:"Ultimately, our users will decide"

[Richy_T]

Or to sign up to Google plus to comment on Youtube or the Android store. Saw one poor chap put up a video because he couldn't get his quite expensive piece of equipment to work. I know the answer. Couldn't put it up. That's how you're serving your customers, Google.

Re:"Ultimately, our users will decide"

[i.kazmi]

Inbox works with your Gmail address (along with whatever other addresses you've added on using imap or pop). It is basically a different way of consuming the same content (ie the email that ends up in your standard Gmail Inbox) and tries to automatically sort the email into categories such as Misc., Forums, Purchases, Bills etc while not assigning a different label to them. Inbox adds the ability to snooze emails (so you get a notification to do something about them at a later time) along with the ability to create sticky emails which show up in a separate folder (for a lack of a better term) that is easily accessible. I haven't had a chance to play with it properly as I only finally got the invite a couple hours ago but I kinda like the premise and if the categorizing algorithms are any good, it might actually be fairly useful (obviously that's my take on it, other people have their own preferences/needs).

Re:"Ultimately, our users will decide"

[sconeu]

You're not Google's customer.

You're Google's product.

Re:"Ultimately, our users will decide"

[FunkSoulBrother]

Sell it to me then, jesus. I'll happily pay a yearly subscription to Gmail if they remove all ads and data mining and don't fuck with the interface too much.

I'm adblocking anyway but I'm sure they are still churning away at my data.

Re:"Ultimately, our users will decide"

[TWX]

That's what I was thinking. If one is forced into radical change, then all bets are off.

The thing of it is, I don't really understand what's wrong with e-mail. I've used e-mail since my BBS days in the early nineties, graduating to fidonet, then to my first Internet-connected BBS with PINE in 1994. E-mail clients eventually followed the Usenet model and started threading replies together which is probably Gmail's best feature, and then the interconnectedness allowing mail, contacts, phone entries, docs, etc to work together helped make Google's user services extremely easy to use across devices.

I have my doubts that they can significantly improve e-mail. It still comes down to opening each e-mail and reading it, however it's parsed, sorted, compartmentalized, split, etc.

Re:"Ultimately, our users will decide"

[Deep Esophagus]

Yeah, I'll also be switching to a new service if they force me into some app that looks more like twitter than conventional email. Consider this garbage (from the Wikipedia entry):

Google scans the email account for important and similar information. It then presents what it considers the most important parts of the email first and groups similar emails as "Bundles" that are named by type (e.g., "Travel" or "Updates"). It also converts physical addresses into Google Maps links and airline confirmation numbers into a flight status update.[2] Users can make custom Bundles as they would make Gmail filters, and can specify the time of day to show the Bundle.

I don't want bundles. I don't want them timed. I don't want Google to decide what is and isn't the "most important parts". I just want to see my email in the same format it was created.

So what is it?

[guruevi]

Webmail is webmail is webmail. WTF is Inbox and how is it different from Webmail or IMAP?

Re:So what is it?

[Lunix Nutcase]

It tries to turn email into some frankenstein todo list.

Re:So what is it?

[Anonymous Psychopath]

It's aimed at fulfilling an Inbox Zero model, which basically just means it presents an empty or nearly empty inbox as much as possible. It's actually quite good at doing it in an intuitive way.

Important things stick around, unimportant things are done away with very easily, but you can still get them back if you make a mistake or change your mind. Or set a reminder so that it goes away now but reappears later, like a snooze button. Personally I like it and have not used Gmail at all since I started using Inbox.

Re:So what is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:So what is it?

[Cramer]

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.

Re:So what is it?

[Hognoxious]

I'm sure they ask. They ask each other.

Guy with piercings: Hey, look, I made it so when you, like, compose a new email this itty bitty box pops up!

Girl with shaved head: Neato! But it's, like, taking up the whole page. That's so last decade.

[clickety-clicketty-click]

Person of transient gender with dreadlocks: Yay, now you can only see three words at a time. Minimalismo!

GWSH: Better hide those scrollbars. They're so Windows XP! [1]

POTGWD: But we'll need some way to scroll, with the window being so petite.

GWSH: If you, like, move the mouse to the right quickly, that could mean "up" or something.

GWP: Inside the box, or anywhere on the screen?

GWSH & POTGWD: Anywhere on the screen, of course!

All: Awesome!

Chief UX Creative: That's what I like to hear. Let's all hop on our fixies, the whoppachoccacacamochos are on me!

All: Totally awesome!

[1] This is the earliest version any of them have heard of, let alone used.

More filtering?

[houstonbofh]

As if the gmail auto threading wasn't bad enough at hiding things from you, now they will filter and what is important? (For advertising...) Why is it that every new upgrade seems like a kick to the groin lately?

Re:More filtering?

[Neil Boekend]

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.

Aw crap, here we go...

[Irate Engineer]

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.

Re:Who's their test group?

[mister2au]

I'd be surprised if any half-competent business user didn't use it that way whether it is via flagged to-do items, storing them in a followup folder, archiving/deleting everything except open items or whatever ...

- If it is something you need to action and respond to, it stays in the to-do list until you action it.
- If it is a response with information from someone else, it stays in the to-do list until you have used the information.
- Otherwise, it gets filed (for reference information or ass-covering paper trails) or deleted.

On the other hand, personal users which are a big part of the Gmail user base would be quite different ...

I know MY work email is a to-do list, while my personal is like a never ending message log (a la phone SMS or IM apps) ...

Re:Who's their test group?

[Shados]

I almost never see anyone who DOESN'T use it that way, at least in the business world (of course, ironically, Inbox doesn't support Google for Works yet...)

Emails are basically a queue of action items, a lot of which are resolved as "won't fix", so to speak (ie: spam, marketing emails, etc), leaving in the inbox the stuff you're supposed to get back to at some point.

Inbox is fantastic for that.

Re:Who's their test group?

[ChunderDownunder]

(1) open gmail in a browser on work pc
(2) type in shopping list, autosaved as draft
(3) open draft email on phone while at supermarket

turns out you don't need an app for that because draft emails sync to multiple devices.

Re:Google engineers...

[iluvcapra]

They fail to understand the purpose of e-mail, and as such we would never ever get the most basic and oldest of the e-mail client functions: folders.

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.

But they would go on "reinventing" e-mail forever, with colors, tabs, bars, circles, ovals, shapes, and probably in far future odors.

You can tell somebody at the Googleplex still smarting over the Wave debacle.

Re:Google engineers...

[Ksevio]

Maybe for simple minded people, folders are more like the office where mail can be filed away. GMail has something that's a vast improvement to that: labels. You can label your email the same way you would put it in a folder, but many emails will fit multiple labels and you can do that. Folders lack that flexibility.

Gmail is already pretty good...

[93 Escort Wagon]

As an IMAP back end for a real email client.

Wow, seriously?

[grasshoppa]

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.

What actually is Inbox?

[aberglas]

The Google page just says that it will be good for me.

It looks generally like a dumbed down phone style app. "lots of whitespace" etc.

There is a *lot* of room for improvement in GMail that does not involve pissing about with the UI. Like being able to add a summary to an email thread. Like being able to break email threads which become muddled. Like being able to add additional meta data do emails and use them for simple applications. People have been asking for these for years, but the MBAs that now seem to run Google do not listen.

But it does not look like Inbox is any of these things,.

Anyone actually tried it?

Re:Who's their test group?

[marcello_dl]

for those not remembering, the verb is "to act".
but of course google inbox 2034 will contain the term "actionize" instead.