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Google is Killing Its 4-Yr-Old Inbox Email App (fastcompany.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Back in 2014, the folks at Google responsible for Gmail did something unexpected: They introduced a new email app. On the back end, Inbox was the same thing as Gmail, and worked with your existing Gmail address. But as a user experience, as then-senior VP Sundar Pichai explained in a blog post, Inbox was "designed to focus on what really matters." It was conceived with mobile devices in mind and ditched a decade's worth of Gmail cruft in favor of tools focused on email efficiency, such as the way it displayed attachments right in the inbox view and incorporated a built-in task manager.
Over the subsequent years, Inbox been a proving ground for features -- such as "Smart Reply" --which later made their way into Gmail, especially with the latter's sweeping new upgrade. So much of Inbox has rubbed off on Gmail, in fact, that it shouldn't come as a complete shock that Google has decided that Inbox has served its purpose. The company is announcing today that it's decided to discontinue the app, which will fade away by the end of next March.
Over the subsequent years, Inbox been a proving ground for features -- such as "Smart Reply" --which later made their way into Gmail, especially with the latter's sweeping new upgrade. So much of Inbox has rubbed off on Gmail, in fact, that it shouldn't come as a complete shock that Google has decided that Inbox has served its purpose. The company is announcing today that it's decided to discontinue the app, which will fade away by the end of next March.
Rely on them if you dare.
Don't used to using google shit in your workflow
Google is discontinuing a service it started a few years ago?! Glad I was sitting down for that bit of news...
I am shocked. SHOCKED!!
#DeleteChrome
At least this time when Google is killing a product, they're killing one that is redundant with other products.
I guess this is better than Google dropping a third competing email client on us, right? Now, if they could just consolidate their "chat" and "messaging" apps into one...
would Google have an email app for 4-year olds?
Fixed the title for you. :)
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
This is unrelated to news that would be for a nerd or anything that matters.
I'm sure there's someone who can explain it to me, but Gmail's UI is just absolutely horrible. Why must it be so awful? It's not like Google doesn't have the money to make it better. It is literally impossible for mere mortals to understand to which specific part of a thread they're replying. Would indenting the messages in a thread kill them or something? If they hadn't built an entire ecosystem around it, Gmail would have gone the way of the dodo years ago.
So I like the Inbox filtering and folders for prioritizing, and don't much care for the idea of a third party client since those can only have other security issues.
The Android Gmail app does this? Or am I using web Gmail to do the filtering?
Am I too lazy to figure this out directly?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Google is looking for the perfect privacy equivalent of the dark sucker.
All the better to do evil with.
Hey, gotta have something good to sell to the Chinese Communist government!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I had never heard of it until today.
This is unrelated to news that would be for a nerd or anything that matters
Use the basic HTML version you get when you disable Javascript. It is quick and efficient.
Pine is good, but it's not Elm.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
There was this little known but interesting technology called GWT (Google Web Toolkit). You could write your server and the client in Java, and then the client part would compile to JavaScript and you could still debug it as Java in Eclipse. It had a lot of cruft (e.g. no one now needs those ancient HTML widgets) but when INBOX debuted, GWT guys would say that was a proof that GWT is alive and well.
Bottom line: I think Google killed INBOX because of the underlying technology (GWT). They will now redo it in Dart.
Judging by the evidence they put before us, it seems that Google devs have never understood what makes a good UI, and even less do they have any appreciation for what makes a bad one. This may be why all their client-side applications have always been an embarassment and barely serviceable. We use them because their server-side is free, despite their client sides being dramatically worse than the GUIs of applications in the 1980's.
This isn't going to change any time soon, at least for Gmail, because they're busy doubling down on their incompetence. The latest version of the Gmail UI is even more of a disaster than the previous one, not only in its visual presentation but even operationally. Their earth-shattering Javascript skills now regularly generate a "Corrupted content" error message when trying to list the inbox. How can a mailbox even be corrupted? Their incompetence is just epic.
People have very short memories and they get used even to such trash when it's free, even calling it "great" if their background is limited enough. As a result there is no significant pressure for change, so it won't. Realistically, the only sensible solution is to leave the Google sphere entirely, which is a good idea anyway on other grounds unrelated to UIs.
It lacked fundamental features and Google ignored the requests to add such features. One example: Inbox could not use contact groups. Why? Only Google knows.
Inbox was one of the few Google apps I really liked. Integrated mail and reminders is fantastic. Of course they killed it. This only spurs me to move further away from Google. I've already replaced Play Music with a self hosted solution, the same for Drive, Play Books, Keep, and Calendar. Switched back to Firefox after 8 years of Chrome. If only someone made a decent Linux phone.
Would Google aid in migration of a few differences between Inbox and Gmail?
Inbox mark as Done is in sync with Gmail archive
Inbox read doesn't seem to equate with Gmail read
Inbox pinned is also not the same as Gmail starred
Please create a migration tool, so all Pinned messages would be starred and all Read messages are also marked as read in Gmail.
How they can expect a customer to adopt their product when they show no commitment to it? How many times do we have to waste time learning, using new thing that goes into obsolete mode? Throw it at the wall and see if it sticks no longer works with their approach.
Although there were/are a few improvements not found in gmail, removing the received date column from the list of emails was a no-deal for me. Grouping emails as received today, yesterday and 'this month', 'August', 'July' isn't very helpful.
You tell 'em, Comrade Wang!
Useless idiot.
Talked to a Google support rep via Google One yesterday, and according to them there is no _official_ word that Google is terminating Inbox, for what that's worth.
Pine (going on 26 years) and Mutt (going on 23 years) are still my favorite daily driver email clients and going strong.
Gmail supports IMAP and SMTP, should you be so inclined ...
Fixed the title for you. :)
It's not the fate that's an issue. It's the rate at which a company products or platforms from cradle to grave in such short order.
That's abnormal, and sometimes I wonder the wisdom of such a practice.
This is a terrible decision. Inbox on the desktop and mobile are terrific products. I don't see ANYTHING wrong with them. I wonder what sort of shitty data-driven decision making was behind this.
"All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams". Elias Canetti