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Gmail Turns 15, Gets Smart Compose Improvements and Email Scheduling (techcrunch.com)

Today, to celebrate its fifteenth birthday, the Gmail team announced a couple of a new and useful Gmail features, including improvements to Smart Compose and the ability to schedule emails to be sent in the future. From a report: Smart Compose, which tries to autocomplete your emails as you type them, will now be able to adapt to the way you write the greetings in your emails. If you prefer 'Hey' over 'Hi,' then Smart Compose will learn that. If you often fret over which subject to use for your emails, then there's some relief here for you, too, because Smart Compose can now suggest a subject line based on the content of your email. With this update, Smart Compose is now also available on all Android devices.

56 comments

  1. a decent search function by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    would
    be
    nice
    .
    especially for an internet search company

    1. Re:a decent search function by Joce640k · · Score: 1

      April fool!

      --
      No sig today...
    2. Re:a decent search function by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 1

      Yes, but will it ever exit Beta?

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    3. Re: a decent search function by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They'll shut it down before long. I wouldn't be surprised if they announce Gmail shutdown on April 1, just like it started.

    4. Re:a decent search function by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      April fool!

      Brought to you by creimer, who bought Slashdot for three pennies last year.

  2. Friends don't let friends... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    use Gmail.

    1. Re:Friends don't let friends... by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      Hotmail FTW

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    2. Re: Friends don't let friends... by TuballoyThunder · · Score: 1
      Very true. The business model of monetizing via (often poorly) targeted advertising is a net negative for society.

      It is almost the worst system you can design. You often get poorly targeted advertisements or exceptionally targeted content that stokes outrage. Then, on top of that, the advertising system provides a mechanism for malicious content to execute on your browser.

    3. Re:Friends don't let friends... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Smart Compose, which tries to autocomplete your emails as you type them

      You've got to be shitting me.

      Why are people still trying this stupid crap that never works right and just gets in the way.

    4. Re:Friends don't let friends... by lgw · · Score: 2

      Hotmail FTW

      As I've said before, Outlook.com does not suck. And while Microsoft may desire to monetize your personal details, they definitely lack Google's talent at it.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    5. Re:Friends don't let friends... by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      So basically, lack of evil by incompetence?

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    6. Re:Friends don't let friends... by lgw · · Score: 1

      Best you can hope for, these days.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  3. Inbox by TFlan91 · · Score: 1

    It's beyond the end of March and I'm happily using Inbox.

    This whole EOL for Inbox better of been an April fools joke.

    1. Re:Inbox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yeah I use my girlfriend's inbox
      sometimes I even use her outbox

      "better of been an April fools joke"

      yeah and that better HAVE BEEN an April Fool's typo
      Jesus Christ, who the hell can't tell of from have?

  4. we are 1st april but still by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    really hoping the email scheduling isn't a prank, it's long overdue.

    1. Re:we are 1st april but still by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's good practice to catch up with your inbox before you send anything, so that you don't propose a ski trip to someone who just broke a leg, and stuff like that. Leave your mails-for-the-future in your drafts folder and send them in the future yourself.

    2. Re: we are 1st april but still by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, let's catch up with the inbox to see if someone died before sending them a birthday greeting.

  5. thank goodness for Thunderbird by swell · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yeah, it's crappy. It's been ignored for years. But it mostly works and I never have to put up with those oddball webmail interfaces. All my inboxes work in the same reliable way they have for years and Tbird doesn't try to think for me.

    --
    ...omphaloskepsis often...
    1. Re:thank goodness for Thunderbird by Drethon · · Score: 1

      I couldn't get it to properly sync with Yahoo and Thunderbird seemed to run a lot in the background. Maybe I should try to get it working again...

    2. Re:thank goodness for Thunderbird by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

      It never kept up with the changing authentication landscape.

      eM client demonstrates how to smoothly set up connectivity with the different email hosts. A free email client that was as good would be nice. Updating TBird with those features would be a great idea.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    3. Re:thank goodness for Thunderbird by AntronArgaiv · · Score: 2

      Seconded.

      One place for all my email accounts, and they all work the same (simple) way. It's the perfect tool for those of us who neither want, nor require "help" writing emails. I believe my first email client was elm...now, off my lawn!

  6. Lol, yeah. by apoc.famine · · Score: 3, Informative

    I tried smart compose for all of one email, and every single suggestion it had was laughably off. I gave it 3 paragraphs to be useful, and it's clear that it's nowhere near useful. And it's not like I was typing something complicated - I was discussing trip logistics with a family member. There was not a single suggestion that I would have remotely considered selecting. It was baffling.

    I'm unclear who wants this sort of "help". It's so half-baked and shitty that I can't help but think that it's just more data collection that they hope will be useful in the future. It is 100% not ready for prime-time, unless you're writing at a 3rd grade level or below. And even then, I kind-of doubt it.

    --
    Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
    1. Re:Lol, yeah. by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 1

      I tried smart compose for all of one email, and every single suggestion it had was laughably off. I gave it 3 paragraphs to be useful, and it's clear that it's nowhere near useful. And it's not like I was typing something complicated - I was discussing trip logistics with a family member. There was not a single suggestion that I would have remotely considered selecting. It was baffling.

      I'm unclear who wants this sort of "help". It's so half-baked and shitty that I can't help but think that it's just more data collection that they hope will be useful in the future. It is 100% not ready for prime-time, unless you're writing at a 3rd grade level or below. And even then, I kind-of doubt it.

      Eh, I kind of like the auto complete for "Hi Recipientsfirstname". I'll admit it.

      I mean, I know the Thunderbird/Pine way to accomplish that would be to set up by hand complex custom rules that trigger based on recipient. But this way is kinda cool too ...

      I'm also amused by the autocomplete suggestions for "I'm sorry" and variants when emailing my wife, lol

  7. I really hate april fools day on slashdot... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And I'm surprised by all of the suckers who read crap like this and fall for it, over and over again.

    Male pregnancy pill, google caring if you like hey vs hi, etc.

    I can't wait for this day to be over and this crap to go away...

    1. Re:I really hate april fools day on slashdot... by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

      In the era of fake news these (bad) April 1st jokes just conflate the issues. :-/ Can't we just tag the bloody articles to stop wasting everyone's time?

      Would prefer to have real news where there is no ambiguity then fake news and uncertainty if it real, fake, or April fools. That's just my personal preference. What's yours?

    2. Re:I really hate april fools day on slashdot... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Male pregnancy pill...

      This hit non-tech news a week ago and is a legit news article, despite the awkward timing of its release on /.

      FYI

    3. Re:I really hate april fools day on slashdot... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      i'm with you. I guess I need to resurrect my fuck Slashdot and fuck April Fools campaigns.

    4. Re:I really hate april fools day on slashdot... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      With slashdot playing along for april fools postings for so long, I don't believe a single post that comes through.

      That's pretty sad.

  8. Boo to Gmail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Inbox forever!

  9. Need a better design by DarkRookie2 · · Score: 3, Informative

    GMail looks terrible now. Matrieal Design is terrible in general. Each app that uses this seems to be slow.
    It's also a lot slower than it use to be.
    It was the last straw on having a Google account.

    --
    http://progressquest.com/spoltog.php?name=Son+Of+Son+Of+DarkRookie
    1. Re:Need a better design by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This sad state of affairs requires an explanation. Maybe those who have poor judgement cannot work in science, engineering, or medicine. They need a field where they cannot easily be proven wrong, so a lot end up UX designers. The subset of UX designers with poor judgement became a majority in 2011 or so, ruining the field completely.

    2. Re: Need a better design by astrofurter · · Score: 1

      Yup. It's a good demonstration why one should not outsource UI design to Fischer Price.

  10. That's nice... by sheramil · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... as long as we can turn it off.

  11. Nope, only ten by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's what happens when you spend 5 years in beta.

  12. How to turn off smart compose? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I saw this feature show up in my Gmail and find it ungodly annoying. May switch to another email app if I can't figure out how to disable it.

    1. Re:How to turn off smart compose? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://lmgtfy.com/?q=how+do+i+turn+off+smart+compose+in+gmail

  13. Only April Fools use GMail by DogDude · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why would anybody use Gmail? Is it really worth saving $2/month on email to let Google spy and catalog all of your email?

    --
    I don't respond to AC's.
    1. Re:Only April Fools use GMail by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 1

      Why would anybody use Gmail? Is it really worth saving $2/month on email to let Google spy and catalog all of your email?

      Well, you are letting somebody do that, at least potentially (and you wouldn't know if they do or not), unless you PGP everything and pretty much only email yourself.

      I'm not sure it's intrinsically better to trust a few random dudes in Switzerland over a highly scrutinized publicly traded company.

    2. Re:Only April Fools use GMail by DogDude · · Score: 1

      I have a legal basis for suing my email company because I pay them. People who use GMail do not, because there is no payment (no "consideration" in legal terms). That's a huge difference.

      --
      I don't respond to AC's.
    3. Re:Only April Fools use GMail by fred6666 · · Score: 1

      Is it really worth saving $2/month on email to let Google spy and catalog all of your email?

      For most people, definitely.

  14. Basic HTML by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I guess new features like these are why now to get my gmail to work at work I have to switch to Basic HTML. Honestly if it had a dark theme, gmail basic html would be the best mail client I've ever used!

  15. How about scheduled delete? by CheckeredFlag · · Score: 1

    I would love to have a filter to delete my email after X days. I get lots of mail generated from daily and weekly jobs. I don't need to keep for more than a week or two and it would be nice if they could delete themselves.

    Why is there no simple way to automate this?

    1. Re:How about scheduled delete? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      just create a filter that send them to the bin. messages in the bin that are older than 30 days are automatically deleted

    2. Re:How about scheduled delete? by CheckeredFlag · · Score: 1

      just create a filter that send them to the bin. messages in the bin that are older than 30 days are automatically deleted

      I still want them to show in my Inbox because I still need to see that jobs ran successfully. Rummaging through the trash is more inconvenient that clicking Delete.

  16. Isaac Asimov's Fault Intolerant by samwichse · · Score: 1

    It's like we're getting to the point in that short story by Isaac Asimov: "Fault Intolerant."

    https://aparthibo.wordpress.co...

    I always liked his stuff about automation. The Reeks and Wrecks from "Player Piano" always seemed pretty predictive.

  17. Gmail really was revolutionary! by schweini · · Score: 1

    I'd just like to recall how revolutionary Gmail's launch was back then - 1GB of free email space was completely and utterly unheard of back then. Free providers offered aprox. 10MB or maybe even 100MB of space back then, and emailing people was a really bad experience, because you would quite often get "the recipients mailbox is full" bounces.
    The confusion of something as ludicrous as 1GB free mail space being launched on a 1st of April was just sugar on top. We REALLY didn't know if Google was being serious or not.

  18. Reincarnation is real by jbmartin6 · · Score: 2

    Clippy has been reborn and thanks to the magic of marketing is now considered "smart"

    --
    This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
  19. It's about TIME! by shanen · · Score: 1

    Tagging here because I suspect it's an April Fool story...

    However, future delivery is something I've been advocating for several years. I'm betting the google mucked it up. Right now that's basically a wager until I see how it works. I know how I want it to work, but the REAL problem is that I'm time-centric and today's google is all about the money.

    For example, I want to combine future delivery with the unsend feature by having an option for a default future delivery time. ALL of my email would be delayed a bit, NOT just the 30-second delay of the unsend feature. The best value depends very much on how you think, but I think I would set it for an hour. That's enough time for the ideas to percolate a bit, and if I feel uncomfortable, I would be able to get the email and look at it again before it gets sent. If I want immediate send because it really is urgent, then it would be the same as invoking the future delivery option, but instead of setting it for some date in the future, I would just pick 1 minute from now. Or that could be masked as an "urgent" email option, with one click (or a menu and click) to mark it urgent and to send it immediately.

    So when should I go see how the google has bollixed it? Now I've gotten my hopes up again, and today's google is always dashing them.

    (Sort of like my recent disappointments with Slashdot, though the solutions are more obvious here because the scopes of the problems are smaller. The difference is that the google has lots of money to play with because some parts of their business model are viable, while Slashdot has become a sort of weird basket case surviving on someone's charity.)

    --
    Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
    1. Re: It's about TIME! by kenh · · Score: 1

      The way I would use 'future send' would be to mark an email to be sent to a person just before they start their work day, so that my email is one of the first emails they see when they open their mail client.

      Rather than try and compose the email so that it's finished and sent when the recipient at work, I can casually write it the night before and schedule it's sending (and by extension it's arrival) to be 8:00 AM local time.

      --
      Ken
    2. Re: It's about TIME! by shanen · · Score: 1

      I thought I sent you an ACK on this? I agree it's a good idea, but it works even better if it's a friend and you know more details. For example, if you know your friend usually opens the email after a cup of coffee, you can schedule your email to arrive at that time.

      Another variation I want would be a default reply sending time, basically to slow down the pace of non-urgent email. It's another application of relative time in the future, but with a bigger delay than for the unsend capability.

      I'd draft the reply and add the delivery date based on priority. A close friend or family member should get it the next day (unless I change it to urgent for immediate delivery), but for a lot of people I'd just as soon wait a week and think about it. However, to implement this feature properly, you'd also need some kind of tickler or reminder system to let you easily see what pending email you had drafted. In my application, in some cases I'd let the original draft of my reply stand, but as it got close to the sending time, I'd like to check it to see if there is anything else I should add, but still encouraging my reasonably timely response. The objective is less email but of higher quality.

      Alternatively, I might push some of the non-urgent email to a period when my schedule is more slack, say for Sunday delivery. Then I would have a chance to review the pending email on Saturday before it goes out.

      --
      Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
  20. Rest of my Christmas list by shanen · · Score: 1

    Should mention the other email options that are at the top of my wish list:

    (0) An effective spammer-fighting system to help put the scammers out of business. "Live and let spam" is NOT a solution. The basic principle is that only the potential victims know for sure.

    (1) Reject and bounce confidential-mode email. If you don't trust me that much, I do NOT want your email.

    (2) Reject no-reply email. If you don't care enough to receive my reply, then I do NOT want your email. And you don't even deserve to know it was never delivered.

    As usual, I have to close on grounds of time, but I'll bid you ADSAuPR, atAJG.

    --
    Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
  21. Opt-in versus opt-out? by shanen · · Score: 1

    Not clear which of the new features you're talking about, but I read the description of the future delivery and it appears to be opt-in, so it won't get in the way. However, after checking with Gmail, the feature is not actually where it is supposed to be. I think the description sounds right, so I'm hoping that the upgrade is not fully propagated yet. It's supposed to be a pull-down option off the send button, but I can't find it yet.

    My main concern is if it is only absolute time, or if it supports relative times as well.

    --
    Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
  22. msmash I appreciate you by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Of all the current " editors"
    At least you seem to proofread
    Your work.
    Oops missed a comma there.
    Der.....

  23. Gmail is so slow to register emails as read by ayesnymous · · Score: 1

    Ever since their update last year, I frequently read emails, close my browser and come back later to see Gmail still shows those emails as unread. I've noticed if I read an email, I have to stay in my browser for 5-10 seconds before Gmail will mark it as read. This never happened before their update last year.

  24. Long past time to discontinue it by John+Jorsett · · Score: 1

    Isn't it about time for Google to put an end to GMail? Every other service of theirs I've tried to use got abandoned. I keep wondering how much longer they'll have search.