Gmail Inbox: Hands on with Google’s latest attempt to fix email
No one quite knows why email has stuck around for so long, but it’s probably because it’s so simple and completely platform agnostic; you can send an email from your laptop or smartphone or car or refrigerator to any other internet-connected device. Try that with Apple iMessage or Google Hangouts.
That isn’t to say that people haven’t tried to replace email over the years. Because email is so old, and because it’s a messy mishmash of standards, and because email has to retain support for ancient and embedded devices, it has plenty of problems and limitations that can’t really be fixed. So far, none of these email replacements have ever managed to establish a beachhead — they usually enjoy lot of activity in the short-term, but when the users realize that everyone else is still using email, they fall quickly back in line.
Google Wave
Google itself has already tried to replace email once with Wave — a short-lived web app that, way back in 2009, tried to merge email, IM, wikis, and social media into a single uberplatform. Google quickly realized that replacing email wasn’t going to work; so it turned to fixing email instead — first by adding a social layer with Buzz, then with Priority Inbox in 2010, and Smart Labels in 2011. Buzz would eventually become Google+, and Smart Labels would become Gmail’s current tabbed view.
And now… and now there’s Gmail Inbox.
Gmail Inbox
Gmail Inbox — or “Inbox by Gmail” to give its full name — is, in a nutshell, the tabbed version of Gmail taken to the next level. Instead of clicking the Social or Promotions tab, they now appear as a bundle in your main email stream. So, with Inbox, your main interface consists of your primary inbox (all your important/flagged emails) — and then bundles of emails that you can click to expand.
Inbox increases the number of bundles over Gmail’s tabs, too — there’s now Travel, Purchases, Finance, Social, Updates, Forums, and Promos. In my early testing, these all seem to be very good at picking out the right emails. You can also add your own bundles (they’re basically just labels, but promoted to your main email feed). I don’t know if user-created bundles can be “intelligent” like the pre-defined bundles, or if they can only match specific rules/conditions. (I’ll update this post as I find out more, over the next few days and weeks.)
Other than bundles, Inbox introduces the following new features:
You now see thumbnails in your main feed (you can open videos, images, and other attachments directly without opening the email).
You can pin emails, which makes them appear on a new “pinned items” page — but you can no longer star an item, or mark it as important.
You can mark an email as “done,” which moves it to a new “Done” list. (This is the same as archiving an email in Gmail.) By default, all your sent email seems to go to the Done list.
You can snooze an email (or email thread) until a certain date or time. It then magically reappears at the top of your main email feed when the snooze expires.
There’s a new “sweep” function that moves everything on your screen (or all selected items) to the Done list.
There’s now a red button in the bottom right corner that lets you compose an email, set a reminder, or quickly email your three most-regularly-emailed friends (pictured below).
What’s it like to use Gmail Inbox?
Obviously, Inbox looks nothing like Gmail; the font is the same, but that’s about it. There’s a lot more empty space, and each screen shows a lot less information.
Bundles are the core concept of Inbox — and so far, I quite like them. The idea is that you can click into a bundle, check what’s going on, and then press escape (or click anywhere outside the bundle) to close it. Like Gmail, you can reply in-line by hitting R or A.
Overall, Inbox feels very fast, very responsive — perhaps even more so than Gmail. (Maybe Google tweaked the JavaScript or something?) The improved speed and responsiveness might make up for the lower visual bandwidth of Inbox; you can’t see as many emails on-screen with Inbox, but maybe the ease of using bundles, setting reminders, and switching to your Pinned and Done views will make it worthwhile? Google could always add a “compact” view to Inbox, too, to squeeze more data onto the screen.
One of my biggest irks so far is that all of your labels, bundles, screens, etc. are hidden behind a menu button in the top left corner. As far as I can tell, you have to physically click the top left corner to open the main menu. (A keyboard shortcut might be added later.) There is plenty of empty space for permanent tabs across the top or side of the page, if Google so wishes — but maybe bundles are so good that you just don’t need to move away from your main email stream? (I’ll need to use it for a few more days to find out.)
The two features that I like the most are the ability to snooze emails, and being able to set reminders directly from my inbox — or even from within emails. (Having said that, Google could easily add both of those features to conventional Gmail.)
There is also an Inbox app for Android and iOS. I’ve only tried the Android version, which looks and works a lot like the web interface, but functions like snoozing and pinning are activated by the dreaded push-and-hold. It’s also a bit crazy that Inbox can only squeeze four or five emails onto my smartphone’s 1920×1080 screen, too.
Does Inbox stand a chance?
Other than burying the main menu behind a mouse click, the only problems I’ve found so far is that you can’t snooze a bundle (it sure would be nice to snooze my Social bundle for a few hours), and using Inbox may adversely affect your old Gmail inbox — for example, some emails that used to be in my Forums tab of Gmail have now magically moved to the Promotions tab. As far as I’m aware, I didn’t do anything to make this happen: it just happened automatically when I started using Inbox.
Google says that you can use Inbox and Gmail at the same time — and indeed, I’m doing that at the moment — but you may end up getting a bit confused, especially if you start snoozing, pinning, and “doneing” emails. Google recommends that you stick with one or the other, and I’d suggest the same, too. The good news is that no actions in Inbox are destructive; you might move a few emails to the archive, but that’s about it. If you want to try Inbox for a few days, and then go back to Gmail, everything should be fine (with the exception of any bugs, which are likely at this early stage of the beta).
What’s the end goal here? From what I’ve seen so far, I think we’re just looking at the next iteration of Gmail. It might look nothing like Gmail now, but it wouldn’t be hard for Google to offer a theme with a permanent left-hand menu and more condensed/compact rows. There’s nothing in Gmail Inbox that seeks to replace email, or to break compatibility with other big email providers (Yahoo, Microsoft, etc.) — I don’t think this is some kind of crazy move to replace or deprecate email. If anything, it’s an attempt to keep people using email, instead of moving to social platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
Gmail Inbox is essentially just another attempt to make your inbox more manageable — which, given the name of the product, makes a lot of sense. I’ll be using it extensively over the next few weeks to see if it actually increases my productivity or quality of life. Stay tuned.
Gmail Inbox is currently invite-only. You email [email protected] if you want to get on the waiting list. Sadly, I haven’t yet been given invites to hand out.