
Ask HN: Is the GMail April-Fools prank intended to launch a permanent feature? - whack
Gmail April 1st easter-egg: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;time.com&#x2F;4278950&#x2F;april-fools-gmail-mic-drop&#x2F;<p>Obviously the minion icon is a April-1 joke, but the rest of the feature actually sounds like a pretty cool one. Imagine the last time you were on a long email chain. One where you gave your 2 cents, and there&#x27;s no need for you to be in the email chain any longer. Someone else can remove you from the email chain by moving you to BCC, but there&#x27;s no way for you to do it yourself. You basically have to beg for someone to remove you from the chain, which is too annoying so no one really does it.<p>Alternatively, you could create some sort of a filter, or just consciously delete all emails from the chain as they come, without reading them. This is manually tiresome, and it also introduces a new problem: If someone references you in the email chain, and you don&#x27;t see it, they will get offended by you not replying.<p>This new gmail easter-egg addresses both of the problems above.<p>1. It tells your email client that you no longer wish to receive any emails in this chain.<p>2. It tells all participants in the email chain that you&#x27;re leaving the conversation.<p>The 1st part above is purely technical, and can be easily done. But the 2nd part requires some UX development. Which might be why GMail launched this April-1 easter-egg. They are experimenting with the ideal UX for telling all participants in the email chain that someone has chosen to leave the conversation.<p>Obviously the presentation needs to be a lot more polished and professional. But easter egg might be a precursor for a real GMail feature that&#x27;s planned to launch in the next year or so.<p>For anyone doubtful that Google would announce a permanent product&#x2F;feature on April-1: Check out the very original gmail announcement: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;googlepress.blogspot.com&#x2F;2004&#x2F;04&#x2F;google-gets-message-launches-gmail.html
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f_allwein
I would be surprised if that's intended, given the negative experiences with
this one:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11404115](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11404115)

That said, you can already mute (or "murder" any email thread by selecting it
and hitting the 'm' button:
[https://support.google.com/mail/answer/47787?hl=en](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/47787?hl=en)

