
Google is discontinuing Inbox - edwinvlieg
https://www.fastcompany.com/90235559/inbox-googles-playground-for-email-innovation-is-going-bye-bye
======
klandergren
Inbox changed my relationship with email and it is unbelievably frustrating to
hear it is being shuttered. I was a better digital person because of the app:
I never forgot to reply, I kept years of ideas and small notes in reminders,
and I could quickly triage and clear all incoming mail.

These things in particular made Inbox stand out:

* UI - simple, uncluttered mobile and desktop experience with uncomplicated keyboard shortcuts. It even had the little things like a satisfying sun animation when your inbox was empty! Desktop Gmail has a surfeit of widgets and add-on icons that perplex, distract, and confuse.

* Bundles - especially for trips: all the relevant emails I needed, in one place—unbelievably useful while traveling. All tickets and information aggregated automatically (and if not, easily added manually).

* Reminders / Compose access - fast interface for creating small notes and mailing frequently contacted people. No reminders equivalent in Gmail (Tasks are available on Desktop but not mobile) and the mobile compose on Gmail is a blank email.

* Pinning - sticky a reminder or email for easy access and reference later. I guess gmail's equivalent is marking as important or moving to inbox?

In any event, if any of the Inbox team are reading this: big THANK YOU for
creating a revolutionary product that was a joy to use. I already submitted
feedback through the app wishing it would continue but if there is anything
further I can do please share how!

~~~
noja
Trips was the killer feature. I hope they port it. The ability to collect all
my related information (a particular trip for example) into a single view was
genius.

~~~
__sr__
Alternatively, you can try Tripit[1] which has more features, but there is
definitely more friction involved as you either need to grant access to your
email account or manually forward emails.

[1] [https://www.tripit.com](https://www.tripit.com)

~~~
octorian
I don't know if its just me, but TripIt feels like a polished iPhone app that
was begrudgingly ported to Android.

That being said, I'm on Android and do use it to manage all my trip data.
Prior to that, I was using various versions of Worldmate.

~~~
__sr__
WorldMate was nice. Another nice alternative — at least as far as apps go — is
TripCase.

------
tdfx
I don't mean to throw out the same old "you can't get attached to Google
products because they kill them at any time" thing, but holy shit, this one
feels like a real kick in the balls. Email is one of my most important
workflows and I've spent a great deal of time over the past few years
attaching myself to the zero inbox mindset through the bundles feature and
having my reminders as first class citizens in the inbox. Going back to Gmail
without these features is a serious regression in my life.

~~~
wanderr
I never even tried Inbox because I didn't trust that it wouldn't get killed.
Ironically I was just thinking about finally giving it a try since it survived
longer than I expected.

~~~
_wmd
I logged in for the first time to see what it was.. same deal here, have
stopped adopting new Google products since 2013 (the Reader debacle naturally)

~~~
DEADBEEFC0FFEE
Lol, that's such a strange approach.

Just adopt the new services, and if they disappear, use something else.

What do we exist to persist these days and how long for?

~~~
_wmd
I'm sorry you maintain such a low opinion of yourself, but just like my
lifespan, my attention is finite and I consider it priceless. If I'm forced to
burn energy on something it better be for my long-term benefit, because let's
face it, either of us could be dead tomorrow, and let's not waste our last
breath cursing the fact we spent our final day alive on a new e-mail client,
or in servitude to some other bullshit tool.

Google have broken that trust on countless occasions, and as a consequence for
half a decade they have been deprived of the opportunity to waste any more of
my time. You should consider doing the same

------
Ajedi32
This is really unfortunate. Inbox's primary differentiator was never in any
one individual feature like Snooze or Smart Reply. No, the real value of Inbox
was that its design was built around a fundamentally different philosophy on
what email is and how it should be managed.

Gmail takes a traditional approach to email management. Messages come in, you
read them, maybe organize them with labels, then archive them, delete them, or
just leave them in your inbox forever. It doesn't really make any assumptions
about your workflow, it just gives you a bunch of fairly standard email client
features and leaves it up to you how you use them.

Inbox on the other hand is very opinionated. It was designed around the idea
that your inbox is a to-do list, and everything from the UI to features like
pinning, snooze, and reminders is built around that assumption. Emails come in
and get sorted into categories, then you go through that list triage them,
marking emails that require no action as done, pinning the ones you want to
deal with soon, and snoozing the ones you want to come back to later. You can
even attach reminders to emails so you don't forget what task they represent.
When you're done you hit the sweep button and everything that isn't pinned or
snoozed gets wiped clean.

As a result of this workflow, emails you've already dealt with are hidden away
in the "done" folder, leaving only emails in your inbox which represent
reminders or tasks you have yet to complete. You can even add custom reminders
to Inbox which aren't tied to any specific email. Basically it turns your
inbox into a to-do list.

I'm saddened to see Inbox go. Gmail doesn't really capture this workflow with
quite the same level of elegance Inbox does; it just wasn't designed to work
that way. I suspect that long after Inbox is gone I'll still find myself using
the workflow it taught me; treating my inbox like a to-do list even when the
client I use is no longer built around that workflow.

~~~
abraae
> Gmail takes a traditional approach to email management. Messages come in,
> you read them, maybe organize them with labels, then archive them, delete
> them, or just leave them in your inbox forever.

Not that long ago, gmail was a radically new way to deal with email.

1) aggregating emails from a single conversation in your inbox - yes, on the
old days, every incoming email was a line in your inbox.

2) providing archive functionality - no need to organise and file your old
emails, just click archive and use the search later if you find you'll need
them

~~~
Rattled
Threading in email clients has been around for decades. Actually I must check
if there are mobile versions of mutt or elm.

~~~
porker
And they thread properly. Unlike Gmail's bastardised 'We munge your subjects
and think these are related'.

I considered implementing the Mutt threading algorithm in a browser extension
for GMail. It's one of those "If I ever have less to do, I'll give it a shot"
ideas that will never get done :)

------
andybak
> Outside of some of the bundling features

Bundling (in the inbox) is THE reason for using Inbox. It's the only unique
feature. It's the thing that changed how I use email.

If I use folders it's the kiss of death for any email that a rule sends to
that folder. I want a single list but with some items collapsed.

Email went from unthreaded to threaded (reducing the complexity massively.

Bundles takes that one step further.

In both cases the critical thing is one ordered list but with a massively
reduced number of individual items.

~~~
on_and_off
Same thing here !!

I don't want to go back to gmail, now it looks like a complete mess compared
to Inbox.

Should I start writing a replacement client ? :///

~~~
andybak
> Should I start writing a replacement client ? :/

Please do.

~~~
wingworks
Yes, pleeeease do. I can't even imagine what I'm going to do come next year
March :(

------
kaushalmodi
These are really unfortunate news! :(

My stress level just went up after opening gmail.com after few years since I
switched to Inbox.

Being used to just swiping emails that I didn't need to attend, I didn't
realize they were still in "unread" status.

Now when I opened Gmail, I see:

    
    
        Social          190
        Updates       4,856
        Forums        3,329
        Promotions    4,214
    

The worst part is that I cannot see which of those "Unread" emails are pinned
in Inbox.

And.. we cannot Pin emails in Gmail the same way as in Inbox :( [I have
already read the "Pin emails" section in
[https://support.google.com/inbox/answer/9117840](https://support.google.com/inbox/answer/9117840),
but starring/labeling/searching doesn't give the convenience that Inbox
pinning did.]

I'll also miss all the rich email rendering of emails like shipping tracking,
flight tickets, appointments, etc.

Alas..

\---

 _Update_ : And of course Google would discontinue Inbox. Inbox did not have
ads, but Gmail has freaking ads!

~~~
samirm
what's wrong with leaving emails unread?

~~~
jfaat
For me, it’s because I can’t stand having meaningless ‘5,423’ badges littering
the icons on my home screen.

~~~
majewsky
We've been conditioned to have that reaction. (That's also why they're red.)
Unread-badges are designed to make you open the app, thus increasing the
amount of time spent in the app.

Freudian slip: I accidentally wrote "the time spent in the ad" on the first
try. :)

~~~
kkarakk
yeah but every service you sign up for now has newsletters/mailing lists and
constantly sends you semi relevant spam with the occasional gem that you can't
instantly consign to the rubbish bin. inbox was so simple for dealing with
things like that

~~~
krageon
You don't really miss anything by throwing every newsletter straight in the
spam folder, the worst that will happen is that you hear life-changing news a
day late. It will not kill you.

~~~
ZeikJT
Noooooo, please just unsubscribe. I only sign up for newsletters I actually
want to have delivered to my email but every once in a blue moon I notice that
a newsletter went to spam instead of my inbox and invariably the reason given
is "It is similar to messages that were identified as spam in the past." which
to me means that other people marked it as spam instead of properly just
unsubscribing.

I understand that it used to be very difficult or impossible to unsubscribe
from stuff, but nowaways it's easier than ever as emails are basically
required to have a one or two click unsubscribe system.

~~~
krageon
I get plenty of "newsletters" I never signed up for. Those deserve to be
marked as spam. I can't trust that the unsubscribe link isn't used to harvest
email addresses that are still in active use, so clicking one of those links
is a net negative for me.

------
jacquesm
Dear user of product 'X' that you've come to depend on for your daily workflow
and that you are completely happy with. To serve you better we have decided to
kill of 'X' and force you into 'Y' which does some of 'X' but worse and will
kill your workflow for the next couple of months, and will give you a lot of
extra work to do besides. Of course 'Y' does not look the same - nor does it
act the same - as 'X' but we are super excited to have an opportunity to force
some change on you, the user, just because we value you so much and we really
would never make a change like this as a way to cut costs. Best regards, your
ever caring and loving supplier.

------
__sr__
Wow! I haven’t used regular Gmail in years! It will be a pain to switch back.
The whole bundling, scheduling, snoozing, pinning, reminders etc are really
useful.

But then it’s Google. The key people probably got bored and moved on and
perhaps no one else is willing to take it up. At least they didn’t make 10
different email products like they did with IM.

Any suggestions for alternative email clients for iOS/Android (other than
Gmail app) which works well with Gmail? The iOS client doesn’t work well with
Gmail. I’m looking for something which has as many as possible features from
Inbox and doesn’t mess up my inbox — i.e. no Mail Pilot.

~~~
jamesjyu
I recently switched back to Gmail from Inbox (before this announcement) and
was pleasantly surprised that most of the features from Inbox were there. I
barely had to change my workflow.

~~~
__sr__
I like the way Inbox handles certain kind emails differently —- e.g. it
extracts relevant data from newsletters, tickets, receipts, order
confirmations, package tracking emails etc. so they are available at a quick
glance. A quick glance tells me that is not the case with Gmail — correct me
if I am mistaken.

~~~
jamesjyu
Ah yes, I don't think those features made it, but I never found that to be the
killer feature anyway. Perhaps someone can remake those, now that Gmail has a
proper marketplace for add-ons.

~~~
fluidcruft
Do the addons work in the mobile apps or is it just browser things?

------
kenhwang
Google's ADHD with products strikes again. It's really hard to get excited
over new Google offerings because they just go away when Google gets bored of
them, time and time again.

~~~
riku_iki
It's likely not google get bored, but users didn't adapt product on large
enough scale.

~~~
sethammons
It is a cycle. Google drops a product due to low uptick, so users don't take
on further products. There are three products that I can think of that have
lasted: search, email, ads (which is search, really).

[edit] oh, and maps!

~~~
icebraining
Google Docs? Calendar? Groups? YouTube? Plus Android and Chrome, of course.

~~~
cannonedhamster
They bought Youtube and it served Ads. Calendar is part of Gmail. Groups is
pretty much dead and hasn't been upgraded in years. Android and Chrome are
part of Ads. Docs is probably the only new feature that they've developed, but
people pay a good amount of money for it.

~~~
Buge
How is Chrome a part of ads?

Docs was an acquisition

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Docs,_Sheets,_and_Slide...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Docs,_Sheets,_and_Slides#History)

~~~
pluma
Chrome is analytics, not ads, but the two go hand in hand.

------
nathancahill
Everyone suspected it for a while. Their active Twitter account refused for
months to say when the app would be updated for the iPhone X.

Personally, I suspect that they painted themselves into a bit of a corner with
the tech stack they choose for Inbox. They used a unique C++ to JS compiler to
run Inbox in the browser. This worked decently well in Chrome, but the
experience in other browsers has been a lot choppier. It's possible the same
codebase was also compiled to iOS and this is what caused the very long delay
in updating for the iPhone X.

I'm sad to see it go. The UX in the official Gmail app isn't quite as good.
The bundle workflow they developed for working through your inbox is something
I haven't seen elsewhere.

~~~
fra
When you have a successful product people love, you don't sunset it because
the tech stack is too cumbersome.

This has to mean that the product wasn't seeing the adoption they were hoping
for.

~~~
munificent
Love don't pay the bills.

If the product isn't helping the bottom line, companies will sunset it. "Free
beer" would be the most widely adopted offering a bar could have, but it's not
going to be good business for the bar.

~~~
haggy
> love don't pay the bills

Thats not always true especially with Google. Anything that helps tighten the
already tight grip they have on users directly affects the bottom line.

------
DannyBee
It's really interesting to see the super-knee jerk reaction here when the
article itself even says that most of the features made their way into gmail.

(I was a _heavy_ inbox user, and i am happy with the stuff that made it's way
into gmail).

Outside of some of the bundling features, i'm curious what actual difference
people are complaining about here.

~~~
o_____________o
Deleting/sweeping a section of emails away on mobile is a huge productivity
boost for me. The Gmail app on Android doesn't have this feature from what I
can tell.

Snooze was a big one too, but that got crippled in Inbox a while ago as well.

~~~
daxterspeed
The ability to mark emails as done or to pin them were hallmark features of
the Inbox interface and they both take significantly more work in Gmail. I'm
severely disappointed that they've decided to axe Inbox without at least
pretending to care - by eg. providing a user survey.

~~~
o_____________o
Oh no, pinning! I've so thoroughly integrated that into my expectations and
behavior that I didn't even think about it.

~~~
dhruvkar
I don't use Inbox -- what does pinning accomplish?

~~~
gknoy
Inbox builds on a set of useful primitive ideas, but understanding them is
necessary to understand pinning's value.

The central idea of Inbox is that your goal is INBOX ZERO, and that after
dealing with any email, you swipe it to the side (or mark it as Done with the
checkmark in the web UI) and _do not see it again_. (Like 'Archive' in Gmail.)

The second idea is that your emails are Bundled by category. This is similar
to a tag or a filter, but you can choose to have them still show (as a bundle)
in the inbox, rather than being filtered to not-seen oblivion. For example, I
had one bundle for Pull Requests, another for Jira notifications. The app
auto-categorizers things for Finances, Promos, etc, so many of the spam-like
newsletters you get will end up bundled together. (Bundles default to only
showing things that are not Done, unless you click a bundle's category on the
left navigation bar.)

That doesn't sound very useful. What makes it useful is that you can
archive/Done an entire category. All of those emails from TeeFury, Newegg,
Amazon, Steam, Github, etc that you would normally consider usually-clutter
suddenly are SUPER easy to deal with. It basically makes archiving those no
longer annoying, as you can do it all at once. Best of all, you see them
first, so it's harder to have something get filtered without being noticed.

Pinning prevents you from archiving an item (unless you explicitly click it).
This means that you can ping something in a bundle, archive the bundle, and it
will archive all the other things, and leave the bundle with that one item
visible.

I am profoundly saddened that Inbox is going away. As others have said, it
_changed my life_ in terms of how I dealt with overwhelming email volumes at
work.

------
tosh
I think by now it would be worth for Google to re-think their branding
strategy. How about releasing new experimental products off-brand? Google by
now has a reputation of discontinuing products (some very vocal) users love.

This makes it very difficult for new Google-branded products to gain traction.
Especially if the onboarding is costly & discontinuation would hurt a lot
(e.g. Google Cloud, Dart, productivity apps, …).

~~~
tosh
Another approach could be to build a brand around their 'enterprise' offerings
with SLAs & LTS and make it more explicit which products are covered and which
aren't.

~~~
cobookman
[https://cloud.google.com/terms/deprecation](https://cloud.google.com/terms/deprecation)

Formal list of products covered under deprecation policy

~~~
tosh
Something like this for all products (beyond cloud) & as part of the overall
branding strategy would be super useful to protect the brand.

------
ohadron
This is so bad for my productivity. I will be missing:

\- Reminders (with the ability to snooze them)

\- Inbox bundling for promo, social, trips etc.

\- Pinning and archiving everything that is not pinned

\- Android 'Add reminder' widget

Any ideas on how to replace these are welcome

~~~
jetrink
A few months ago, I realized how important reminders had become to me. Knowing
that Inbox might disappear someday, I switched to Todoist and began adding all
new reminders (tasks) there. Apart from the lack of integration with Inbox
(which is now a moot point), it is a straight upgrade.

* You can still sync reminders to your Google Calendar (tasks appear as events on the date they are due). Edits made in the calendar will be synced back to Todoist.

* Tasks can be assigned sub-tasks

* Tasks can be organized into projects

* You can create complex filters

Of course, if you want to keep things simple, that's an option too and for the
most part, I've avoided the fancy features.

~~~
komali2
Google calendar has reminders baked in - does todoist leverage those? Or are
items just "events?"

------
ulfw
Not trying to be facetious or anything, but honestly I wonder why at this
point anybody would bother using any Google product besides the triumvirate of
Search/Maps/Gmail.

What's the point?

~~~
ihatethem
While you're not being "facetious" you're being "glib".

Inbox was obviously a place the gmail team used for experimentation and now
they are folding it back in.

Besides you're making it sound like there was some huge cost involved in
adopting or in abandoning Inbox, which there isn't.

~~~
coldtea
> _Inbox was obviously a place the gmail team used for experimentation_

What was "obvious" about it? Here's how Google introduced it: "Inbox by Gmail
is a new app from the Gmail team. Inbox is an organized place to get things
done and get back to what matters. Bundles keep emails organized."

Do you see anything about it being an "experiment" to eventually throw away?
Not to mention Gmail already had the Labs feature for experiments.

In fact, what 2 Google representatives had said at the time was:

""We hope, in the long run, that most of our users will be on Inbox." (Alex
Gawley)

"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."
(Jason Cornwell, Inbox's lead designer)

~~~
ulfw
I couldn't have said it better myself! They tried to sell it as the possible
evolution of Gmail. Not some 'experiment' that would partially flow into the
Gmail they asked us to abandon for Inbox in the first place.

------
fernandopj
I'm a happy and heavy user of Inbox, this came as a shock to me. I guess I'll
wait and see by January how is Gmail, but I'm not looking forward.

> By retiring Inbox, is Google losing a valuable ability to experiment with
> new email functionality in a way that’s tough to do with a billion-user
> mainstay?

I also agree with this. If Google decided to let Inbox go, same way as with
Wave, then the next "email UX experiment" will be another codename. Why not
use the existing Inbox product to do the next innovation? Its base is formed
by users which already showed adoption to new ideas and UI.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Why not use the existing Inbox product to do the next innovation?

Because the next innovation may be a completely different direction. I much
prefer Inbox to Gmail, but I'd be a lot less happy for the Inbox name to be
kept but the actual app to replaced by some completely new vision.

> Its base is formed by users which already showed adoption to new ideas and
> UI.

I bought into Inbox’s specific vision, not the generic idea of novelty. If
Inbox didn't work out for Google, I'm disappointed, but I'd rather they kill
it openly than that I get force fed some new unrelated novelty approach
because I was using Inbox and must therefore be into whatever.

------
oelmekki
I can see this being seen as a turning point in the future, if Google loses
influence.

Until now, every time people were saying "I won't use a new google product, I
don't trust them to keep it running", they were quickly blamed by googlers who
replied this team had nothing to do with that team, and that you could not
blame google forever for having close greader on you. And it was reasonable to
think greader was an accident and we could not hold grudge on everything from
google because of it (not that google did not close other products, but they
were not as popular and difficult to replace).

But now, it's not an exception anymore, and it comes in a time when firefox is
gathering new strength, when duckduckgo results are getting competitively
good, when purism is working on a true linux phone... Google has been so
strong this start of century not only because they had outstanding products,
but also because they had a loyal and passionate hardcore users base. I can't
see them not losing that, in the future (time will tell, obviously).

------
jillesvangurp
I think this choice may be partially inspired by the fact that lots of people
never switched to Inbox and people like myself actually switched back at some
point. For me pinning UX kind of sucked and I really missed the Gmail density
of information.

What's sad is that Inbox stopped evolving almost immediately after they
released it. This seems to be a thing at Google. Release something, hype it,
and then just walk away instead of maintaining and improving it. If there was
anyone working on that at all in the last 3 years; sorry I failed to notice
that there was anything happening at all. It looks to me that there was a
skeleton maintenance team at best. So, it looks like there was some infighting
and the Inbox team got starved of resources. Gmail on the other hand was
improved a lot over the past few years.

In general it strikes me that essentially all attempts by Google to do a bait
and switch of their products in the past few years have been impopular and
somewhat underwhelming in their outcome. They've killed a lot of popular
products in favor of things that then flopped. They've repeatedly walked away
from products that maybe had issues but were entirely fixable only to replace
them with something worse.

There's something deeply wrong with how Google is being managed since Alphabet
was created. They are lacking a clear direction/strategy. Is it Fuchsia,
Chrome OS or Android that is going to be the OS of choice? I'm not sure they
know the answer themselves. I'm not sure their OEMs know either. My advice,
kill two out of three and get it done within the next 12 months. IMHO, Android
would at this point be by far the most disruptive thing to kill. There's a big
risk of forks surviving any attempt by Google to kill that and ending up being
a headache for Google.

Similarly, which of their billion chat clients are we supposed to actually use
at this point? Same advice, pick one, kill the rest ASAP. IMHO keeping and
fixing hangouts is the best course of action at this point. It's the only one
that's been around long enough to actually have a user base (despite it's many
flaws and terrible UX).

~~~
kkarakk
if there was infighting atleast we(the users) would hear about it. google just
seems to encourage people to move past the things they've made instead of
innovating on it so we(as users) never hear anything until a project is killed
off.

~~~
jillesvangurp
I've been in big companies, this has infighting written all over it. Two
competing teams, one gets shut down. Classic stuff. Usually means two separate
business units with competing middle management fighting over resources. One
of them won. My guess is this happened quite some time ago and most of the
team was reassigned years ago already.

------
explodingcamera
I'm actually thinking of switching to a different email service because of
this. Gmail is just way to cluttered for my taste, inbox's model where you can
just check off emails and they're gone was such a time-saver and a fresh
breath of air.

I hope I can find something as simplistic and at the same time feature rich
somewhere else :(

~~~
vidarh
I've wanted to for a long time;Inbox put that on hold because it made my email
manageable again. Clearly it's time to start looking for alternatives again.

~~~
politelemon
What alternatives are there, similar to Inbox?

~~~
vidarh
I wish I knew of any, but after having tried Gmail again after this
announcement, I really don't want to go back. If I can't find any I might be
forced to write my own.

------
cannonedhamster
Google's penchant for killing products is why I moved away from them for even
their stable products. I want a company to be okay with having a stable
platform of boring work to build exciting things on top of and Google isn't
that company. Add to that my lack of trust in Google to not spy even when it
says it won't, and it was just a perfect series of events. I honestly think
the phone jack removal might have been the defining moment when I decided to
move to an iPhone 6S. They will pry that phone jack from my cold dead hands.

------
smsm42
That's the problem with Google latest-and-greatest offerings - they roll it
out, make a hype, if you're naive enough you start using it, integrate it in
your workflow - and they they decide it's not what they wanted and throw it
out, and you have to re-do your workflow again.

I just switched to using desktop mail client and going to web UI only
occasionally - at least desktop client is not likely to go away when Google
gets bored with it.

------
kurtisc
I don't like Inbox. So, rather than being annoyed it's going, I'm worried that
Google will morph GMail into Inbox and force me to use its non-chronological
features. I've already had it shoved down my throat with the web app -
thankfully I could revert it.

------
Apreche
WTF

I use inbox for everything. GMail is basically unusable for me at this point.
This is a complete disaster.

------
Zyst
Been using Inbox for the last 4 years, sad to see it go. The bundle structure,
and snoozing are both features I use religiously.

Thanks to the Inbox team for delivering a great product!

------
Myrmornis
Very disappointing. I feel like this is retrograde -- my impression is that
Gmail is a very advanced tool for people who care (by choice or professional
obligation) about their email, whereas Inbox was a huge leap forwards for
people who just want to avoid wasting time on email. And I kind of thought the
latter was more forward-looking.

------
sdoering
Well thanks Google. You just made the necessary transition into MS Outlook
land so much more easy.

My company got bought and I need to switch into MS land. Sadly. But my biggest
complain was to loose my workflow from Inbox. Google killing this just kills
one argument from my list. Sadly.

I like the UI. I really, really like the reminders and the bundles. And the
ability to postpone a message to see it as new some later time was a big boon
too.

I know - lot's of that is already in Gmail. But the UI is just so... not
there. Well. Again - Google killing a great product that only a minority of
people are using. It is not that nerds matter.

~~~
awiesenhofer
Same here without the aquisition. Will be interesting to see how much Inbox
functionality can be replicated by custom rules etc.

------
giggsey
Does Gmail have any features like Inbox's groupings for Trips?

I have a lot of emails grouped together into a Trip, which Inbox helpfully
shows a card summary for (including flights and reservations).

~~~
redbonsai
Trips is by far my most used feature -- I'm really going to miss that too!

------
DanFeldman
Damnit, I love inbox and I use it everyday. Much preferred to the GMAIL ui,
seemed less cluttered to me and the swiping features to archive/snooze/pin
were great. Yikes. It worked really well out of the box for bundling and
didn't need much configuration. RIP inbox.

------
quxbar
Okay, what can I download for iPhone to replace this? It was truly a beautiful
UX. I loved it every single day I used it.

~~~
jedmeyers
Gmail? Most of the feature are there already.

------
elboru
Inbox was the first tool that helped me reach "inbox zero". I really liked the
feel of seeing the cute landscape after I was done with my email. Anyways I
saw this coming since they took a lot of time to update their app for the
iPhone X.

------
uses
I don't know why this surprises me but this just feels weird.

I felt like Inbox was the product that I was supposed to get on board with. It
really is true that you just can't love google products. They make it freaking
impossible.

------
jeffkeen
What a cruel joke! That was a really great product.

I've completely given up hope of anything I love in technology lasting unless
it's a paid product from a company that doesn't rely on advertising for
revenue. Even then it's not perfect, but fuck if this isn't CLASSIC GOOGLE
BULLSHIT.

Sometimes it's killing a perfectly good product (ala Reader) after getting
everyone to emotionally invest in it, and then there's the equally frustrating
aquihire. Sell the lie that the beloved product will continue and that the
team is so excited for the Incredible Journey[1] ahead and then bam, bullet to
the head. Product killed.

I still have scars from Reader, Sparrow, and Songza. And Mailbox! Looks like I
switched to Fastmail just in time to avoid another heartbreak. Not too fancy
but reliable AF and not going anywhere. Money well spent.

Between this and Apple's post-Steve product decisions I'm becoming a
curmudgeon in this current world of technology, wishing we could turn the
clock back the clock nine years to when things made more sense.

But honestly, in my fantasy world you know what I'd love to see? Some sort of
statement that went along with an app detailing what their future plan is for
cashing out or shutting down. Like, "If we don't survive as a business we will
open source our product and provide an avenue for you to continue using it".
Or, "We're building a sustainable lifestyle business and are not interested in
being swallowed up by Google and being shut down" Or "We're looking to cash
the fuck out ASAP! No guarantees; enjoy the ride!"

I have fun dreams.

[1]
[https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/](https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/)

------
maybeiambatman
WTF. I have been using and loving (for the most part) Inbox since they
launched it. I had to work so hard to bring down my Inbox to zero. _sigh_ I
guess with Google, I should have expected as much.

------
antirez
I don't understand Google here. Clearly Gmail is not the final word about
email user interface, and Inbox was a very promising first step. I can
understand, if Inbox did not receive enough attention, to start moving Inbox
to different directions, but how is it possible that Google has no space for a
permanent alternative UI testing project?

------
4rgento
This may be a case of following the data with disregard to the dynamics.

1\. In the beginning there was G Mail and there where two camps(roughly):

    
    
      a. Those who made heavy use of e-mail, and where "adapted" to the user interface.
    
      b. Those who had problems with the UI(replying to all their emails, etc...)
    

Of those two camps: those in camp `a` where unlikely to switch. That would
have interfered with their workflow.

Those in camp `b`, not all switched because people resist change. Change takes
energy.

2\. Then there was `Inbox`

Now, there is a subset of camp `b` which has adapted its workflow to use
Inbox. The most satisfied ones are here complaining :).

They don't want to go back to G mail, but will be forced to.

The questions I would ask, if I were responsible for shutting down Inbox, are:

* How many people were leaving inbox for G mail? * Why?

~~~
4rgento
Also gmail is the default android app but I'd guess they have consider that.

------
lechiffre10
What's the point of adopting Google products if most end up being canned? I
love that they're willing to release cool new products but it's almost like a
bunch of children who quickly move on to another set of toys

------
dfischer
That makes me sad. I love the snooze features of inbox. The new gmail one is
not the same. :(. Especially the UX of the iPhone app.

Oh well.

~~~
antimora
You have it in Gmail now too.

~~~
dfischer
It’s not the same on the UX I’m missing. In the inbox app it’s a quick swipe
to snooze. In Gmail it archives. :(

------
akshaynathan
Sad to see this here, but if anyone is interested in a new tool with some of
the features of Inbox (snoozing, pinning and more to come), we're building
Monolist ([https://monolist.co](https://monolist.co)).

Monolist integrates directly into the tools you use and surfaces things that
you can act on inline in the app (missed Slack mentions, Asana tasks, Calendar
invites etc.). We're actually working on a GMail integration right now and
would love to hear from the community what kinds of Inbox features we could
replicate successfully.

~~~
Klathmon
My biggest thing that I am kind of panicking that I'm going to lose is the
ability to batch groups of emails into bundles and deliver them at given times
of the day.

For example, all "purchase" emails (emails like shipping updates, receipts,
etc...) are automatically hidden whenever they come in, and are delivered
under one bundle at 9am for me, and they will send notifications to my devices
and show up right in front of me at that time.

This is very different than something like Gmail tabs, because they are fully
out of sight and out of mind until they "arrive" that morning.

And that feature is the killer feature for me. Imagine if your physical mail
was delivered to your door tens or hundreds of times a day? That's how I feel
about normal email clients.

And after getting used to this way of working, I have this vacuum that I
desperately want filled with just not email, but all notifications on all
platforms.

Id love to queue up all Reddit messages until after my workday, bundle most
Twitter notifications until one specific time every day, get a notification
from slack at 4:45 and "snooze" it to show up like new tomorrow morning at 9
AM.

Snoozing notifications individually isn't a replacement, the ability to choose
to snooze automatically to the next key time was huge. Putting them in tabs
hidden from the "main" view isn't a replacement, I won't remember to check
that tab unless I'm in my email and have time to do it (and remember to).

Inbox changed how I deal with interruptions, it changed what I want from a
phone, it helped me stop my FOMO in a lot of areas, and kept me from
forgetting to answer emails and do tasks because I would forget to check a
task list or something.

I know I'm only one person, and I still haven't clicked on your pink and
checked it out (I plan to right after this), but I would very much pay good
money for software that can enable this workflow again, especially if it works
for more than just emails and reminders.

------
Griever
As a heavy Inbox user this is definitely a bummer, but I do feel a bit
relieved to know what is coming to Gmail.

Last month a video showing some future updates to the Material Design
components leaked. If you check out
[https://youtu.be/0mAude0774I?t=1m27s](https://youtu.be/0mAude0774I?t=1m27s)
you can (briefly) see that the version of Gmail they're showing has a lot of
functionality seen in Inbox, particularly Trip cards and expandable message
bodies. Fingers crossed!

------
kevindong
I still deeply miss Mailbox (the cross platform app bought and abandoned by
Dropbox). It was __SO __fast and sleek. Emails appeared damn near instantly,
the app never lagged, and actions taken locally were reflected remotely near
instantaneously.

Email clients are a lot better now than then. In fact the best features of
Mailbox (swipe to /action/ and snoozing) has been copied by basically every
email client now. However, I have yet to find an email app for either macOS or
iOS that's as consistently fast.

------
hackathonguy
Pinning, bundling, gestures and embedded todos/reminders all make Inbox the
best email app there is. Hats off to the Inbox team - you've made a great
product. I'll miss it.

------
adrwhong
Hmm this really sucks, especially for my daily/hourly reminders that I have
set up. What are others using to replace Inbox's reminders?

------
mezzode
Inbox has got to be the single most useful productivity tool for me. Pinning,
bundling, and snoozing just make managing emails so quick and efficient since
you can easily triage and get rid of what doesn't matter, and Gmail as it
currently stands just can't compete.

If bundling and pinning aren't brought over to Gmail like snooze, Gmail is
basically dead to me from an efficiency perspective since manually selecting
what you want to remove takes significantly longer than pinning and sweeping
in Inbox.

Worse still, there's the opposite problem if we wanted to build an Inbox
successor on top of Gmail since while bundling and pinning would be easily
implemented by the client, snooze is _still_ not part of the Gmail API[1] so
there would need to be a completely separate layer of snoozing in the client.

Honestly, if a competitor were to rise and implement Inbox's feature set, my
money is on the table.

[1]
[https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/109952618](https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/109952618)

------
thieving_magpie
You've got to be kidding me. This was the last thing I used heavily. I'm out
the door now. Good grief does this company frustrate me.

------
mcfunk
I tried to move to Inbox but kept having to use the Gmail app after I would
see alerts for mail and then was unable to find the message in question in
Inbox without searching, which is tedious. The "missed messages" problem was
one I couldn't ever get past (maybe my own settings were to blame -- but at
the end of the day it wasn't worth the time to figure out).

------
matteska
When Google shutdown their RSS Reader, Feedly lived...

What’s the Inbox successor going to be?

------
Myrmornis
OK, how do I get Inbox's "sweep" action in Gmail?

What "sweep" did is just in one click get rid of _everything_ that you haven't
pinned. It was a massive productivity boost for someone for whom dealing with
email was mostly a waste of time (my company doesn't really use email much, so
my inbox mostly contained notifications from other apps).

------
jordanthoms
Ugh! I love Inbox, going back to the Gmail interface feels awful in
comparison. I love the grouping of emails by day so I can easily see
everything that came in today.

Having a separate app that takes a different approach which heavy users of
email might like makes sense - the UI you need when you are getting 100+
emails a day is very different from when you are getting 5.

------
wlesieutre
Side-note on Google's communication systems, I watch an email thread at work
where it went:

    
    
        1) Here are my questions
        2) I've added responses below in BLUE
        3) Additional feedback in GREEN
        4) More responses in BROWN
    

and it really made me miss Google Wave. Inline replies within long emails are
not well handled.

~~~
pythonaut_16
Is that similar to the functionality provided by Twist from Doist? It's not
email based but it seems to be a hybrid of Email and Slack. I've only messed
with it a few times and never with Google Wave, but it sounds similar to what
you're describing.

~~~
wlesieutre
I'm not familiar with Twist but from a quick glance I don't see a similar
function.

Wave let you post a reply in the middle of someone else's message, so that if
you were presented with a whole list of questions you could answer each of
them inline, and other people could tag on to those new conversation threads
in place.

------
Guillaume86
I'm another one of the disappointed long time users. Just tried Gmail again
and the UI/UX is not yet there, the ads in the app is also a big downgrade...

I also loved to use "save to inbox" feature (creating reminders from outside).
It is a share option on android so accessible from pretty much anywhere and on
PC I used the Inbox extension on chrome that has the same feature to save the
current page.

Now for the future... I'm probably dreaming but I wish the snooze/done
paradigm would be provided by a stand-alone service and available system wide
and in the cloud (with an open API). We should be able to "snooze" anything (a
watsapp message, a sms, a web page) and select a date/location/device that
will wake it again. Bundling could also be provided by the same service...

Edit: that service should of course also replace the several tasks/reminders
services and apps that google has created these last years.

------
kkarakk
Google says tasks is the replacement for the "snooze" feature but going to see
deleted tasks is like i'm visiting the wayback machine ->
[https://mail.google.com/tasks/canvas](https://mail.google.com/tasks/canvas)
genuinely made me go wtf

------
domenukk
Inbox loads instantly and continues loading, GMail takes up to 10 Seconds in
Firefox on a pretty decent machine...

------
raihansaputra
I'm sure I'm repeating voices here, but I'm really sad. And the article also
mentions Mailbox too which I used before and moved to Inbox because it had a
similar interface/structure. I love grouped archive/delete, I love pins, I
love snooze. Inbox, I feel, is the only sane way to do email.

I don't know whether I want to even adopt a new product again, from anyone,
and integrate it into my workflow. I've had Astrid (to Yahoo(?)), Sunshine
Calendar (to Microsoft), Mailbox (to DropBox) gone and now it's Inbox.

Maybe it is time to vote (and ask devs/companies to enable us to) with our
wallets. I have Todoist and trying out Notion, I really hope they don't roll
over soon.

Now I kinda understand people who want to roll their own tools for
everything.. You don't become dependent on others for what is important to
you.

------
yebyen
What is with this trend of "discontinuing" products that are already receiving
little to no maintenance? Google is not the only one guilty of this.

From the announcement, I get the idea that if I use Inbox today, it will be
gone and I will no longer be able to use it after the EOL date is passed. Is
it really that hard to keep the lights on, for a product for which development
has already been finished?

People like this product and it has features that no others do. I don't want
to go back to using the Gmail app on my Android either. There are tens of
thousands of unmaintained Android apps from developers who may have even died,
or at least we may never hear from again. So why should this one need to be
formally sunsetted?

I am far more likely to quit email altogether, than to embrace a vanilla Gmail
experience at this point.

------
andybak
I'm struggling to post a comment that doesn't just consist of a lot of swearv
words strung together.

I knew this might happen but I'm really gutted. I'm actually worried about how
my time management and workflow is going to fare in light of this.

It's _weird_ how much this bothers me.

------
kjhosein
I was already a 'power' Gmail user when Inbox was released. I had developed
muscle-memory for prob 20 keyboard shortcuts and used Gmail mouse-free, had
dozens of labels, used a slew of Gmail Labs, and had given up using an
external email client (used Gmail in a browser exclusively).

Yet when Inbox came along, it was incredibly useful, especially on my phone.
It was my choice of app for quickly digesting email on-the-go. I stopped using
the Gmail app.

But conversely on the desktop, I remained a Gmail user and never used Inbox.

I understand that the rumors are that Bundles are coming to Gmail which is
good and necessary. I can only hope that it's as seamless in the mobile app as
it is now in Inbox.

Long live Inbox!

------
bogomipz
>"...as then senior VP Sundar Pichai explained in a blog post, Inbox was
“designed to focus on what really matters.”"

So does "what really" mattered then no longer matter now? Certainly email
hasn't fundamentally changed since then.

------
boomskats
I gave up on using Inbox a few months ago as I started to find it too slow,
and absolutely _loved_ the refreshed Gmail and Calendar interfaces.

However, I really hope that they fold the Reminders functionality from Keep
into Gmail now, as the reminders integration across Inbox/Keep/Cal was one of
my main reasons for sticking with it for as long as I did. That new Tasks
interface is pretty, and I get what it's doing by trying to be a bit more like
Todoist, but I think bringing full-on Reminders to Gmail as 'first class
citizens' would make a lot of people miss Inbox much less, and probably get me
to drop Todoist.

------
blablabla123
I would have ended up using it if I hadn't left GMail for good now. All the
privacy revelations and planet-scale data mining of private data of the past
years has led me to the conclusion it's better to self-host in the long-term.
(Ads based on my E-Mail conversations, Snowden, ...) At the moment I have a
patch work solution based on different providers but at some point it'll all
be on my own servers.

I kind of miss the crazy new features but the other stuff is developing at a
faster pace then ever and gets unexpected features. Inbox is pretty cool, I
can even use it when I'm completely drunk ;)

------
stephanierobe
If you're looking for an alternative to Google Inbox, you should give SaneBox
a try. You can train it so only the emails you want to see end up in your
inbox. Here's a $25 off code: www.sanebox.com/inbox

------
yingw787
I really like Inbox reminders and the smart addressee option when pressing the
"Compose" button. I use reminders when I'm offline to save notes to myself. If
I use my Google Home, then the reminders also show up in Inbox. I really liked
how reminders and this part of the Google ecosystem integrated with my
lifestyle routines. I guess I could switch to Todoist or roll my own thing,
but it won't be the same.

Needless to say I'm miffed by this news. It tells me it's dangerous to love
Google products no matter how great they are, because one day they'll be taken
away.

------
matwood
I saw this coming when it took Google months to update the Inbox app for the
iPhoneX. The regular gmail app was updated almost instantly. I started weaning
myself off of Inbox then, even though it finally was updated.

------
Illniyar
I think framing the conversation as a deprecation or discontinuation of a
product is too generous towards Google. It makes it seem like the product has
reached it's end of life.

This isn't a discontinuation, it's a failure. If invoice was a startup this
would be an "our incredible journey" article after the company has been
acquired and it's product destroyed.

Google has failed to monetize inbox.

Similarly it's not that we don't use google products because we fear they'll
discontinue it, google has failed too many times - you don't bet on a company
that fails so often.

------
Communitivity
I hate that they did this to Inbox, after they did something similar to Wave.
But, I think this is how they operate. Their strategy seems to be to build a
product, launch it, see if it reaches some hidden very high threshold of use,
if it doesn't then discontinue it, and then either shelve it or open source
it. I can't fault them for that strategy, even though I don't like the
results, because I think that may be how they have to operate at their scale.
I do wish they would have a policy of always open sourcing a product that they
kill.

------
jorisw
I've always used a particular email flow in Apple's Mail.app that allows me to
use my email exactly as an Inbox user here calls it: "reminders as a first
class citizen of your inbox". Is that what Inbox was for?

If so, am I the only one that uses Mail.app (or whatever email client) like
this? :

[https://jor.is/mail-flow.jpg](https://jor.is/mail-flow.jpg)

In short: Sort by flags, then by date received. Keeps your actionables on top,
even grouped by (flag color) category if you want. I never forget to deal with
any of my emails.

------
ohitsdom
I still use Inbox and I love it. I snooze reminders all the time for bills and
regular maintenance tasks. If I snoozed something for a few years from now,
does anyone know if it'll work in gmail?

------
ocdtrekkie
There's been some revisionist history out there, but Inbox was intended to be
"the next version of Gmail" at the time, until a near revolt internally about
how the Gmail team "ruined Gmail" led them to launch it as a "separate
product" instead.

Now that there's a new new version of Gmail, which was rolled out a couple of
months ago that hasn't upset everyone, it's unsurprising the unloved stepchild
of the family is going away.

Old Gmail was version 1, Inbox was version 2, and the new Gmail is version 3.

------
Aeolun
FFS! I finally managed to get into using Inbox, and Google is being google
again and killing the project.

I guess there’s something to the adage that you shouldn’t use anything google
if you want it to last.

------
hknd
They merged the most useful features from inbox into the new gmail (1), and
(imho) that's a really good move. I'm really happy with gmai (and never was a
"true" inbox user though).

1: [https://www.blog.google/products/gmail/stay-composed-
heres-q...](https://www.blog.google/products/gmail/stay-composed-heres-quick-
rundown-new-gmail/)

------
tzury
Inbox so far is the very best email client I used. It is not an email client,
rather a task manager. Mails, reminders, auto reminder, auto-grouping, oh, and
TRIPS!

Oh man, trips, every incoming email related to a trip is automatically merged
into the bundle, airline tickets, car rentals, hotels, flight schedule
changes, you simply need nothing else, it was all there.

The new Gmail recently introduced is not getting close to Inbox.

I can't believe they do it.

------
reality_czech
Friends don't let friends depend on Google products.

~~~
z0r
Friends don't let friends depend on web apps.

------
Fire-Dragon-DoL
This kills me. I loved the reminders mixed with emails, I didn't need any
separate app: all notes abd emails abd reminders in a single giant todo
interface. It's perfect. The migration guide states they have nothing for the
reminders beside a stupid suggestion to use split screen with 2 apps on phone
(which is not even close to what i need).

I'm looking around for alternative products that behave like inbox.

------
aequitas
Inbox had two distinct content types, emails and reminders. Both where handled
the same by Inbox but reminders don't show up in Gmail. Anyone found yet how
to migrate these to Gmail? I have a lot of reminders that are snoozed at
specific times and also to "Some day". Would really hate to loose them. I
checked to data exporter Google provides and it has no entry for Inbox, only
Gmail.

~~~
awestroke
They are in your Google Calendar I think

------
jasonvorhe
I really don't get the problem here. Google's intentions for Inbox were always
clear in that it was an experiment to see where mail could be headed and where
they could try things that may find their way into Gmail. That's what they
have done. Lots of features are now in Gmail. Now Inbox is being put to rest
with about half a year of a retirement announcement in advance.

------
cl3m
Is there any good todo manager with reminders and saved link with a snooze
function like Inbox? or is there any way to see those in Gmail?

------
komali2
If someone makes a clone that I can plug my @gmail.com account into, or just
forward from, I will be a paying customer.

------
Mikeb85
This isn't huge news IMO. Lots of the UI changes have appeared in Gmail
already and unless they were going to keep changing Inbox it no longer has a
raison d'être.

And while I know some people aren't a fan of Google shuttering products, I
appreciate that they let you 'test' the bleeding edge if you want.

------
albertfrostt
I suggest you voice your opinion here:
[https://productforums.google.com/forum/?utm_medium=email&utm...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!msg/inbox/k-NVIvqwXt0/9T2NTCf9BgAJ)

------
allard
Took me the better part of an hour to find snooze in the Android Gmail app. It
wouldn't appear until after I visited gmail.com in a full browser. That is a
royal clustermess. I'm usually not annoyed by vendors changing their stuff.
Super annoying to have to give up the blue app.

------
0xb100db1ade
I'm switching to protonmail because of this. It has a nice UI and as a bonus
I'll get encryption.

------
dogweather
I can't keep the various gmail clients straight, so I'm not too broken up.
AFAICT:

* I use Inbox most of the time, until... * I need to create a filter, and I switch to gmail to do it. * Then I continue using gmail because I forget to change back to Inbox...

------
StephenAshmore
Well, I suppose I'll be looking for a replacement to Gmail pretty quick. Long
time inbox user from the beginning, and Gmail still isn't caught up to it in
UI/UX, plus loads of my "Done" emails in inbox still show up in Gmail.

------
jon49
Inbox wasn't a web app. That's why never used it. You had to install the app
onto your phone. Since I'm a light user of email this didn't make sense. From
reading the comments I can see why people loved it as a full app though.

------
cmurf
I'd like to see the new Gmail interface abandoned. It soaks my CPU doing all
these b.s. animations that don't actually advance the UI or the UX. And times
millions of users, what's the carbon footprint of all those extra CPU cycles?

------
Cub3
This was the last thing keeping me in the Google Ecosystem, shattered that
they're killing it.

I heavily used the trips mail bundling with "Google Trips" integration for
both personal business trips.

I think it's finally time to port my mail to another carrier

------
gesman
I like the search capability of inbox - it always was better than gmail.

It had it quirks due to "designed to focus on what really matters." \-
actually meaning: "we'll ignore what you want and need and do it the way we
think you need".

------
aristotle2
Smart move. The UI wasn't that great, the product wasn't intuitive, and why
would you have two inbox clients from one company? Normal people don't use
Inbox, they just want to use regular Gmail and not think about it.

------
etimberg
That's unfortunate. I really liked Inbox (other than the horrible performance)

------
vl
Google's communication strategy (and any other strategy really) is just a
reflection of internal incentives structure and organization structure. One
would hope that this is the other way around, but it is what it is.

------
eterps
Time to start an open source version of Inbox? ->
[https://codepen.io/simoberny/pen/bdvMyj](https://codepen.io/simoberny/pen/bdvMyj)

------
awiesenhofer
Is there any Win/macos desktop app that works somewhat similar to Inbox?

------
radium3d
Man, I just tried out gmail and the UI is so bloated and slow. C'mon google,
don't bullshit us that "gmail" is equivalent. It's not about what it can do,
it's how it does it.

------
kposehn
This really bums me out. I’ve been using inbox all-in since the start and have
loved it since day one. Switching back to gmail is going to be a real
challenge as I prefer the way it organizes my email.

------
andrewstuart
Maybe the term for this is "unfluencing" \- where you take a product used by
many influencers and drop it, making them mad and hostile and reducing trust.

It's the opposite to "influencing".

------
dfleurantin
Correct me if I'm wrong but was the purpose of Inbox to test and experiment
new features/functionality to be added to Gmail? It did not seem this was
meant to be a long term solution.

------
bpye
Yikes. I loved Inbox and was using it until a couple months ago. I moved to
FastMail because I wanted to host my email with another provider. I certainly
won't be going back to Google now.

------
luord
I'm really going to miss the remainders feature from inbox. Tried the task app
for gmail and it doesn't even allow setting a time, just date.

It also doesn't have anything like pinning links.

------
agentPrefect
To be honest; I'm a little surprised it's lasted this long.

------
knorker
Come on, you knew this was coming the day they launched it, right? They were
not going to maintain both gmail and Inbox, and Inbox just could not win.

But it looks like gmail is getting Inbox features.

------
rcthompson
I assumed this was coming eventually. It's been clear for a while that Gmail
is under active development and Inbox isn't, so I figured Inbox's days had to
be numbered.

------
pantheon
Hey guys, majority of people here are smart - why, why, why do you use any of
Google products? Just learn to live without them and you will be much happier.
Google is crap.

------
motiw
To all inbox user I will appreciate your opinion on Centask which attempts to
take inbox philosophy one step forward and completely merge Gmail inbox and
task management

------
p90puma
Feels like Google Reader 2.0 for me .... Fool me twice...

------
tluyben2
Damn. Only yesterday I said to a friend that Inbox is miles above other stuff
I used. Bah Google. At least Open Source it then so we can take over :(

------
cdaringe
I can never relate to people's love of this product. To me, it added noise and
complexity to an otherwise simple email system. I aggressively tag, archive,
and delete mail. I process and/or backlog messages in conjunction with
calendar to always keep my inbox to <10 messages.

The cognitive overhead to maintain this discipline has and will forever be ~0.

Inbox is pure cruft over native Gmail. That's an offensive opinion to many, I
know, but the intrinsic value inbox brings is very low over other highly
accessible tooling already available within a few clicks.

------
wnevets
If you had to do with tons of email Inbox seem like it would be great. However
it just got in the way when you only had to deal a few emails a day.

~~~
IggleSniggle
I went from 10000+ unread emails to inbox-zero. I honestly don’t think I could
have taken the leap without Inbox. True, I don’t need the bundling feature as
much any more, but I’m sad the product is going away.

~~~
sdoering
Exactly that. I really digged the different philosophy Inbox brought to the
table. You had "Inbox Zero" by creating a Task List out of your inbox. It was
practically a todo list made up of emails. With scheduling, reminders, pinning
and stuff. And automatically sorting into bundles like social, purchases or
trips. Man I will miss the automatic bundling of all my trip related mails.

------
vagab0nd
I'm a little confused by the replies here. From the source article from Google
[0], it sounds like they are planning on merging Inbox features back into
Gmail and focusing on one product instead of two. They even put out a
transition guide. I think long term this is a good thing. Why are people
freaking out?

0: [https://www.blog.google/products/gmail/inbox-signing-find-
yo...](https://www.blog.google/products/gmail/inbox-signing-find-your-
favorite-features-new-gmail/)

------
darkvertex
For anyone wondering how to see your Inbox "pins" in Gmail, search for
"label:pinned" (it's a secret label!)

------
dev_parrott
This is devastating news. I'm going to completely change my workflow around
email. Does anybody know of a comparable product?

------
n72
Ugh. I while back I switched all my gcal events which emailed me to reminders.
Now I have to change them all back again.

------
ben_jones
Why isn't Google more clear on the life expectancy of its products? Because it
would hurt adoption numbers.

------
divanvisagie
So... anyone know of an open source mail client that is designed around the
same philosophy as inbox?

------
albertfrostt
Brutal. Hope someone builds an Inbox replacement before next March. Gmail
feels archaic after Inbox.

------
tvanantwerp
Google breaks my heart yet again. Farewell, Inbox!

I guess next they'll discontinue my phone service, too.

------
kag0
Is anyone interested in building a new email client/service based on the
inbox-as-a-todo-list paradigm?

Maybe something that would work with any email provider but would sync
todo/done/snoozed state with our server. Or perhaps could embed that state in
IMAP flags.

I'd be open to working on the backend and arch if there's interest.

------
mikulabc
Don't worry people, remember Google latitude? It was gone and came back :)

------
emodendroket
Thunderbird is still around and I'm sticking with it as long as it works.

------
sjg007
Gmail search is terrible... it’s the one thing I don’t get why it’s so bad.

------
ssijak
Ok, this was the last thing that will push me off of Google services. I was
already reluctant to use their new apps and services and was pondering moving
anyway. Anyhow only thing that does not have proper replacement is Photos but
I will manage.

------
jryan49
Hmm, maybe we should create an open source version of inbox?

------
fh973
Meanwhile Gmail search is still not working properly...

------
sabujp
inbox made gmail slower, used more memory to display the same content, just
give me alpine in a browser with decent search

------
afro88
Anyone know why they're shuttering it?

~~~
blondin
i don't know either, but let me guess... money?

power users here are arguing UI and functionality... but when they redesigned
GMail, i took a look. and it dawn upon me that with Inbox i was in a different
world. Inbox has 0 ads. GMail is full of ads. to the point i don't even know
where my messages are. they be scrapping your messages like crazy to get you
to click on those ads.

i don't blame Google. really. it's just sad to have to switch yet again.

------
bitcharmer
Typical Google

------
noja
Good news everyone: Google will be integrating their Trips feature into Trio
(the successor to Duo after it sunsets next month).

------
philip1209
Superhuman is a great alternative.

------
joboyx
Please don't shutdown Inbox!

------
foobarbazetc
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

------
jakeogh
Google: redefining reliable

------
brazzledazzle
This is pretty frustrating.

------
mcilai
No!!!!!!!!!!!!!

------
talles
didgoogleshutdown.com needs an update

------
AzzieElbab
Clearly evil

------
spookyuser
They can pry it from my cold dead hands

------
welix92
Good riddance

------
svrtknst
Aw fuck.

------
samirm
good riddance

------
gammateam
OOPS

------
domoritz
Noooooo. I love bundling and the Gmail UI is just so cluttered with stuff.

EDIT: Okay, they are porting bundling to Gmail. I hope they also clean up the
UI. The settings dialog is a nightmare to look at.

------
josephh
Finally, they are following through with their own app store policy of banning
apps with “repetitive content”[1].

1\. [https://play.google.com/about/developer-content-policy-
print...](https://play.google.com/about/developer-content-policy-print/)

