
A new Gmail inbox - Lightning
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/a-new-inbox-that-puts-you-back-in.html
======
bretthopper
These comments are pretty sad. I know we feel the need to comment on
everything right away these days, but honestly there isn't much to say about
this feature until we've actually used it.

HN almost universally believes in execution over the idea, yet here we are
trashing an idea before seeing the execution. It's great that Gmail is trying
to innovate and improve the email experience. Maybe this feature won't work
out but how about we try it out first?

~~~
vidarh
Given how obnoxious the new compose it, it is getting hard to trust them to do
the right thing with Gmail.

~~~
piyush_soni
Just FWIW, I love the new Gmail compose as well. It is indeed useful to be
able to go through and consult previous emails without doing the back and
forth for writing one mail. And I really love Gmail for all the small
convenience things they keep on doing, like including a 'Track Package' button
in the 'product shipping' email's subject itself ! As far as I know, they were
the first to do many innovative things, like drag and drop to attach files!
They shouldn't stop trying new things.

~~~
intrazoo
I like it too. I can write multiple emails at once, and a chat box will never
be in the way of the composer. Maybe there should be a "snap back into page"
button thing, but people seem to forget that there is a pop out button if you
want a more mono-tasking email style.

Additionally, with this interface, it could be more integrated with hangouts
and cross google's services (maybe easier send email pop up on andriod
tablets?).

~~~
vidarh
I think that's a fundamental difference in working style. I never write
multiple emails at once, nor have I wanted to. To me that is clutter.

The "pop out" choice is a poor one since it turns Compose into 3 operations:
Press compose, press the pop-out button, press maximize on the new window.

(as for the chat box, I use Minimalist, and my Gmail UI is trimmed of anything
extraneous).

~~~
thezilch
Just hit "d" -- first have shortcuts enabled.

~~~
vidarh
Yes, I found that out in this thread. It's still a worse experience, though,
as it's much slower.

------
adastra
Disaster.

1) I just turned it on, and it is not customizable _at all_. You cannot create
custom tabs, and you can't even pick what goes into the tabs they have
created.

2) When you turn it on, it disables Gmail's multiple inbox. Multiple inbox is
the only thing saving my email from being a complete and utter disaster right
now.

3) Judging by how they are forcing the new compose on everyone it is
reasonable to expect that they will force us to use this as well. (The new
compose screws up at least two workflows for me, btw. For example, sending a
form email to several people is now a pain because I have to manually click
"edit subject" to remove the "Fwd:"). If they force this on me, it will
completely destroy my ability to use gmail. If they want me to leave gmail for
good, that would be the way to guarantee it.

What a mess.

~~~
3JPLW
I wish they would have taken more time to better support tabbed browsing
instead of implementing their own floating compose windows in javascript.

Now they've implemented their own version of tabs.

Just support native browser controls, please. People understand them. They're
simple. They work. The more stuff they add, the heavier Gmail becomes... and
the more of a pain it is to load in multiple real tabs.

~~~
stdbrouw
Show me any big web app that doesn't use tabs at least somewhere. I don't see
what the big deal is.

------
simonsarris
Oooh I like this very much, though it looks like I'm not allowed to play with
it just yet on my account.

Labels and filters solve several Gmail problems but demand too much footwork
on my part. I found that my Gmail experience got better when I adopted this
credo about two weeks ago:

 _Thou shalt have but one Gmail label, and that label's name shalt be "Needs
Reply"._

Either it can wait, and be there when I specifically look (search) for it, or
it needs a reply. I _need_ to know which emails need replies, and I generally
need to label them manually.

Labels beyond this I view as a distraction. I used to label everything, now I
label nothing. The fewer you can use the better, I think.

And yet I still want a label or two for all the semi-solicited mail I get.
Things that I do not need in my inbox, but ought to be there for my idle
perusement: Banana Republic sales, MyHabit "deals", Newegg dailies, Kindle
book of the day deals, and so on.

And then there are things like Facebook updates. Nice to know, but I'll get to
them eventually anyway the next time I open up Facebook, which I look at about
as much as my grandmother checks the weather (read: Every hour, and for no
reason).

If this wants to distill my system for me then I'm ready with open arms.
Bigger tabs at the top are way better than a hard-to-parse list on the side.
Can't they turn it off for a complainer and roll it out to me?

~~~
SCdF
That's really interesting. You don't even label emails you've archived? I like
to chuck "invoice" on everything that represents money changing hands: actual
invoices, e-purchase emails (congrats on buying this game / software, here is
your key), stuff like that. I also have a few others about specific topics.

In terms of labeling emails that need replies for me if it's still in the
inbox if it needs a reply / action. If I'm done with an email I archive it.

~~~
simonsarris
I think that labels become problematic because the more things you label, the
closer looking at "All emails labeled X" looks just like a search.

In other words, to be the most useful, a label needs to have as few uses as
possible, or else become a separate folder for perusing. And if a label looks
just like a search, skip the clutter and just do the search. If its a bin for
perusing, well, good on this new feature.

I can't imagine when I'd want to view all emails labeled "Invoice", for
instance. If I know I'm looking for a software key, then doing a search will
be much faster than clicking on the label and eyeballing it for the right one.

In your example that's also something you have to label manually. If you
forget one and then look through the "Invoice" label folder and don't find it,
you have to go do a search anyway. As much as possible I want to reduce the
number of things that could be screwed up by mere forgetfulness. So by not
using labels there is no chance of screwing it up, and there's less work to do
to boot.

So I'd rather not concern myself with taking the time to organize my to-be-
archived emails into labels unless it represents a non-trivial gain, and I
don't think the gains are very large in nearly every practical case. "Needs-
reply" is the only one, since it represents a separate queue of to-do emails.

~~~
k3n
That doesn't fit the bill and would be efficient if you only had 1 sender per
label. Nearly all of my labels have a one-to-many relationship, and so
recreating that 'search' would first require me to remember each of the
parties involved, find their email address, and then manually construct the
query. I think his example is poor use, I think the suggested usage pattern is
to take the 10s the first time you have a new contact (that falls under a
label) and filter all future messages, making it a 1-click operation to access
that archive going forward.

I think your logic is seriously flawed, but as long as it's your email and not
mine, so be it!

------
jedc
Disclosure: I work at Google and have been dogfooding this on my personal
account for a while.

I draw a distinct line between my work e-mail and my personal e-mail. In my
work e-mail I have a lot of rules, filters, automatic labels, and use multiple
inboxes. I also need to read and deal with most every e-mail I receive. In
this inbox I don't (and frankly wouldn't want to) use the new Gmail inbox.
Based on many of the threads here on HN, this is the perspective many have in
mind.

However, for my personal inbox it's been a godsend. The automatic labeling is
highly accurate, and where it's not you can correct it and it learns/adapts. I
can live in my "primary" inbox and only venture into the other tabs (social,
updates, promotions, forums) only when I want to. I used priority inbox, and
this is an improvement on that, in my opinion.

So while I have a bias here, I've really, really enjoyed having this for at
least one of my inboxes. :)

~~~
DannyBee
FWIW: I feel exactly the same way. I use this on my personal email, and it
hasn't gotten anything wrong in months, while successfully moving a lot of the
stuff i only want to tangentially care about to where it belongs.

------
Timothee
I find all these new email products (Sparrow, Mailbox, etc.) interesting on a
UI/UX level but they're highly irrelevant to me. I always read about how hard
it has become to manage one's inbox, but I really don't have a problem with
it.

My system is simple: do not sign-up for newsletter or notifications (e.g.
Facebook, Twitter, GitHub, etc.) you won't read, unsubscribe anytime you
realize you don't read the ones you receive, delete emails you won't ever need
again, archive the ones that are nice to keep around but won't require
anything from you anytime soon, and use filters whenever possible.

So in the end, I don't receive that many emails per day. I certainly don't
receive any promotions in the mail… that's just asking for trouble.

Right now I have 25 threads in my inbox and the vast majority of them I keep
around because they have pictures I want to save in iPhoto but haven't had
time to. (I need to find a system for that actually)

~~~
nwh
It's almost impossible to /avoid/ getting signed up for a pile of "newsletter"
spam. Pretty much everybody that has access to my email address floods me with
them.

~~~
Timothee
Any time I get something I don't want I click the unsubscribe link. If the
link doesn't work, if there aren't any or if I need to do more than legally
necessary (e.g. logging into my account), I click "Report spam" in Gmail.

I don't feel bad about clicking it because I trust Gmail as a whole to be
smart enough not to penalize an account globally if I'm the only one reporting
it. Plus, when I do it, it's because it's actually spam.

Over time, it really works.

~~~
betterunix
Personally, I view "mark as spam" as a way for me to cast a vote on bad email
behavior. No, I do _not_ want to receive the latest news about your product
that I bought 5 years ago -- yes, it is spam when you email me about it. It is
spam when you email me asking for money just because I attended your group's
meetings a few times in college. It is spam when you send me an email that
does not render unless I enable HTML. It is spam when you drop my friends'
names in an attempt to get me to sign up for your website.

Spam is not just about scams, malware, and crime. It is about the annoying
deluge, the fact that I have to open a browser and enable Javascript from 20
different sources when I unsubscribe, and generally about unsolicited,
unwanted email trying to get me to do things I am not going to do. Filters,
including a spam filter, are what keep my inbox under control.

------
gardarh
Looking at my girlfriend's gmail Inbox makes my eyes bleed, it's a mishmash of
seemingly irrelevant email, lots of promos or facebook notifications more than
half of which is unread. I sometimes find it hard to control myself not to
"clean it up". This seems like a perfect addition for her... as for me, I've
already setup my filters and am already happy with gmail as is; I don't think
this will interfere with that. Seems like a feature designed for the 99% of
people who don't frequent HN.

~~~
twistedpair
Seems like the video and solition was tailored for that crowd. Didn't see any
invites to Maker Faire in the video's inbox.

------
bbx
The main difference I can see with labels (at least for power users) is that
the mails get filtered _automatically_ by Google in these categories. I
believe that most of us here on HN won't see this feature as revolutionary but
it might help the less tech-savvy ones.

For quite some time, I've been happy with GMail because I set up a system
through which _each_ email is ultimately stored in one of my _predefined_
labels. I wrote an article about it [1]. It's both simple to setup and easy to
use. And although I don't receive that many emails, I believe it can scale
quite easily.

[1] <http://jgthms.com/organized-gmail-inbox.html>

~~~
div
I have a similar system, but yours does take things a step further. I'll
definitely feel like wasting an hour sometime revising my own setup :)

That said, I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head. If the automatic
filtering is done well, it will be a killer feature for normal users.

From glancing over her shoulder, I know my girlfriend has hundreds, if not
thousands of unread mails, most of which would probably end up in the
promotions tab.

I'm positive this change will make it much easier for her to check her email
at a glance.

------
adventured
So they're giving me sub folders ("tabs") for my inbox folder. How very 1999.

What Gmail is really doing is adding more layers of complexity. Now they have
hard wired folders (inbox, sent, etc), labels (aka custom folders), tabs in
the inbox, and importance markers (starred / not).

They're making the same mistake that consumed many of Microsoft's email
efforts: adding complexity thinking that's how you add 'power controls' and
make it easier to sort mail.

~~~
aiiane
not forced to use it. What would you rather they add?

~~~
adventured
Who said I want them to 'add' anything?

They can make it possible for me to easily search a trillion pages online from
one input box, with a great hit ratio for what I'm actually looking for. But
they need to add comical layers of complexity - none of which is new or unique
- just to sort my email? It's depressing if that's the best their Gmail team
can do.

These 'features' have been done before by other companies and other services,
and they didn't solve the sorting problem of email. They're just repeating
mistakes other companies made many years ago. There's nothing special about
sub folders for an inbox folder, even if you call it a tab.

I would argue that Google needs to think originally again about email, as they
did when they first came up with Gmail, and not repeat the poor product
choices made by other email products and services.

~~~
hnriot
the same old whining. If you don't like the new features, the blog clearly
says you can choose not to use them, they provide backward compatibility.

You say this has been done before, what hasn't. You should live with the
features for a while before jumping to immediately trashing them without even
having used them.

Nothing is "new or unique" - and nobody wants that either. They want steady
improvements without losing familiarity.

~~~
dannyr
Dude, he's clearly whining without bothering to even read the post.

If he actually read it, no reason to complain because you can turn it off.

~~~
jamoes
> because you can turn it off

I think the fear is that eventually they won't let you turn it off. Google has
a habit of doing this type of thing with Gmail (eg the new UI, and the new
compose)

~~~
dannyr
then whine when it actually happens.

------
pbiggar
The problem that I have, and that many here seem to have, is that as
"advanced" users, we've already built a fully-customized system for ourselves.
Like when Dropbox came out, and we all had git/svn/cvs versions of the same
thing going back years.

As a result, any changes are inevitably going to break our workflow. Even
changes that are better for the common man cannot be better than our
customized system.

For example, now it filters social email into the same folder: great, I can
ignore it while I'm at work. Except my twitter alerts from my company account.
So it breaks.

As another example, you apparently can't customize the tabs, and it disables
multiple inbox. I spent a few years coming up with the optimum GTD steup for
myself in gmail, and it's broken now.

I think the solution here is really for people like me to use a different
email client. Gmail has become the defacto winner, but there's probably a
market in making a different client for tech-savvy, very heavy users, with
customizable interactions.

------
pkfrank
I'm encouraged that they seem to allow you to toggle this new inbox on/off as
you wish.

In contrast to the "new" compose box which will eventually be forced onto
everyone.

~~~
jcfrei
I'm just gonna hijack this thread in case any gmail devs are dropping by. the
new compose box is a joke - why would you force users to write emails in a
small window in the bottom right corner?!

~~~
lallysingh
I felt the same way at first. Then I noticed two things:

(1) I could write several messages at once. Useful if you want to look things
up, and keep multi-tasking.

(2) I can refer to other messages while writing one.

~~~
Smudge
So we're managing windows inside of our browser inside of our window manager.

------
moskie
It's not available to me yet, so I'm not sure how exactly it works.... but
their example pic showing "Promotions" as one of the tabs is pretty
disheartening. The post here says it's customizable, so I hope that is not
mandatory.

~~~
aiiane
Can you elaborate on why you feel it's disheartening?

~~~
moskie
It comes off as something being masked as a "feature," when in actuality it is
just something that is trying to get me to spend money. It seems like it blurs
the line between the "content" of my inbox and advertising.

~~~
SEMW
> it blurs the line between the "content" of my inbox and advertising

Yeah. They used to automatically file non-spam promotional emails into a
separate folder where you could safely ignore them, but now they just go into
your regular inbox! Money-grabbing so and so's.

(...is what you'd be saying if this feature were being eliminated rather than
introduced...)

~~~
moskie
I'm sorry, but this blog post is suggesting I should have a big shiny button
at the top of my email inbox that will show me "Promotions" from Google Offers
and Zagat (also owned by Google). That rubs me the wrong way.

~~~
SEMW
> a big shiny button... that will show me "Promotions" from Google Offers and
> Zagat

No. It files all your emails that it classifies as promotional but non-spam.
That won't include Google Offers and Zagat if you're not subscribed to Google
Offers or Zagat (for me, it's mostly events & careers newsletters). It's just
an auto-categoriser (a new UI for smart labels), it doesn't invent new emails
that weren't there before.

Several people in this thread have already explained this. If you don't
believe us, go to gmail and switch to the new view - there doesn't seem much
point in doing competing close-readings of a short blog post when you can see
how it works first hand...

------
rayiner
Wait, are these categories fixed? If so, more proof that gmail is now made for
kids: "We get a lot of different types of email: messages from friends, social
notifications, deals and offers, confirmations and receipts, and more."

That doesn't remotely begin to describe my inbox, but then again I haven't
been in high school for a long time now. Where is the tab for "bills"?

~~~
RobAtticus
Adults don't get messages from friends? Adults don't get deals and offers from
Groupon, LivingSocial, or places they've shopped before? Adults don't get
confirmations and receipts for things they purchase from Amazon or for flights
they're taking?

These all seem like things people have in their email regardless of age. Your
point seems pretty flimsy.

------
jpdoctor
I assume this is about getting Google Promotions better airtime in people's
inboxes.

One more reason to remove the google flow from your critical path. We always
knew there was going to be a time that they needed to please shareholders over
users, and that time has come.

~~~
vkou
This has nothing to do with giving Google Promotions airtime... And everything
to do with filtering _all_ promotional material out of the average user's
Inbox.

------
mcintyre1994
This feature is definitely getting misconstrued. There's been a lab for it for
ages (not the new layout, but automatic labelling of these categories) and it
works really well. Looks like they're A/B'ing it in (I haven't got the new
layout yet), so if you haven't got it yet, enable the smart labels lab and see
what you think.

------
mrgreenfur
Seems like this is the G+ification of Gmail. All of googles other products
(like all the examples shown: g+, zagat, offers, etc) get featured prominently
to get more of those sweet, sweet gmail eyeballs.

This is the monetization of gmail. Eyeballs directed towards actual paying or
ad-supported services, which is a huge advantage.

~~~
aiiane
Err, what? The labels only sort your existing email. There's no new content
involved.

------
jonahss
My browser has a navigation bar and a tab bar, and now my gmail has a
navigation bar and a tab bar inside those.

This started over a year ago, and has gotten even worse.

[http://threehuskies.wordpress.com/2011/07/03/why-is-
there-a-...](http://threehuskies.wordpress.com/2011/07/03/why-is-there-a-
browser-in-my-browser-j/)

~~~
jrockway
How do you plan to archive or delete emails without buttons to do so?

------
dannyr
"If the new inbox isn't quite your style, you can simply switch off all
optional tabs to go back to classic view, or switch to any of your other
favorite inbox types."

If this new Gmail feature doesn't suit you, you can TURN IT OFF.

~~~
Karunamon
Problem is, if it's anything like usual Google features, it follows a common
path:

New feature announced --> Deployed to @gmail users -- Deployed to Apps users
--> Old feature deprecated --> old feature removed

Google has a feature of eventually forcing people onto bad UI layouts.. for
example Youtube.

~~~
piyush_soni
But you still stick to it, so it doesn't show up in numbers to them -
otherwise they'll change it back to what _more people liked_ \- or may be it
already is that way?

~~~
Karunamon
Most of my (and I imagine a good chunk of this site's readership) access to
GMail is handled through IMAP, for one.

For two, I struggle to think of a UI cockup of an email app on the level
required to drive people to switch ecosystems.

~~~
ohsnapman
"Most of my (and I imagine a good chunk of this site's readership) access to
GMail is handled through IMAP, for one."

Data? Projecting much, aren't you? My anecdotal evidence contradicts yours.

~~~
Karunamon
Hence the "I imagine". I am allowed conjecture as I wish.

------
hammerzeit
As a user, I think I'm excited by this, although a lot will depend on the core
usability and accuracy -- this is where this kind of technology often
founders.

As an entrepreneur, this seems phenomenally relevant, given the relative
penetration of GMail among early adopters. The choices that GMail makes can,
within limits of what users will tolerate, create new behaviors for its users
and eliminate old ones. This can create landgrab opportunities for startups
capable of harnessing the new forms of attention and be destructive for
startups addicted to the old forms.

------
napolux
Nobody cares about Google+. And they still put it everywhere.

~~~
lucb1e
I care and they make it worse. It's becoming more and more like Facebook, more
chatty instead of with interesting content. Besides the obvious eternal
September, which means more users and is a goal of theirs, they discourage
long posts and comments by shortening how much you see of it, and making the
expand link less visible. I now consciously make sure it breaks mid-sentence
so that people know there's more.

------
kh_hk
Hate to be the guy that goes offtopic, but the gender and target bias on the
ad bothered me.

So, girls are all about knitting, dates, having their nails painted and buying
shoes? I know they just took some trends (knitting and lindy hop), but I found
the ad awkwardly worded.

Maybe it's just referring to personal inboxes, or someone that does not know
how to keep the inbox clean, or how gmail is supposed to make your day easier,
I don't know.

------
guiambros
Mine was just enabled (and I use my own domain with Google Apps for Business,
so that's a first. Usually I'm the last one to receive beta upgrades).

Here's my first impressions:

1\. [Primary] tab was very accurate, right off the bat. It detected all
personal and important emails properly. And all social updates went to, well,
[Social].

2\. [Promotions/Updates]: these two are a bit all over the place. Honestly I
don't even understand exactly what they meant by "Promotions", but seems it's
"anything that is long, but not personal, and certainly not a simple automatic
trigger/trigger". All mixed up. Promos went to Updates, and vice-versa.

3\. It also failed to detect several emails from discussion lists and blog
posts, that went incorrectly to [Promotions] or [Updates], when it should have
gone to [Forums]

4\. For now there's no ability to customize the tabs. At all. WYSIWYG. Not
even the label. The "+" is just a shortcut to enable/disable one of the 4
additional tabs (besides Primary, that is always visible).

Overall, this is clearly a beta version, so it'll be interesting to see how
they improve the functionality over the next releases. I'm sure it'll be a
nice addition to most types of users (particularly those that have thousands
of emails archived - which is not my case).

I just wished I could customize the labels right away; it's something so small
and ridiculously simple to implement, yet it would allow users to make it
personally relevant to _them_. But considering the OP, this should be coming
soon.

ps: I can't understand why so many negative comments about an _optional_
feature. At least for now - and likely the next 6-12 months - you'll have the
option to simply not use it. And if (when?) they force it down your throat,
well, just vote with your money... Oh, wait. Did I just say _money_?

------
Thrymr
I just enabled this on my personal account, and my first impression is that
the categorization is very useful. Sure, it would be nice to have more
customization available, but it looks like you can train it to some degree to
tailor it somewhat.

My main complaint is that it adds yet another set of controls on a cluttered
and unintuitive interface that has already been changing recently. The tabs go
away when you're looking at an individual email, so you can't go straight from
a message in one folder to another category. As far as I can tell, when
looking at a message and a new one comes in, you can't tell which category it
is in. You only see that is there via an "Inbox (1)" in the sidebar.

All in all, I think this is useful, but the overall Gmail UI is still
disappointing, and getting busier and less intuitive instead of more helpful.

------
ohazi
I currently use the "unread first" inbox type, which puts unread messages at
the top of my inbox. It seems that these inbox types are an either/or
proposition. I can't have unread messages at the top _within_ this "new"
inbox, which is a deal-breaker for me.

~~~
notahacker
If that's the case (I don't have the option to enable the new inbox yet) it's
a shame.

A combination of tabbed, filtered content and "unread first" would be a sweet
spot as I'd quite fancy being able to prioritise unread email by subject
matter without being inundated with those promo emails I'm not quite motivated
to set "mark as read" or "junk" filters for.

------
ZoFreX
> In the Gmail for Android 4.0+ and Gmail for iPhone and iPad apps, you'll see
> your Primary mail when you open the app and you can easily navigate to the
> other tabs.

And if you don't have Android 4.0+, if you enable this feature you won't be
able to see half of your emails - because apparently updating apps for older
versions of Android is really hard, despite literally everyone except the
people that made Android having no problem doing it whatsoever.

(note to those not on Android: some of Google's own apps only update in lock
step with the Android version, so you can only upgrade your Google Talk app by
upgrading your whole O/S - which in practice often means buying a new phone)

------
mherdeg
An unrelated bug that seems to have shipped today: you can reliably deny an
iOS user access to the Gmail mobile Web application in Safari and also the iOS
Gmail application if you send them an e-mail which (1) ends up in their inbox
and (2) has an attached .ics calendar invitation. They'll be forcibly logged
out & redirected to the auth screen once they load their inbox in mobile view
if their inbox contains a message with an .ics invitation file.

On the flip side, if you see this behavior, you can log in, search for
[in:inbox .ics], select all the results, and choose "archive". Neat bug.

------
kevinwmerritt
A feature that I wish Gmail would copy from Outlook.com is the ability to auto
delete emails after a certain time. I have all email tagged with the
intelligent Social updates category delete after three days.

I use Gmail and Outlook to manage different email accounts. The Outlook.com
inbox has smart categories which are similar to these new Gmail
categories/tabs. Instead of tabs across the top like Gmail, Outlook.com has
Quick Views on the left hand side which activate the category filter.

Hopefully Gmail will allow you to customize what is filtered by their smart
categories like Outlook.com does today.

------
twistedpair
Seems like a good way to get the Facebook and other social network spam out of
people's in boxes, or at least buried under a tab. A subtle way to combat the
G+ competitors and spammers.

------
mililani
I don't know about this new Gmail inbox, but what I do know is that Gmail
seems to be getting progressive worse with every iteration. Has anyone seen
what they've done to Google Talk and Gmail? Basically, every chat message is
now saved in Gmail as a sent message. It's so bad now that my entire Sent
folder is cluttered and unusable. I had to resort to Conversations view, which
I utterly despise, to make things more readable again.

I have a feeling this new Inbox is going to be another iteration of fail.

------
epo
I use multiple accounts for this kind of filtering, main account, shopping
account and throw-away account.

On the one hand I see this as the Office-ification of gmail, the accumulation
of useless features that add bulk and complexity but not utility. On the
other, this is Google's reaction to the phenomenon of people signing up for
multiple things from their email account and getting cluttered as a
consequence. Not for me but probably of great use to people with lots of
social- and shopping- traffic.

------
Ziomislaw
good thing I already started to "delete" myself from google.

there are really bent on shooving G+ down ppl's throats.

~~~
ensmotko
I was really excited about Google Game Services and I've even implemented them
into my game, but then I discovered users need a Google+ account (not just a
Google account) in order to use high-scores/achievements.

Now I'm considering whether or not to actually publish the version of the game
with achievements/high-scores...

~~~
Ziomislaw
aren't games on google+ now being deprecated? anyway, I think one logic game
there had an internal scoreboard (as it was being published from many other
locations) and scoreboard copy was also being pushed to g+.

~~~
ensmotko
Yes, google+ games are being deprecated. But Google Game Services is something
very different, it's an API that makes it easy for game developers to
implement achievements, scoreboards and multiplayer. It turns out that your
users need a google+ account to get access to these features, thus making them
less awesome as I originally thought.

------
ktf
Is this different than folders? Or labels? Is the primary benefit here that
these categories are more prominent in the UI?

~~~
aiiane
Unlike labels, which require fixed rules (or manual action) to place emails
into them, the tabs sort emails algorithmically.

~~~
ktf
So I have to manually fix gmail's incorrect assumptions about how I want my
mail to be filtered rather than manually put my own correct filters in place?

Doesn't seem right for me, but I guess I can see the draw for folks who don't
want to deal with setting this stuff up themselves. (Which is probably most
folks.)

~~~
khalstvedt
This (incorrect assumptions leading to frustration) is definitely the most
troubling thing to me about automagic solutions. I'm currently working on a
project that incorporates this idea of sorting email into contexts
(<http://solnovus.com>, not much info up as of yet), so we've been thinking a
lot about this problem specifically.

We are working in user-defined contexts from day one (not all users fit into
the 5-context model), but I think incorrect classification is the most
important issue to address to minimize user frustration. We are approaching it
by treating topic and context membership fuzzily and using graph visualization
to aid in traversal of inexact queries.

I couldn't agree with you more: there are serious problems with binary
membership and "automatic" filtering.

------
ziko
People who want their email under control already have something similar - for
instance, I have filters and labels and folders for Newsletters and offers,
one for Family and friends, University and so on. People who haven't taken
control of their inbox yet won't be bothered to do that now. Loved the music
in the video though.

~~~
aiiane
Which is why the tabs have automatic algorithmic categorization - so that all
of the people who don't take the time to set up custom filters and labels
still get some automatic organization.

------
martian
I'm excited about this new direction for Gmail. I think their team makes some
of the greatest products in the Google ecosystem.

But I have to say, reading this on mobile (Chrome for iOS) is next to
impossible. The scrolling is all over the place. Thankfully ihackernews has a
"view text" mode that makes this more sane.

------
coreymaass
I love the new icons! I've been using gMail in fluid (<http://fluidapp.com>)
and had to dig around for a decent icon. As someone who favors flat design (I
know, I know, buzz word), I like the simplicity of the new ones they show at
the end of the video.

------
shared4you
So, basically Gmail labels have been converted into tabs. One tab per label. I
can get rid of labels now.

~~~
ensmotko
But there doesn't seem to be an option for custom labels (tabs). You can only
choose between Social, Promotion, Updates and Forums at the moment.

------
tjbiddle
Looks interesting - Will probably try it out, but not sure if I'd stick with
it. I try to shoot for 0 inbox at all times - So all my emails are either
archived or starred for later; I don't categorize outside of that.

But, that's why they allow an option to disable it :-)

------
techpeace
Use Organizer for Gmail from OtherInbox:
<http://www.otherinbox.com/organizer/>

It's more customizable, has been learning categorizations for various sender
addresses for years, and works with Gmail labeling.

------
AYBABTME
I've turned it on, it instantly categorized my emails perfectly. Just
yesterday I was bitching about having to create filter rules for mailing lists
and such.

And then today this thing comes up. I'm happy, today is a good day. Unicorns
and puppies everywhere!

------
ksixmju
So this is for Gmail users that can be bothered to figure out how filters and
labels work?

~~~
travisp
I'm a heavy user of filters and labels, but I've fallen in love with Gmail's
smart labels, which seems to be the early beta version of this.

Creating and managing more and more filters for every single new sender of
email gets to be a pain. Every time a new one comes in, you have to go through
multiple steps to create one, and then if you unsubscribe, you have to
remember to remove the filter, if you don't want your filter list to just get
unmanageable.

I find the smart labels do a pretty good job of capturing the main categories
I want filtered into particular labels and hidden from my main inbox --
without any extra effort on my part. In my mind, anything that works well and
saves me from tedious work is well worth it.

------
atsaloli
All this advanced functionality and still no sorting by date. :(

~~~
chebucto
Or by size, though I strongly suspect that is by design, to better make you
use up your quota.

------
badhairday
New day, different way to organize your inbox. What it comes down to is the
ability to find a system that works for you and then to keep up with it.

------
bborud
Does this mean another two weeks of clicking away popups informing me of new
features for every damn Google Apps account I have? Oh great.

------
therandomguy
This is perfect for me once enabled on "unread on top" view. Currently I have
to choose between the two. Is this on the road map?

------
rjv
I hope they don't neglect the vertical-split view with this update. It's
easily the most productive way to to use Gmail IMO.

------
runn1ng
Based on the recent Google Talk changes, I halfway expected cutting support
for sending e-mails in and outside of GMail

------
drjacobs
Post doesn't mention how to opt out... -1

------
mzuvella
Surprised no one has mentioned that this update puts the squeeze on Sanebox
and Boomerang.

------
harrisonpowers
I'm sure this will help a lot of folks, but I'll keep using my filters and
custom inboxes.

------
gummydude
Google is definitely dropping pre-honeycomb support as all their apps going
holo way.

------
nikbackm
Hmm, I usually keep at most 10-20 messages in my inbox.

Wonder how this scheme will work with that?

------
brianbreslin
first thing that popped into my head after seeing this: Other Inbox. I've had
a similar feature for years from them, just tosses things in the OIB/xyz
labels/folders.

Also how will this work with something like Mailbox app for iphone?

------
dools
And they still won't let me turn off conversation view on mobile ...

------
shmerl
Will this new inbox work with Google Talk or it's Hangout only?

------
coin
The blogspot article is utterly unusable on the latest iPad 4

------
franze
kinda hard to trust google on this, after all they announcing this on a
webpage that screws up scrolling on modern touch devices...

------
cpursley
Wow, who knew Gmail would copy AOL's Alto mail.

------
marcrosoft
Hate it. I Also hate the new compose.

------
clausonh
Why isn't the navigation persistent?!

------
fffernan
So basically folders are cool again?

------
gre
Stoners made the Android screenshot.

------
juanpdelat
Where is the Call to Phone button?

~~~
masonhensley
Unfortunately I think they killed it in the Hangouts "update"

------
ronaldsvilcins
Nice UI!

------
thoughtcriminal
Enough of the Google ads already. Google makes changes all the time. It can't
all be news.

~~~
hammerzeit
I'm willing to guess that GMail is among the top 3 most used products by HN's
readership. This is a substantial change in the experience of that product, as
well as deployment of what seems to be some pretty nontrivial technology
powering that. It's also the kind of feature that will impact any startup that
uses email as a communication channel with its customers (to wit: All of
them).

If that's not relevant to the HN community I'm not sure what is.

~~~
Fuzzwah
Ok, I'll bite. What do you think the other top 2 products are?

~~~
msrpotus
GitHub and Google search, I'd guess.

~~~
Fuzzwah
GitHub was top of my guesses.

