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I loved Inbox, but what actually happened there was that there were two visions of Gmail 2.0 internally. Inbox didn’t win, partly because it was written in a ni
by 1123581321 6y ago
I loved Inbox, but what actually happened there was that there were two visions of Gmail 2.0 internally. Inbox didn’t win, partly because it was written in a nightmarish C++ framework, but some of its best features were brought into Gmail.
Gmail is a conservatively managed product, but it does improve over time.
- CarlosEscobedo 6y agoMain thing its missing which i miss daily is bundles. Auto travel bundle was super helpful. Also it had a better ui..
- msh 6y agoWhat is Gmail written in?
- mynegation 6y agoJava, compiled with Closure
- andolanra 6y agoNobody I know who used Inbox feels that the current Gmail interface—even with some Inbox features backported—is an acceptable substitute for Inbox.
- 1123581321 6y agoNow you know one. :)
- rocha 6y agoHave you tried the Simplify GMail browser extension? It made the transition from Inbox to GMail less painful to me. https://simpl.fyi/ https://simpl.fyi/
- morberg 6y agoThat looks quite nice. Is there an alternative for Safari?
- juliozaravia 6y agoI'm intrigued. How could the framework of a certain programming language affect the product, in this case Inbox?
- 1123581321 6y agoMy understanding is that development of Inbox slowed and became unpleasant because the C++ generated JS was unattractive to developers at Google, and it didn’t have the internal support for a rewrite. Since the Gmail product was the incumbent, has more developers and is probably refactored often enough to maintain a certain code quality level, and several Inbox features were compatible with Gmail, the Inbox product had no leverage to get itself enough support to stay alive.