5 ms·

Gmail graduates 3 Labs features

50 points by vsloo 14y ago

frozenport 14y ago
Is there somebody at Google who made $200,000 by inserting the widget for `Reply to All`?
- whichdan 14y ago
  Deploying any change to 400m+ users is extremely non-trivial.
jakozaur 14y ago
Well Google Labs seems to be an innovative approach to product development. Quite surprised that I can't name other company which follow that approach. Could work if you have some truly passionate users. Although they missed a few potential features (see Rapportive and friends).
- tommi 14y ago
  Nokia Beta Labs since 2007.
mrng 14y ago
Direct link to the official announcement: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+Gmail/posts/H1mkyyY2nW4 https://plus.google.com/u/0/+Gmail/posts/H1mkyyY2nW4
arscan 14y ago
Some discussion about the quote one from last week: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4838810 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4838810 Spoiler: some people strongly dislike it.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
I realized the other day that web scale makes differentiation hard. Gmail is the poster child for it. I hate Gmail, at first I was neutral on it, then I went to work for Google and got to see it used "in production" as it were and found how it could be really useful, then stuff I liked (layout, features) got changed and/or deleted and I now I don't like it. Now there is nothing wrong per se with Gmail, its doing its thing and I'm doing mine, but I cannot step off the train. I can't just not buy the upgrade and stay with the feature set I like, the train keeps moving, I get sucked along with it. We pay for Gmail for our company, as a paying customer the majority of our users wanted to stay with the old format, we could not. Not an option. I supposed that it true of IT shops that are built on top of Notes or Exchange as well, you get what you get. I stopped using Gmail labs features when I realized that if they don't "graduate" they vanish. And if you've grown to depend on them, you're screwed. Sigh.
- vsloo 14y ago
  It's expected for users to be fickle. One day they'll like something and the next day they'll leave. Gmail simply provides a platform for facilitating this phenomenon without divulging too much of their resources. I'd say it's a win-win?
RDDavies 14y ago
"Default reply to all" This isn't a feature. It's a bug.
- jonknee 14y ago
  Unless you need to always reply to all, then it's a handy feature. It's a setting to change the default, if you don't want it the good news is you don't have to do anything.
- tomjen3 14y ago
  You kidding? This will provide fun stories for years.
- afterburner 14y ago
  I see many mistaken "Reply"'s every month, and I think I've only seen one mistaken "Reply to all" in my life.
  - modeless 14y ago
    You've never seen an email storm then? They're most often started by a mistaken "Reply all". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_storm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_storm
    - afterburner 14y ago
      I've read hilarious stories about them, but I've never been part of one. (Someone replied to all once at my old job when they shouldn't have. Then they said oops. End of boring story.)
    - pcl 14y ago
      In my experience, they've been caused by misconfigured listservs.
  - wladimir 14y ago
    On the other hand, the potential damage of one mistaken "Reply to all" can be enormous, compared to a mistaken "Reply" which just adds some extra work.
mbrubeck 14y ago
Yay, "Send and Archive" is my favorite labs feature. It saves me seconds every day. Okay, that might not sound like much but it also makes responding to my email that much less of a chore, which makes me happy.
- jedbrown 14y ago
  Unfortunately, it was broken with the gmail redesign and is still broken. I open a thread with 30 new messages, select part of a message half way down, hit 'r', and find myself editing a reply to the very last message. Instead, I have to click an extra time to change the focus to the message (with no visual indication) before selecting it. Selecting text from a message should be sufficient indication to reply to that message, without needing to reposition the invisible focus. This bug costs me minutes per day.
drakeandrews 14y ago
Every time I see a new batch of features graduated from labs I still look to see if they've deigned to bring back the right-click-and-hold navigation to labs. It broke my usage habits for months when they "retired" it (and still does, every now and then).

50 points by vsloo 14y ago

frozenport 14y ago

Is there somebody at Google who made $200,000 by inserting the widget for `Reply to All`?

whichdan 14y ago
Deploying any change to 400m+ users is extremely non-trivial.

jakozaur 14y ago

Well Google Labs seems to be an innovative approach to product development. Quite surprised that I can't name other company which follow that approach. Could work if you have some truly passionate users. Although they missed a few potential features (see Rapportive and friends).

tommi 14y ago
Nokia Beta Labs since 2007.

mrng 14y ago

Direct link to the official announcement: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+Gmail/posts/H1mkyyY2nW4 https://plus.google.com/u/0/+Gmail/posts/H1mkyyY2nW4

arscan 14y ago

Some discussion about the quote one from last week: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4838810 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4838810 Spoiler: some people strongly dislike it.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

I realized the other day that web scale makes differentiation hard. Gmail is the poster child for it. I hate Gmail, at first I was neutral on it, then I went to work for Google and got to see it used "in production" as it were and found how it could be really useful, then stuff I liked (layout, features) got changed and/or deleted and I now I don't like it. Now there is nothing wrong per se with Gmail, its doing its thing and I'm doing mine, but I cannot step off the train. I can't just not buy the upgrade and stay with the feature set I like, the train keeps moving, I get sucked along with it. We pay for Gmail for our company, as a paying customer the majority of our users wanted to stay with the old format, we could not. Not an option. I supposed that it true of IT shops that are built on top of Notes or Exchange as well, you get what you get. I stopped using Gmail labs features when I realized that if they don't "graduate" they vanish. And if you've grown to depend on them, you're screwed. Sigh.

vsloo 14y ago
It's expected for users to be fickle. One day they'll like something and the next day they'll leave. Gmail simply provides a platform for facilitating this phenomenon without divulging too much of their resources. I'd say it's a win-win?

RDDavies 14y ago

"Default reply to all" This isn't a feature. It's a bug.

jonknee 14y ago
Unless you need to always reply to all, then it's a handy feature. It's a setting to change the default, if you don't want it the good news is you don't have to do anything.
tomjen3 14y ago
You kidding? This will provide fun stories for years.
afterburner 14y ago
I see many mistaken "Reply"'s every month, and I think I've only seen one mistaken "Reply to all" in my life.
- modeless 14y ago
  You've never seen an email storm then? They're most often started by a mistaken "Reply all". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_storm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_storm
  - afterburner 14y ago
    I've read hilarious stories about them, but I've never been part of one. (Someone replied to all once at my old job when they shouldn't have. Then they said oops. End of boring story.)
  - pcl 14y ago
    In my experience, they've been caused by misconfigured listservs.
- wladimir 14y ago
  On the other hand, the potential damage of one mistaken "Reply to all" can be enormous, compared to a mistaken "Reply" which just adds some extra work.

mbrubeck 14y ago

Yay, "Send and Archive" is my favorite labs feature. It saves me seconds every day. Okay, that might not sound like much but it also makes responding to my email that much less of a chore, which makes me happy.

jedbrown 14y ago
Unfortunately, it was broken with the gmail redesign and is still broken. I open a thread with 30 new messages, select part of a message half way down, hit 'r', and find myself editing a reply to the very last message. Instead, I have to click an extra time to change the focus to the message (with no visual indication) before selecting it. Selecting text from a message should be sufficient indication to reply to that message, without needing to reposition the invisible focus. This bug costs me minutes per day.

drakeandrews 14y ago

Every time I see a new batch of features graduated from labs I still look to see if they've deigned to bring back the right-click-and-hold navigation to labs. It broke my usage habits for months when they "retired" it (and still does, every now and then).