It's glorified SMS in that the designer of the feature has explicitly said that they changed the design so that it would basically be glorified chat: > What it

It's glorified SMS in that the designer of the feature has explicitly said that they changed the design so that it would basically be glorified chat: > What it looks like, really, is a slightly oversized version of Gchat. And that’s no accident. Google’s actively trying to make email less fussy and formal--or, in other words, to make it a little more like instant messaging. And as Jason Cornwell, Gmail’s lead designer, explains, one of the ways to do that is simply to "give you permission to write shorter messages." [...] > "It was a space that was sort of intimidating, I think, to write a message like 'Hey, wanna get lunch?'" he explains. "We wanted the new compose to facilitate these quicker messages. Or at least make it a space where that felt appropriate." http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672250/how-a-tiny-new-compose-window-could-reinvent-gmail http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672250/how-a-tiny-new-compose-w...