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I would think this simplifies email organization for the average user. Normal people don't use labels extensively and don't customize their inbox. With sane p

by typpo 13y ago

I would think this simplifies email organization for the average user. Normal people don't use labels extensively and don't customize their inbox. With sane presets for these tabs, Google can give most users an inbox that is organized by default.

russgray 13y ago
I thought the point of gmail was that you didn't need to organize. Just search.
- aiiane 13y ago
  For email you've already read, sure. But it's often nice to have some organization for what you haven't yet read, so you can focus on the email you care most about first.
- vidarh 13y ago
  The Gmail search is beyond useless to me... Because I have too much stuff saved, and contrary to the web where pagerank provides a good signal, they don't have the same signal for search.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- shalstvedt 13y ago
  Indeed, that's the purported utility of Gmail: keep around every piece of information, so you never lose track of anything. Does it work that well for you? How much email do you get on a daily basis? (I work at a small software startup, SolNovus, that has been exploring this for a while, and for us, it doesn't seem to work that well in practice. Users can't always remember keywords for long-archived messages and have to resort to scanning pages of emails, even when tagged.) Really, I think the ticket to having an inbox you don't have to organize is not to hide everything beneath the search box, however smart it may be. At some level, you need to incrementally generate queries, because the search will be imperfect. Things like search visualization methods that help incrementally refine queries, tied to more flexible and configurable machine learning, look promising.
  - russgray 13y ago
    I dunno, less than many people I suspect. 100 or so per day (not counting spam)? Search works well enough for me at the moment, though I do confess to tagging things like order confirmations and shipping notifications.

by typpo 13y ago

russgray 13y ago

I thought the point of gmail was that you didn't need to organize. Just search.

aiiane 13y ago
For email you've already read, sure. But it's often nice to have some organization for what you haven't yet read, so you can focus on the email you care most about first.
vidarh 13y ago
The Gmail search is beyond useless to me... Because I have too much stuff saved, and contrary to the web where pagerank provides a good signal, they don't have the same signal for search.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
shalstvedt 13y ago
Indeed, that's the purported utility of Gmail: keep around every piece of information, so you never lose track of anything. Does it work that well for you? How much email do you get on a daily basis? (I work at a small software startup, SolNovus, that has been exploring this for a while, and for us, it doesn't seem to work that well in practice. Users can't always remember keywords for long-archived messages and have to resort to scanning pages of emails, even when tagged.) Really, I think the ticket to having an inbox you don't have to organize is not to hide everything beneath the search box, however smart it may be. At some level, you need to incrementally generate queries, because the search will be imperfect. Things like search visualization methods that help incrementally refine queries, tied to more flexible and configurable machine learning, look promising.
- russgray 13y ago
  I dunno, less than many people I suspect. 100 or so per day (not counting spam)? Search works well enough for me at the moment, though I do confess to tagging things like order confirmations and shipping notifications.