19 ms·

Google Inbox

• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• afandian 12y ago
  There were bad Google outages earlier today (at least in the UK). I wonder if these were connected?
• daturkel 12y ago
  Certainly ties into the discussion about google making two of everything [0]. It's not clear how this product is meant to co-exist naturally with gmail. [0]: http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/10/googles-product-strategy-make-two-of-everything/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/10/googles-product-stra...
  • radley 12y ago
    ...And Google Now and Lollipop's new Smart Notifications.
  • deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
• erenemre 12y ago
  I'm definitely not the target audience for this and I really hope that Google isn't going to force me to upgrade to Inbox. Looking at you G+.
  • danieldk 12y ago
    If you are on Google Apps, you can (as an administrator) disable Google+ completely. In that way, you won't get any Google+ stuff in Gmail.
    • danieldk 12y ago
      Really, downvoting? Care to explain? https://support.google.com/a/answer/1689647?hl=en https://support.google.com/a/answer/1689647?hl=en https://support.google.com/a/answer/1638152?hl=en https://support.google.com/a/answer/1638152?hl=en
  • MrZongle2 12y ago
    ...and I really hope that Google isn't going to force me to upgrade to Inbox. If I had to wager on it, I'd say it's going to happen. User adoption is a powerful metric.
• caffeineninja 12y ago
  This looks very much like Mailbox, in particular the swipe left and right to archive/snooze a message.
  • alexgaribay 12y ago
    That's exactly my first thought. The only differentiating feature mentioned in the video from what I could gather was an indicator of importance that the app determines.
    • mikesun 12y ago
      Mailbox was acquired by Dropbox some time ago.
  • digestm 12y ago
    That's exactly what I thought. Was wondering if Google acquired Mailbox app!
    • ohadron 12y ago
      Dropbox did.
  • pradn 12y ago
    I don't get more than maybe 10 emails a day on my personal account. Mailbox makes it fun to take care of them. I don't see myself needing anything more complex.
  • jfernandez 12y ago
    It seems to take strengths from Google's email aggregation prowess + Mailbox-like functionality + Google Now integration. A smart play but yeah it's going to look very derivative in light of how awesome Mailbox already is at tackling the majority of the issues with email maintenance.
    • r00fus 12y ago
      Yeah, but it's possible many folks trust Google and don't trust Dropbox (or haven't even heard of Mailbox) so it's interesting for Google to access that untapped market.
• ParadoxOryx 12y ago
  They didn't show the web interface, I wonder if it will just be baked into the Gmail mobile apps?
  • DannyBee 12y ago
    No, it's web as well.
• dalacv 12y ago
  how does a company like Google not 'Get It' when it comes to email. Google++.
  • scrollaway 12y ago
    Are you serious? Are you saying Google, which has revolutionized webmail and is one of the largest and most popular email providers, doesn't "get" email?
    • taeric 12y ago
      Oddly, I agree. GMail is nice, but every time they try and remake email they completely mess up. Remember, Wave was supposed to be the next email, as well. Heck, they even had some odd push to get me to "plus" messages to people instead of emailing them. And really, I can't remember any feature that pulled me to gmail other than a) free, b) lots of space, and c) google's name. The non-threaded messages was actually something I disliked at the beginning. I put up with it now.
      • scrollaway 12y ago
        So they try new things... if those things fail, it doesn't mean they don't "get" email, it means the idea was not the right one. It's not like they turned gmail into Wave, much less Inbox. I'm glad someone out there in the big providers is trying new things. If anything, to me, it shows they get email more than anyone else: They realize that it's deeply flawed for a lot of today's workflows and that a solution, in order to have a chance, needs to be built on top of the open standards of email and be backwards compatible with them.
        • taeric 12y ago
          I don't see how these statements aren't compatible. The claim is that every "new email" product google has made hasn't been as good as when they just made an email product. And, I don't think anyone really wants them to quit trying. It is scary that they may eventually kill what they have though. They explicitly did this with reader, after all. (Maybe I'm projecting, of course.)
• wy 12y ago
  The latest product from Sparrow? I've been already into the refreshing UIs of Inbox. Can't wait for the invitation.
• scrollaway 12y ago
  GOS talked about it a few days ago before the announcement for those interested: http://googlesystem.blogspot.se/2014/10/google-inbox.html http://googlesystem.blogspot.se/2014/10/google-inbox.html I'm interested but I keep seeing that this sort of stuff never takes into accounts things such as mailing lists (a la mailman and such). I hope I'm wrong.
• Demiurge 12y ago
  I really hope this means that if I disable this "Inbox" in Gmail clients I can get back my ASCII email...
• N0RMAN 12y ago
  You can request an invite by sending a E-Mail to inbox@google.com
• bearbin 12y ago
  This looks great. It seems like the extension of what they've been doing with Now for a while - all the information you need in easily actionable cards.
• nvk 12y ago
  I wish I could pay for google services so that they don't need to sell my information to advertiser.
  • ihuman 12y ago
    You can pay for it, though. http://www.google.com/work/apps/business/ http://www.google.com/work/apps/business/
  • thrownaway2424 12y ago
    That's not how google makes money.
  • DannyBee 12y ago
    Google doesn't sell your information to advertisers, it allows advertisers to sell their stuff to you. Big difference.
• jawns 12y ago
  I get the impression that this is more the next generation of Google Now than it is the next generation of Gmail. (Google Now is all about plucking out information from larger sources of data and bringing the most important stuff to the front as it's needed.) I suppose I could see how this would be useful if you're using your smart watch or your phone and only want the most important facts, boiled down to their essence. (But then, doesn't Google Now already do that?) Outside of that context, it doesn't seem like you'll ordinarily have both Inbox and Gmail open at the same time, because (as far as I can see) Inbox is just a way of better organizing and presenting the underlying data, whereas Gmail is more like the raw feed.
• BinaryIdiot 12y ago
  Looks interesting; is this coming to iOS and Android or just Android? Also curious if this will make an appearance in web form as the Gmail and its suite of apps are woefully outdated (Gmail, Contacts, Tasks and Calendar have had some bugs for years and are simply behind on the good UX front).
  • DannyBee 12y ago
    It's IOS, Android, and Web.
    • deweller 12y ago
      Do you have a source for this?
      • nevir 12y ago
        http://blogs.wsj.com/personal-technology/2014/10/22/new-gmail-inbox-app-puts-the-important-stuff-on-top/ http://blogs.wsj.com/personal-technology/2014/10/22/new-gmai...
      • DannyBee 12y ago
        Yes. http://www.google.com/inbox/ http://www.google.com/inbox/ shows it But i'll shortcut it and just offer an existence proof, since you can find all three pieces with creative searching: https://itunes.apple.com/app/id905060486?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/app/id905060486?mt=8 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.apps.inbox https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and... https://inbox.google.com https://inbox.google.com :)
        • BinaryIdiot 12y ago
          Oh damn; the link from the OP I didn't see it but it's very clear on this page. Thanks!
• inoop 12y ago
  I'm not sure what this 'inbox' does, but from judging from the video it's about a bunch of twenty-something hipsters from California high-fiving each other.
  • deleted 12y ago
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  • aqzman 12y ago
    Serious question: Did you read the article, or did you just watch the video? Reading the article along with watching the video made it perfectly clear to me what this product is doing, despite the fluff in the video.
    • StevePerkins 12y ago
      I read the original link, and watched the video on that page, and had pretty much the same reaction as the parent commenter. If this service is perfectly clear to you, then please elaborate for the rest of us. It appears to be sorting and arranging various bits of data. The examples shown include messages, and a flight reservation. What all kinds of data bits DO integrate? Does this read my email (or replace it)? Does this read (or replace) the news feeds of my social networking accounts? Where did it get that flight itinerary? Why is everyone in this video talking a selfie every two seconds, is Inbox sharing or managing photos for you? I think this supposed to be an improved version of Google Keep, perhaps with some hooks into Gmail and your phone's camera. But all I have to go by is a few paragraph of fluff, and a 60-second video of young people staring down at their phones. Feel free to fill in the blanks, if you picked up some more solid information that we're missing.
      • untog 12y ago
        Why, it's almost like the launch of any app, ever. Plenty of sites have more detail: http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/22/7041227/google-inbox-hands-on-this-feels-like-the-future-of-email http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/22/7041227/google-inbox-hand...
      • 12y ago
• GuiA 12y ago
  Congrats to Google on shipping! Side question: am I the only person fully satisfied by my email workflow? I practice inbox 0- if an email is in my inbox, it means something needs to be done about it (whether it's replying, filing a bug report, writing a patch, etc). Once it's done, it gets archived. I star the stuff that I'll need to refer to later, like tickets for a flight or concert. I then have a few server side rules to do things like mark certain classes of emails as read (eg build logs, mailing lists), so as to not flood my phone with notifications. And... that's it. (edit: oh and yes, I am also very diligent about unsubscribing from the stuff I know will never be relevant, rather than just archiving it and forgetting about it until another email from the same source comes up a week later. After a few weeks of consistently practicing this, your inbox gets much better) I get probably a few hundred emails a day at most (work+personal), and this system works great for me. I know people like Paul Graham think email is utterly broken, but when you're at their level I'm not sure ~any~ tool will be satisfying - they're absolutely outliers. So HNers, do you really have a problem with your email workflow, or is everyone just repeating "email is broken" because some smart people with an ungodly amount of email said so?
  • therealdrag0 12y ago
    I'm with you. Inbox never should have more than 15 items. Everything else is unlikely to be looked at again and gets thrown into an archive folder (Business/Orders/Correspondence). If I get mail I don't want, then I unsubscribe. I'm also on the lighter side of email load/work, but I don't see how a simple/efficient/clean workflow like this could be improved.
  • Demiurge 12y ago
    You're definitely not the only one. I think these 'email is broken' changes are aimed at people who use smartphones and tablets that didn't use PCs before, trying to make it more chat client like. I think this might be a market force, but it definitely tramples traditional email, which is long form, non-instant, textual (not visual) communication medium.
  • spindritf 12y ago
    I practice inbox 0 Yeah. And with a few (well, 119) filters, it's actually pretty rare that an e-mail hits my inbox. Rare enough to have notifications on my phone enabled.
• amluto 12y ago
  Google says "it’s a completely different type of inbox, designed to focus on what really matters." I thought that things like having a text editor that allows me to reliably do complex things like typing and pasting without losing my place, or perhaps a compose window that can be resized, really mattered. Since Gmail doesn't have either of those, maybe Inbox will add them :)
  • dragonwriter 12y ago
    You seem to be more concerned with features of the outbox than features of the inbox.
    • amluto 12y ago
      Touche. Maybe Google Outbox will end up being amazing.
  • relaytheurgency 12y ago
    Or folders. Didn't Gmail get rid of folders?
• jcampbell1 12y ago
  Snoozing emails, and turning emails into tasks, is the one feature that is important to me and gmail has been missing. I have tried some hacks like "mailbox" by dropbox, and "taskforce", etc, and they worked well, but it didn't work across all platforms. I am looking forward to trying this out.
• joshfinnie 12y ago
  I am sad that this seems to be Gmail only. Why have developers lost touch with standard IMAP protocols so we can use these new fancy apps with any email provider...
  • untog 12y ago
    I have to imagine that this relies on an enormous amount of backend processing - and that it is a lot easier to do this with one Gmail backend.
  • SloopJon 12y ago
    The vast majority of my Gmail access is through IMAP, and I'm quite happy for Google to leave that alone. Their tastes are very different from mine, and change more frequently. I would not be happy to wake up one day to find that Google had shuffled my messages, created new folders, and randomly labeled my messages to look like the flag of the world cup-winning soccer team.
  • maggit 12y ago
    An unfortunate reality is that IMAP is a really bad protocol. I encourage you to try implementing a client to get a feel for how difficult and quirky the protocol is. (Be sure to try implementing IDLE) I'd love to see a better base protocol with a clean extension mechanism and a culture of documenting and publishing such extenstions. One can dream :)
    • exelius 12y ago
      EWS (Exchange Web Services) is actually a very good and well-documented protocol built on top of HTTP/HTTPS. Unfortunately, it's Microsoft only, but it's the closest anyone's really come to a "modern" e-mail protocol.
  • magicalist 12y ago
    Isn't this just an email client? If you connect via IMAP, you get all your email as usual. It's up to the client to do things like set calendar reminders from emails or whatever.
• jaysonelliot 12y ago
  Slightly off-topic, but can we talk about that video? I would love it if Google could just sell me on the idea of their products for once, instead of trying to sell me on a twentysomething Brooklyn lifestyle. When I get hit in the face with these cheap emotional ploys that feel like an early 2000s Microsoft Zune ad, I get distracted from the actual product being touted. My resistance goes up. Does this approach work for anyone? If you really are a Williamsburg hipster, I'd expect this kind of pandering would feel off-putting. If you're not, it's alienating. There's certainly a place for emotion in ads. But how about a bit more product, and respect for our intelligence?
  • brador 12y ago
    I would argue this product is not made for you. It is made to grab market share of the twentysomething crowd from Twitter/Facebook as Google sees it's gmail views shrink. These types of ads appeal to twentysomethings. Yes they're vapid and contentless, but that's what works to get that market to sign up to a product.
  • bluthru 12y ago
    These videos are so homogenous. Virtually any phone app could have been interspersed in the video.
    • josh-skidmore 12y ago
      Maybe there's a business venture behind this idea - stock promo videos for mobile apps?
      • stephenr 12y ago
        Stock video that is so generic it has no relation to your product and conveys nothing about the product? I'm sure you'll get 20 VC funds camping on your lawn for the chance to fund that one, but that says more about them really.
  • Zelphyr 12y ago
    I find it interesting that I'm not the only one turned off by that video. I thought maybe I'm just not the target demographic but now that you mention it; it looks like just about every other video marketing some tech production. Its so... cookie cutter.
• sdk16420 12y ago
  I don't understand why people want some algorithm to sort your email for you. IMO email should always be sorted chronologically, and if it's too much, then used rules and folders/labels. Your inbox is not the place to add reminders. With the Google strategy you will have reminders everywhere seperately: calendar, email, phone, IM, texts, etc. Inbox by Gmail: the Facebook of email.
  • actionscripted 12y ago
    > I don't understand why people want some algorithm to sort your email...if it's too much, then used rules and folders/labels. What, really, is the difference? I see many of Gmail's changes as the automatic equivalent to rules/labels and they have a massive sample set to base it all on.
  • AceJohnny2 12y ago
    As a counterpoint, I use Gmail's "Priority Inbox", and it's basically the best thing since sliced bread for me. I don't want to have to bother creating rules for every Kickstarter I back, mailing list I join, marketing email that's just useful enough not have me unsubscribe. The Priority Inbox does a 99% perfect job of sorting the emails I actually care about. Occasionally (once every other month), it misses something, but a quick scan of the "everything else" box usually, which I do anyhow, has me catch that. That's the kind of algorithmic sorting that I want more of.
    • _delirium 12y ago
      > rules for every ... mailing list I join This one at least is solved for me now, since most list software implemented RFC 2919 a few years ago. Lists should include a list-id header, so just write one rule "if mail is to a list named foobar, file it in lists/foobar". Or if you don't care to separate them out, even just "if mail is to a list, file it in lists".
  • cloudwalking 12y ago
    A lot of people use their email as a place for reminders.
  • 12y ago
• aroch 12y ago
  Is Inbox going to be broken on GApps accounts like Now is?
  • scrollaway 12y ago
    I want to know the reasoning behind this question. Do you think a Google employee is going to come in here and answer "yes! we'll break it hard!"? Do you think anyone here actually has the answer? Most don't even have access.
    • aroch 12y ago
      It's mostly just a hypothetical, I don't expect anyone to have the answer (Google won't even officially acknowledge that Now integration is broken in GApps). It is mostly annoying that Google introduces new features that they apparently don't care about making work for their paying customers.
  • jrockway 12y ago
    Inbox works on two of my Apps accounts. What are you actually asking?
    • chambo622 12y ago
      Did you have to turn this on in the Google Apps control panel? I'm unable to get it to work (Google Apps free edition, grandfathered).
      • gmcabrita 12y ago
        It's currently unavailable for Google Apps accounts. If his apps account has access to it then it's likely that he works for Google.
        • jrockway 12y ago
          That turns out to be the case.
• flavor8 12y ago
  Perhaps cool. I honestly wish they'd change their approach to quality & bug reporting, though. I get the impression that all of their developers are so busy making new & shiny that the tools that we rely on everyday are just languishing. I've never had any bug that I've reported via their product forums fixed.
• mudil 12y ago
  What I would like to see is Gmail becoming more like Zendesk/Desk.com. So I can effectively manage responses, contacts, etc, with a single click and pre-defined responses.
• Chevalier 12y ago
  Hmm. I'm not sure that this is actually an email app. For the record, I think Gmail and its steady incremental improvements embody email perfection -- I can't imagine going back to life before auto-sorted tabs -- and I'm totally willing to give Google the benefit of the doubt. Still... it's tough to see how Inbox improves on Gmail. Instead of email, I think Inbox is an effort to finally (FINALLY) improve GTasks by marrying it into Gmail and Google Now. GTasks is woefully lacking. My recent switch to Trello has absolutely revolutionized my work flow, more than I thought possible. Inbox's autotasking looks like a big improvement on the dumb list, but it still doesn't look like a real competitor to Trello's kanban system. (One last plug for Trello, just because using it for an hour has turned me into a wild-eyed fanatic. It's AMAZING. Try it!)
• cottonseed 12y ago
  > designed to focus on what really matters So it has open and auditable secure end to end encryption?
  • mankyd 12y ago
    Not exactly what you want, but there is at least this: https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/saferemail/ https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/saferemail/
    • magicalist 12y ago
      also https://code.google.com/p/end-to-end/ https://code.google.com/p/end-to-end/
• adambratt 12y ago
  I've been messing around with the new email schema stuff that Google has had out for the past year or so. I'm really looking forward to having a more intelligent layer around email. It's a great messaging protocol but up until now it's been mostly contextless. I don't see email going away anytime soon and projects like this just confirm its usefulness. For those who haven't seen it yet take a look at Google's email schema stuff: https://developers.google.com/gmail/actions/ https://developers.google.com/gmail/actions/
• dschiptsov 12y ago
  A "new way" to push a "sponsored content" to me, like FB's feed does?)
• ProAm 12y ago
  MIT can't be thrilled with the name being taken (albeit it Inbox is so generic I dont see this brand becoming worth much)[1][2] [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7999814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7999814 [2]http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/07/mit-and-dropbox-alums-launch-inbox-a-next-generation-email-platform/?utm_campaign=fb&ncid=fb http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/07/mit-and-dropbox-alums-launc...
• nazca 12y ago
  If you are using Google Apps Free edition, you're good to go. If you pay for Google Apps, you get shafted. Nice.
  • Someone1234 12y ago
    Google Apps free edition (up to 10x users) no longer exists unless you were grandfathered in. Now it starts at $5/user/month.
  • gmcabrita 12y ago
    I have the old Google Apps Free edition and I apparently can't use Inbox, so there you go.
    • wjoe 12y ago
      Same - the help page says it's not available at all for Google Apps accounts, only for personal Gmail accounts. https://support.google.com/a/answer/6082718?rd=2 https://support.google.com/a/answer/6082718?rd=2 Since I only use my @gmail.com account for spam and have my own domain for personal emails, guess this is a no go for me. I was considering switching back to a personally hosted mailserver for privacy reasons anyway, would have liked to try this though.
  • porges 12y ago
    This is quickly becoming SOP... I'm still waiting for Google Now Gmail cards >:/ (And as a single-user apps account I don't even get the recently-released unlimited storage...)
• steven 12y ago
  When I got the demo on Monday, I was struck most by how Google Now technology was integrated. That's why I called my piece (on Medium/Backchannel) "Inbox, the app child of Gmail and Google Now." Now that I have the app, I'm enjoying it. Very clean.
• volandovengo 12y ago
  I'd love to see the data behind why this justified a team of 100+ people making more than 100,000 per year to re-invent email. Does the typical email user have an inbox which is half empty? Do users just read email that seems exciting? Do users want to just glance at their email periodically?
• deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
• andygambles 12y ago
  So my question is this an App only or will it be part of the Gmail interface?
  • richbradshaw 12y ago
    It's accessible via inbox.google.com, so works on Chrome as well as iOS and Android.
• arenaninja 12y ago
  I haven't tested it, but watching the video with no sound it looks like making email more like a social network. Either way, how about going back to the way email used to be? I dislike composing e-mails inline, I dislike having to dig through a menu to pop out a modal, or having to memorize everyone's icons because apparently text isn't cool anymore.. how about giving me a page dedicated to composing, instead of adding another layer to the current page and hiding the options from plain sight? From what I've seen on this so far, it appears that this moves in the opposite direction of that
• Siecje 12y ago
  > You can even teach Inbox to adapt to the way you work by choosing which emails you’d like to see grouped together. Finally!
• motters 12y ago
  Today, we’re introducing something new. It’s called Exfil. Years in the making, Exfil is by the same people who brought you Gmail, but it’s not Gmail: it’s a completely different type of inbox, designed to focus on what really matters. Email started simply as a way to send digital notes around the office. But fast-forward 30 years and with just the phone in your pocket, you can use email to send your most intimate thoughts, feelings and sexual fantasies to an undisclosed warehouse in Utah where our expert systems will analyse it for signs of emerging criminality, non-normative behaviour or just any juicy information that we can sell to some dude who's willing to pay. With this evolution comes new challenges: we get more email now than ever, important information is buried inside messages, and our most important tasks can slip through the cracks—especially when you use encryption. For many of us, dealing with encryption has become a daily chore that distracts from what we really need to do - so we decided not to use it and to make sure that your email is always stored in plain text so that we can read it easily and hand out copies in bulk to all our friends, associates and subcontractors.
  • deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
• whoisthemachine 12y ago
  These bundles, categories, etc. that are being introduced really just seem like re-hashed labels. Why did they need to introduce these other methods of grouping e-mails together?
• mohamedbassem 12y ago
  Sending an email to inbox@google.com fails with the error : "the user you are trying to contact is receiving mail at a rate that prevents additional messages from being delivered."
• danieldk 12y ago
  I love Google Now, so I will probably like this as well. However, one thing I start worrying about more as I come to rely more on such tools is: what is the chance to miss something important? What is relevant is picked based on heuristics and statistical models, and it might miss things that I consider to be very important. Obviously, human errors occur in a more traditional approach where you use an e-mail client, calendar, and todo application. However, it would be interesting to see how accurate such machine-learned approaches are, compared to manual methods for information management.
  • habosa 12y ago
    I've been using Inbox and you won't miss anything. The auto-surfacing is really not as aggressive as you might imagine. If you just use Inbox without changing any settings you basically just get a cool GMail UI with the addition of 'Done' or 'Remind me Later' on each message.
• dkulchenko 12y ago
  Here's what I got in response to my invite request: Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently: inbox@inbox.gmrservice.ext.google.com Technical details of permanent failure: Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the relay gmr-smtp-in.l.google.com by gmr-smtp-in.l.google.com. [2607:f8b0:400e:c04::e]. We recommend contacting the other email provider at postmaster@gmr-smtp-in.l.google.com for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 550-5.2.1 The user you are trying to contact is receiving mail at a rate that 550-5.2.1 prevents additional messages from being delivered. For more 550-5.2.1 information, please visit 550 5.2.1 http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?answer=6592 j1si1502294pdb.1 - gsmtp Nice one, Google.
  • joelwd 12y ago
    I received the same error; I tried again a few minutes later and it worked.
    • piyush_soni 12y ago
      Same here. Got the error, emailed a second time, it worked.
  • calinet6 12y ago
    Aw give 'em some credit, they basically just got too popular and hit a rate limit. Nice indeed.
  • berfarah 12y ago
    I like the irony of using a conventional email message to request beta access to the next generation of email too.
    • AceJohnny2 12y ago
      Aside from the fact that Inbox is still email, this is called "bootstrapping".
• danbruc 12y ago
  What I always wonder - do people actually use email for private communication? Everybody uses email at work, but at home? From time to time I sign up for a new service or order something and get confirmation mails or I send a couple of emails back and forth to resolve an issue with a service I am using, but it is always between me and some business. The number of emails I have written to or received from friends is negligible and I am not aware of anyone heavily using email for private communication. Everybody just calls or writes a SMS or uses WhatsApp or Facebook or ICQ, but never email. So am I - and the people I know - a rare case or did just nobody advertising email related stuff recognize that no one uses email for private communication?
  • provemewrong 12y ago
    Same here, and I believe that's the norm. I was confused by "we love email" and their choice of showing young people messaging each other as the typical use-case for email.
  • a3n 12y ago
    Most of my non-face to face communication is email. But I'm old, and I have old friends. My phone is mostly for listening to voicemail and letting the NSA know where I am. [Hi guys.] If I could just get my sixteen year old to email me instead of text, I'd be very happy.
  • hayfield 12y ago
    I may be an odd one, but I use email for personal things. If messaging a group of people, there's inevitably someone who refuses to get Facebook or doesn't have a smartphone or never checks their texts or something. At the same time, everybody has an email address that's checked at least daily (at university, and email's how anything course-related is communicated). By emailing, it removes the cognitive step of working out how to contact someone - it just works. Yes, I'll use text or Facebook for certain things with certain people, but email is something that just works with everyone.
    • danbruc 12y ago
      University is a bit a odd case - it's often a mix between work and private life and during that time I indeed used email quite a bit more for private communication.
• Lewisham 12y ago
  I've been using Inbox at El Goog for a while now, and I am happy to answer questions (in between dealing with a newborn...) FWIW, I really like it, and use it exclusively for my work and personal accounts. Inbox functions very much more like a ToDo list than it does an email client. Here are the workflows I have: Work: I filter all mailing lists into different clusters that I have appear at 7AM every morning. I then scrub through the subject lists to see what happened yesterday, pinning things that require my attention, and then sweeping the rest. At this point, everything pinned in my Inbox is now "something I need to look at". I then read the email, and decide if it has an action item or not. If it's actionable and I intend to do it today, I'll leave it pinned. If it's not something I'm going to do today, I'll Snooze it until I think I'll have time to do it, or at least evaluate another Snooze time. To make sure I don't miss important emails, I have a cluster that I put all email that has myself explicitly in the To: line, and have that appear whenever anything arrives. I do occasionally miss things that didn't have me in the To: and went to my 7AM clusters, but this is few and far between, and I hazard happens less than my Gmail inbox where I had far more cognitive load on managing the emails there. Home: The defaults are tuned well for home, and I use the clusters (like Travel, Purchases etc) like I do for work, having them appear at 7AM each day. Most things get swept immediately, and again I pin things that require my attention and are maybe ToDo items. Inbox is really opinionated about its workflow: if you struggle against it, you'll have a bad time, and you'll prefer Gmail's flexibility. However, if you are Inbox Zero or GTD minded, I think you'll love Inbox. Inbox is my ToDo list, and replaces Wunderlist/Things/Evernote/Google Tasks for me. I set reminders to myself for work items that don't have an email attached. I encourage everyone to give it a week to see if it suits them, but I'm afraid I'm all out of invites for now :(
  • piyush_soni 12y ago
    First: Why do you think they created a completely new app rather than integrating features into the gmail app one by one? I understand it has a good integration of Google Now in it, but Google Now itself works very nice for me (Like showing important stuff from my gmail). Thanks!
    • Lewisham 12y ago
• Dwolb 12y ago
  It's good that they got the 'bundles' in there, but much of this looks like it's a Google Now integration into Gmail. There's a ton of anxiety around information gathering, organizing, monitoring, and 'checking the box' that this solution glances by, but doesn't directly address. I don't believe this solution will compete with most people's other email inbox.
• skyjacker 12y ago
  Seriously folks, who cares. It's a minor change to gmail's workflow. No really, think about it. It's just email.
• alimoeeny 12y ago
  Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently: inbox@inbox.gmrservice.ext.google.com ... The error that the other server returned was: 550-5.2.1 The user you are trying to contact is receiving mail at a rate that 550-5.2.1 prevents additional messages from being delivered. For more 550-5.2.1 information, please visit 550 5.2.1 http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?answer=6592 http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?answer=6592 fl6si3394876qcb.0 - gsmtp Anyone knows what that "rate limit" is?
• rusbus 12y ago
  I opened Inbox and it crashed within 10 seconds. :-(
• higherpurpose 12y ago
  They are building a new e-mail system - yet still nothing one end-to-end encryption? Oh sure, I know they want to build the End-to-End plugin for Gmail (the service they are trying to make obsolete), which they know only a few people will use. But this is an opportunity to start from scratch with end-to-end security by default.
  • abraham 12y ago
    Inbox changes nothing about how email works. It simply tries to make the UI/UX more useful. Gmail content is what powers Inbox.
• gosukiwi 12y ago
  And here I am with a Windows Phone.
• noinput 12y ago
  Video: we're fixing email because people send too much of it Blog Post: email inbox@google.com to try it. ..I got a good chuckle.
• gcb0 12y ago
  from the site is is just gmail with the ability to accept/snooze calendar events. also the spam inbox (what they are trying to label as offers or something on gmail) is not part of the priority inbox. besides that, and all the smiling happy people in the Ad, all i could grasp is that they added lots and lots of white space around each message to compensate for the humongous size of that phone screen.
• alaxsxaq 12y ago
  It will be interesting to see how companies like Boxer 'pivot' in response to this. I started using Boxer a little while ago specifically to deal with the email-becomes-todo-item issue which Gmail generally lacked. Not sure I'd have any reason to continue to use it if I could score an invite to Inbox (hint hint).
• supergirl 12y ago
  video made me cringe
  • sparkie 12y ago
    I watched it without sound. Definitely enough to put me off forever.
• KhalilK 12y ago
  Meta note: That is one of the smoothest and pleasant scrolling experiences I've had on the web! Kudos to the web devs!
  • M4v3R 12y ago
    It's funny, because for me the scrolling on their page (https://www.google.com/inbox/ https://www.google.com/inbox/) doesn't work at all, on Safari 8.0/OSX.
    • cromwellian 12y ago
      I just tried it on Yosemite/Safari 8 and it seems to work for me.
    • om2 12y ago
      It works for me, and doesn't obviously glitch in the sense of dropping frames, but it feels wrong. The animations all start really slow, and the curves are way off the curves of OS-native features that do a page-at-a-time swipe. Also, if you continuous scroll with the trackpad and backtrack your fingers even a little, it jumps back a section. Still, I am not sure it is easy to fix these issues given what the web platform offers today, and kudos for not blatantly dropping frames.
  • cromwellian 12y ago
    We've spent a lot of time optimizing for 60fps for the Web, it's not quite there yet for all browsers, due to different rendering/layout engine "gotchas", but we're working on rock solid 60fps everywhere.
    • zecho 12y ago
      Is that why Inbox requires Chrome?
      • deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
      • 12y ago
• notastartup 12y ago
  Google really knows how to toy with my emotions with these videos.
• GI_Josh 12y ago
  I recently spent the better part of a day clearing out my work inbox because I'd heard too many people preach about inbox 0, and how the only things in their inbox were things they actively needed to work on. This worked for all of two days for me. Now, a week later, my inbox is once again packed, with nothing being moved or deleted, just read. That's just a flow that seems to work better for me. My to-do lists that I actually need to pay attention to are in other places... I'm looking at Jira to see what needs my development attention and in what order, for example. I'm pleased with treating my email as a giant bin where everything gets thrown, but can easily be fished out again given the need. While I imagine this is all dependent on just how much email you actually get in a day, systems like Google Inbox seem useful to me at first, until I realize I'm no longer following the system, or I'm spending too much time deciding on where an email should be filed instead of simply acting on it and moving on with my life.
  • dmix 12y ago
    You should probably work on getting less email then. I find zero inbox easy to do. It takes practice, but I also unsub from newsletters and reduced my work load. Tons of email is a symptom of either over-loading yourself with work or not managing how you communicate with people well.
• andrewguenther 12y ago
  I can't stand how little I can see at a glance in my inbox now. With the Gmail app on my Nexus 5, I could see 7 emails in the default inbox view. With Inbox I can see 3. Two of which do not include a subject line because they have been grouped "Social" or "Purchases" and will take an additional tap to view. I'm going to give it some time, but for now I find most of the content to be a horrible waste of space.
• cantrevealname 12y ago
  I wish Google had used a less generic name. Searching for "mail isn't showing up in my inbox" is either going to show you generic mail problems or Google Inbox problems. Apple's "Messages" app is a terrible name in the same way.
  • Ensorceled 12y ago
    For a company that still makes the vast majority of it's money from search, Google sure generates a lot of products with absolutely horrible SEO. The chrome browser vs chrome os search overlap is just awful as I found out this week.
    • stephenr 12y ago
      Google don't make money on Search. They make money on Advertising.
• vs4vijay 12y ago
  Can not find the Invite option..
  • clarkm 12y ago
    I don't have Inbox yet, but I don't think everyone gets invites immediately. Anyways, here's some info: > Once you have an invite, you can hover over the red create button and you will see a gold ticket - Invite to Inbox. Select that to enter your friend's email address and send the invitation. > Quick note: if you received an invite from a friend today, your 3 invites to share won't be available until this Friday. https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/gmail/nCtyOEbZHh8/vxMeQSj75XUJ https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/gmail/nCtyOEbZH...
• shostack 12y ago
  This is the first step towards some of the functionality in the movie "Her." Trusting an AI (or algorithm in this case) to sort your email and bubble up different aspects is a huge task, and I'm glad to see Google finally start putting their full might behind it.
  • zevyoura 12y ago
    That functionality has already existed for quite a while in Google Now.
    • shostack 12y ago
      Yep, you're correct. I should have been more clear in that while some of this was in Google Now, it didn't really "manage your email" like this does. I was specifically referencing the scene where Sam is noting key points about the various things in his inbox and organizing it for him. Of course the movie title is possibly one of the most generic words out there, so finding a link to share is non-trivial :)
• Angostura 12y ago
  Is it just me, or do all these attempts to mould e-mail to avoid cognitive overload just create cognitive overload. "E-mail - a list of messages from people, by default displayed in the order they arrived." Isn't that simplicity refreshing?
  • scep12 12y ago
    If e-mail were indeed only messages from people we'd have no need for these products. But it's not realistic to expect that anything we pay close attention to won't be thwarted by some form of spam or advertising in this day and age.
• covi 12y ago
  Eventual consistency / Lost Updates at play? I have tried sweeping the "Low Priority" emails; whenever I clicked the tick that group entry was gone. So far so good. However, whenever a new email popped up and was classified in that group, the whole group appeared again. Or am I just misunderstanding the feature and do I just have to mark individual email as done one by one?
• pcwalton 12y ago
  Chrome only, it seems. Disappointing. https://twitter.com/brianleroux/status/524987137892954112 https://twitter.com/brianleroux/status/524987137892954112
  • cromwellian 12y ago
    It doesn't use any Chrome specific features and it will work on FF, but it needs to be optimized to get buttery smooth 60fps animations. As you know, the logic for when the various browsers do layout, create layers, upload them to the GPU, etc is different, and that causes divergence rendering performance. It was hard enough to do this on Chrome, it just takes time. We also ran into a recent difference in the way sparse JS arrays as handled. We use sparse JS arrays for some data structures, but array.splice(0) on Chrome runs much faster than FF when using this to clone a sparse array. There's no intent to exclude Firefox, engineers are staying late in the office working on it.
    • fabrice_d 12y ago
      Still, people wanting to use it will likely switch to chrome. That's a tactic google already used for hangouts - only to end up with a very unconvincing "oops, that was a mistake" answer (see https://twitter.com/johnath/status/486575645338918912 https://twitter.com/johnath/status/486575645338918912). Instead, you could just notify the user that performance may not be as good on other browsers for now.
    • fabrice_d 12y ago
      Still, people wanting to use it will likely switch to chrome. That's a tactic google already used for hangouts - only to end up with a very unconvincing "oops, that was a mistake" answer (see https://twitter.com/johnath/status/486575645338918912 https://twitter.com/johnath/status/486575645338918912). Instead, you could just notify the user that performance may not be as good on other browsers for now.
    • jgon 12y ago
      What an incredibly disingenuous reply. Chrome is truly this decade's IE, and watching Google try to play this kind of crap off would be disappointing if it wasn't so insulting. "There's no intent to exclude Firefox", it just turns out you've done that for like 2 major product releases in a row along with a giant flashing button suggesting that the user downloads Chrome. I'm not stupid, you don't have to lie to my face.
• coryfklein 12y ago
  The first video on the page is useless. Full of images of people on their computer and phones, running on the beach, etc. After watching the video, I still have no idea what Inbox really is besides "an improvement to email" (supposedly).
• legohead 12y ago
  years in the making of solving a problem that doesn't exist. another google "wave".
• covi 12y ago
  When composing in Inbox, how do we get the nice "Plain text mode" option available in Gmail? The most useful thing it brings is to automatically line-wrap the emails.
• MCRed 12y ago
  New Rule: I'm officially done with artificially segregating people into "cool people" who have an invite and the rest of us who have to get in line. Simple was the worst offender-- I should have known with the multi-year wait, to be capped off by bigoted comments from a cofounder to me on twitter (about an unrelated matter. But hey, your CxO makes a bigoted comment- I'm no longer your customer!) But it's not just Simple, it's google with the wave invites, google with the gmail invites going back when, google with the orkut invites, google with the Plus invites, etc. No more, Google.
  • smussmann 12y ago
    I expect the reason Google is doing this is to be able to control the rate at which they allow people onto the infrastructure behind the new service. Going from internal testing to everyone on the Web using a service can be pretty rough. [Disclosure: I work for Google, but not on anything related to Inbox or Gmail]
  • nandemo 12y ago
    So you're saying you're against beta releases?
  • LukeB_UK 12y ago
    It's pretty much a standard thing. It allows them to test it as it scales up and iron out any issues.
• frogpelt 12y ago
  The UI looks a lot like Twitter. That doesn't attract me for some reason.
• thomasfl 12y ago
  E-mail is constantly changing.
• coffeemug 12y ago
  Could someone please invite me -- coffeemug@gmail.com. I'd love to play with the product
• cwilson 12y ago
  I've been using this for the last 4 hours or so. I closed the old gmail in my browser and swapped default apps on my phone. My quick thoughts on the iPhone app: Good overall. It's just as good as most of the new line of productivity focused apps that have been released (and acquired) over the last year. My quick thoughts on the web interface (inbox.google.com): This is where it's really shining for me. Finally email doesn't feel like a spreadsheet with buttons anymore. It feels like Gmail should feel in 2014. Now that I've started using this, it would feel painful to go back to normal Gmail. You just kind of have to start using it to understand, but I really like it. All of the new features (reminders, pinning emails, bundles, and one-button archiving of bundles like promotions and forums) are great . I've used almost every new feature already and they all feel like a natural part of a flow. The only nitpick I have at the moment is the integrated chat in the web interface. It's defaulted to the Hangouts style chat, which I'm not a huge fan of. In old Gmail you have a choice of using the normal version of chat or Hangouts chat, and I've always turned off Hangouts chat. I really wish you could do that here, but I'm not seeing an option for it and my guess is there will never be one. Overall however I'm really happy with this new version of Gmail and will continue to use it everyday.
• danielweber 12y ago
  What does this mean for https://www.inboxapp.com/ https://www.inboxapp.com/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/10/inbox-app/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/10/inbox-app/ ?
• IkmoIkmo 12y ago
  Oh god, the video? Amazing models doing fun recreational stuff. At the end of the video I didn't feel I knew anymore more about Inbox than I did before. I mean I get it... but it still feels stupid to do something like that, worse to sit through it and realize you're not watching to be informed by substance, you're watching to be convinced by style.
• janoelze 12y ago
  I'm so happy Google finally found its design language. This looks beautiful. Really something to build on.
  • jinushaun 12y ago
    I love it too. Certainly prettier than ios 7/8.
• hadoukenio 12y ago
  5 star reviews in the Google Play Store from people who haven't even got an invite? The system is broken.
  • ssijak 12y ago
    1 stars also
• n72 12y ago
  Sounds to me very much like the Active Inbox plugin, which I've been using for a couple of years and proselytize mercilessly. It's based on the GTD way of doing things.
• jerkywez 12y ago
  I went to a google IO event when wave was the next best thing to email clients. Like many things, it died off because of adoption rates and bloated UI trying to achieve world domination. On the flip side i loved the talk like a pirate channel bot ;p Lets hope Inbox does not go down the same path..
• wslh 12y ago
  Does it read RSS feeds?
• truebosko 12y ago
  If anyone is offering invites, I'd love this. bart.ciszk@gmail.com -- Thanks!
• suprgeek 12y ago
  An interesting comparison might be to the Zoho Inbox Insights [1] app that is slated to land fairly soon. If reports are to be believed this app has similar functionality. [1] http://www.pcworld.com/article/2837812/zoho-nips-at-google-inboxs-heels-with-its-own-email-filtering-app-inbox-insights.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/2837812/zoho-nips-at-google-i...
• nagarjun 12y ago
  I can't wait to try this out. I'm drawing a few parallels to Acompli (when it comes to how Inbox handles attachments) and I love Acompli. Hope they add Google Apps support soon.
• sgy 12y ago
  pretty much inspired by PG? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ITLdmfdLI#t=450 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ITLdmfdLI#t=450
• yournemesis 12y ago
  WTF google? You get me interested in a product. I download it on my phone no problem. But then when I go to open it I'm told that it is invite only. I missed this detail in the blog since it isn't mentioned until the end. Knowingly allowing me to download a program I can't even use? This is a perfect recipe for a 1 star review. How it has so many 5 star review is beyond me. Oh well, I still really want to try it. So I clicked the invite link that makes me use gmail (the app I'm replacing) to send an email. However, it's not a standard mailto link but a link to https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox?compose=new https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox?compose=new . Seriously? Now I have to type in an email address because Google failed to use one of the most primitive features of HTML. So far my email experience has only been less convenient. Anyway, I uninstalled it from my phone. I'll just wait a year or so to see if it flops like several of there other products and then maybe install it.
• eellpp 12y ago
  The basic assumption behind this seems to be that marketing spam in email will keep increasing and instead of fighting against it, organising content around it is better approach. Most people (who nowadays carry lot of personal/group communication around facebook/whatsapp) still get a lot of mails on product deals, newsletters etc. Email is also the tool for login, password recovery and for other utilities like that. Beyond that its the primary tool to do the most important thing : send a official mail to whoever concerned. May be to the president of country or to the school principal. Reducing the noise into this core tool should be of importance. Facebook/Whatsapp has take out a big chunk of casual and group communication, which is good. Something that could keep out the product marketing out of email could be of next good change. I think the movement should be towards reducing the unwanted content in emails, than organising the unwanted.
  • aiiane 12y ago
    The promotional cluster is only a very small part of Inbox's feature set.
• vmarsy 12y ago
  After a bit of use, I think I like it. I was curious about the relation between Inbox and Gmail. My current Gmail has a lot of filters and labels. When looking at the labels, you have the choice of displaying them as "Clusters" in your main inbox, which is pretty convenient. I did that to my Friends label and it is now a Friends cluster. Note that it doesn't change anything in Gmail: the label is still here, all the filters that interact with it are still here too. I realized that one of my friends wasn't in the cluster, so I moved it in it, and clicked on "Always do this", it prompted me : "Always move emails from Myfriend@email.com to Friends" . 2 remarks about this: - This is a very basic way of adding some emails from bundling, in the future I except to be able to specialize more: for instance sometimes I get important emails from a co-worker, but he also sends a daily reminder that I don't care so much about, I would like to be able to move it to the bundle “Useless updates” only it comes from him AND has this specific subject. That is something we can do through the Gmail filters, but not through the “Always do this” interface yet. - Curiously it created a filter in my old Gmail filters with as a rule : " from:Myfriend@email.com Action: " The filter has no action, so I assume that when I will be receiving an email from that friend , in Inbox it will go into the good cluster, but in Gmail the label "Friend" won't be appended to it, this means that Gmail rules/filters apply to Inbox, but Inbox rules don’t apply to Gmail. The Inbox's "Done" is doing the same thing as the Gmail's "Archive" . I haven't been able to experience the snoozing feature yet
• diltonm 12y ago
  It looks pretty, it looks like it might end the hide and seek with attachments on a smart phone client; not a problem on a desktop but I can never find the attachments in Gmail on the phone. I'm not sure I like that idea that it decides what's important and highlights it; probably because it would get it right most of the time. I could get used to it.
• aashishpatil 12y ago
  I am the developer of Eπvelope email app for iOS. Its got a clustering feature that seems similar to Gmails' Bundles - auto grouping of similar emails (Receipts, Offers, ). Entire clusters can be moved,deleted,archived. And it works with Gmail, Yahoo, iCloud, Outlook. http://bitly.com/envelope-clustering http://bitly.com/envelope-clustering http://PiEnvelope.com http://PiEnvelope.com
• aagha 12y ago
  What's the "sync" between Gmail and Inbox like? If you Snooze an email in Inbox, what happens to it in Gmail? If you put it in a bundle, what's that do to it in your inbox?
  • aiiane 12y ago
    https://support.google.com/inbox/answer/6098273?hl=en&ref_topic=6067565 https://support.google.com/inbox/answer/6098273?hl=en&ref_to...
• rocky1138 12y ago
  Mods can you change the URL of this post to http://www.google.com/inbox/ http://www.google.com/inbox/ ? It's way more informative and actually details what the app does.
• Illniyar 12y ago
  Judging from this: http://www.google.com/inbox/ http://www.google.com/inbox/ , we have: * Folder and Rules (with the only distinction of having some pre-populated ones, I think) * Some smart content extraction from known emails (reservations, invoices, etc...) - probably going to be a privacy nightmare * Todo and reminders ( what's new about this? outlook/gmail calendar/thunderbird-lightning all do this) * Snooze for reminders - yeah...
• bxio 12y ago
  I'd love to get an invite, if anyone has an extra lying around.
• NicoJuicy 12y ago
  I'm wondering if the inbox is integrated with Google Keep for tasks and if there will become API's available? It's to bad Google Keep only has an internal API (that isn't available to us)
• rashthedude 12y ago
  Google please stop trying to be everything to everyone.
• SergeyDruid 12y ago
  No support for Gingerbread on play store (I have an Ace Plus but I'm about to buy a Moto G) :(
• shafiahmedbd 12y ago
  If you happen to have invites, could you send me one too? Thank you. My e-mail: shafiahmedbd@gmail.com
• algorithm_dk 12y ago
  This looks awesome! Now I won't be able to decide between this, myMail and Mailbox :'( Can anyone shoot an invite to andrew(at)algorithm.dk? Thank you!
• ssijak 12y ago
  I really, really like the idea that they are pushing you to always have clean inbox. I always struggled with that, making my own systems. Also grouping of similar emails sounds promising. But I hate this invite thing, so if someone have a spare invite, I would be really thankful if you can send one to ssijak@gmail.com
• thallukrish 12y ago
  I have used Google Inbox, but if I read the comments here, the overarching thing seem to be to make a zero inbox. Why cannot you do this with your existing email client? What are the features of Google Inbox that helps you do this? And why do you need to make your inbox zero? Is it like you want the email client to show up the high priority ones that you need to attend to at the top? How does a Google Inbox automatically know what is high priority for you ? Sorry if my understanding is not aligned to what is offered by Google Inbox.
  • thallukrish 12y ago
    Sorry, Typo - read as 'I have not used Google Inbox'
• jinushaun 12y ago
  Man, no wonder Google has a diversity problem. This video was a montage of young millennial hipsters partying. Somewhere in there email was involved. On topic... Looks a lot like Mailbox. I'd be worried if I was Mailbox.
• valanto 12y ago
  Anyone got an invite to spare? Would be great to get one! (my email is valanto@gmail.com)
• simcop2387 12y ago
  Don't hurt me too much, if anyone has an invite: simcop2387@gmail.com
• ed_blackburn 12y ago
  Sadly I have my google account hooked up with custom domains so it won't work. I'm looking forward to trying this when it is available. I can understand why google don't want to push this on large organisations in case it results in expensive support, but as a paying google customer It'd be nice to have the choice.
• insanemac 12y ago
  Not getting a invitation yet, pity
• checken 12y ago
  After using Inbox for a day, here's my initial thoughts: Incredible mobile experience, but not as productive as Gmail on the browser side. If you're an inbox zero fan, you'll love it. I think the point of Inbox is to bring inbox zero to the masses. They've replaced the "archive" button with a check mark button labeled as "done". This button has the exact same functionality as archiving a message in Gmail, but to someone using Inbox for the first time, it would more natural to click "done" rather than archive. The reminders & pins are a nice touch as well. The snooze functionality takes a page from Baydin's boomerang service. However, this is where I'm still not sold. I've used Baydin's boomerang service for nearly 2 years now. I use it on approximately 80% of the messages I send. Inbox gives you the ability to "snooze" messages, but not "boomerang". I think it's much more important to be able to bring an email back to your inbox when someone hasn't replied to it as opposed to snoozing a message to take care of at a later date/time. I've come to the point of not understanding why you would even attempt inbox zero without boomerang. It blows my mind that email has been around for this long and we're still relying on a third party app to achieve this functionality. For anyone unfamiliar, Boomerang allows you to set a message to come back to your inbox if a person does not reply to it in 12 hours, 2 days, 4 days, or any later date you choose. I started using it for business, but then I realized how much it helps with everything. I use it on most personal emails now as well. Let me give you a real world example: 3 people on an email chain, everyone agrees we need to meet one day next week. The last email of the chain someone suggests, "Are you guys available next Wednesday at 10:00 AM?". In a world of inbox-zero without boomerang, this message may go unanswered if everyone on the chain forgets to reply (very common in my world). For a boomerang user, I set the email to come back to my inbox "if no response" in 2 days. This way, if there's no response, I can send a follow up, "So are we meeting next Wednesday or not?" I still can't figure out why this hasn't been built in to more email services by now. Anyways, coming back to Inbox. It's beautiful, cool, great on mobile, but I will not be able to use it as my main email client unless they allow 3rd party apps like boomerang. Or, for the love of technology, build their own functionality that brings no-response emails back to the inbox! Am I the only one?!
• maram 12y ago
  I really have no idea how this thing is going to help me organize my life. Google failed to explicitly highlights the difference between INBOX and other things like Reminder, Notes, google calendar, gmail. And on top of that using a name that is making it more confusing.
• scottmcdot 12y ago
  Does anyone know how to merge my old 'starred' emails from Gmail and make them all 'pinned' emails in Inbox?
• akulbe 12y ago
  I would love to love this... but it's only for @gmail.com accounts, so far. What a disappointment. It would seem like Google would get more REAL traction with this if they made it available to Apps for Work customers. Every single one of my business domains uses Google for email. Business folks use productivity solutions more than individuals, I'd think. I don't understand why they don't target us first?? The only people I give my personal @gmail.com address to any more, are ones I don't want to be bothered by, in my main mailbox.