Tuesday, 28 October 2014 04:30

Industry News | Google Inbox: New Email App to Soon Replace Gmail

Google has been working to change email experience, giving users the ability to have more control over how they sort email and make email easier to deal with overall.

Google's revelation? A new app called ‘Inbox’. "It's not Gmail but it's a completely different type of inbox, designed to focus on what really matters." says Google. It’s a new way of how your inbox is presented and how you handle all the emails you receive.

Google Inbox is a complete overhaul of Gmail. It doesn't change your messages, but it alters how you view and handle them. The plan for a reinvented inbox started months ago, when Gmail introduced "Categories”, which allows you to sort email into folders like "Social," "Promotional” or "Updates." The new Inbox app allows you to segment messages in a number of new ways with folders labeled "Reminders," "Assists" and "Snooze."

Reminders is a to-do list incorporated into the new Inbox app, with the idea being the user will add their own reminders into a "central place to keep track of the things you need to come back to" to complete chores at a later time.

Assists help you cross those chores off your reminders list by auto-providing info to help get the job done. Assists work together with your email. For example, when a user makes a restaurant reservation online, Inbox adds a map to your confirmation email. Nifty.

Snooze lets you delay your emails and reminders until it's convenient for you to deal with them.

The interface itself is easier to look at. Email lists are no longer headlines crammed together in a shoddy list, but are now displayed in an optimal space. Additionally, if an Inbox message has attachments you can now open them without having to open the email.

To compose a message, there's now a red compose menu button located in the bottom right corner of the screen. When you press the button, a list of four of your most popular email recipients pop-up, providing instant links to their email addresses — similar to the new documents button for the recently updated Google Docs. There’s also is a new slider button at the top of the page that lets you switch between your email messages and your “Reminders."

The new Google Inbox app runs on Apple's iOS as well as Google's Android and Chrome OS platforms. It's currently available by invite only (ugh) by sending an email request from your current Gmail account to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Only time will tell if people will adapt to this new app. As with anything, most people are reluctant to change. If we learned anything from Google Plus, it’s that not all Google products become popular overnight.

If you have any thoughts on this new technology from Google, feel free to email us or leave a comment.