Google Rolling Out Gmail Redesign 303
Today Google announced a redesign of the Gmail inbox. Citing a high volume of email which makes it hard for users to focus on what's important (or what they want to focus on at any given moment), the new inbox will automatically group incoming emails into categories, which will appear as tabs at the top of the inbox. 'You can easily customize the new inbox — select the tabs you want from all five to none, drag-and-drop to move messages between tabs, set certain senders to always appear in a particular tab and star messages so that they also appear in the Primary tab.' Speaking to The Verge, Gmail product manager Alex Gawley said, 'It became obvious to us over time that this notion that the inbox was more of your master than your servant was becoming more widespread. It wasn't just the people receiving hundreds of emails a day — more regular users were starting to feel stressed out by their inbox.' The announcement notes that if you aren't interested in the new view, you can switch off all the tabs to go back to the classic inbox view.
No! (Score:5, Insightful)
Please stop fixing what is not broken. Please.
Re:No! (Score:5, Insightful)
No shit.
I mean, what is so difficult about reading all my incoming emails in the order I see them...like I've done with email since I first got email on the internet in about '93.
What has changed so much that they need to potentiall fsck up the interface yet again?
I think by now, we've pretty much gotten email front ends and MTA's done about right, not much need for new tinkering that I can fathom.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'm confused; it says clearly in the summary and the article that people can go back to the classic view if they choose to do so. Therefore, they're simply giving people an option as to how they want to view their inbox, and if you like the current version, you can keep it. So what are you upset about? More options is always a good thing, especially if one option is to keep things the way they are.
Re:No! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No! (Score:5, Insightful)
gmail keeps pushing not insignificant changes, and calls them 'optional'. my experience is they later remove the options.
Re:No! (Score:5, Informative)
To get rid of the "Important" mailbox in the web interface: Go to your Gmail settings, Inbox tab, and set your Inbox to "Classic".
In the Android Gmail app, go into the settings for your Gmail account, and uncheck "Priority Inbox".
Re:No! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm confused; it says clearly in the summary and the article that people can go back to the classic view if they choose to do so. Therefore, they're simply giving people an option as to how they want to view their inbox, and if you like the current version, you can keep it. So what are you upset about? More options is always a good thing, especially if one option is to keep things the way they are.
Because if it turns out people LIKE it, then the GP and GGP might wind up having to admit they're the outliers and no longer represent the views of the internet. This is an unacceptable solution, as it would be tantamount to admitting that the internet, being a melting pot of humanity never before seen in history, has evolved to something the GP/GGP doesn't recognize, and that, in turn, would be the first step in realizing that they're OLD (with a capital OLD) and behind the times, AND that they can't stop the progress of time any more than the music labels and movie studios can.
Therefore, the objective is to whine loud enough so that the choice to change things is somehow removed. This will preserve their fragile egos, which I'm certain they can agree is worth holding back any possible conveniences, unless they themselves are initiating it, in which case everyone else is old. And the fact that old people can agree on it is all that matters.
Re: (Score:3)
So the 'internet' is one thing now, with no room for minority views or preferences?
Depending on the size of the minority, then yes. There comes a point where it isn't worth spending the money for niche needs. This isn't to say it is a fun experience (please don't kill Reader, or iGoogle), but it comes with free and proprietary services. If only 5% of people use X, but it costs more than 5% of of your operating expenses to maintain, why not kill it?
I'm sick of internet entitlement. Sure, Google is killing a service I love (not offering an alternate, optional, GUI, but KILLING), but I c
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Don't trust them (Score:5, Interesting)
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I'm with you. I hate the new compose interface. In fact, I'm considering dropping gmail over it. The only reason I haven't is that I'm not super impressed with the alternatives. Eventually my dislike for compose will override those reservations. I give it about three months.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
You must be new here. Welcome to Slashdot, the land of ironic techno-luddites. If it isn't a monotone command line, it is broken and needlessly complex.
I don't get it either, I'm looking forward to this, since right now Gmail somewhat frustrates me, since it is hard to divide messages into useful groups, beyond "starred", "important", and "everything else". I would like to keep all my work related mail in one area, all my invoices and shipping info in another, my social updates in another, useful "bulk"
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I mean, what is so difficult about reading all my incoming emails in the order I see them...like I've done with email since I first got email on the internet in about '93.
Yeah, I mean, just like back in '93 when I used to get all those facebook invites to my email. And the craigslist responses. And the messages from my state government about my license plates needing renewed. The updates on the status of my federal income tax return. Messages from PayPal about changes to policies on availability of funds on their system. Notification from my bank about my checking account balance. Statements and bill notifications from all of my utilities providers. Receipts for pizzas I ord
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You assume that people in the earlier days of the internet weren't getting lots of emails too, just with different content. Have you ever been on half a dozen active mailing lists at the same time?
I'm still quite happy with "everything turns up in my inbox with metadata I can filter by". That plus some auto-move rules does me just fine at work (where I'm a 100 emails a day man) and at home (pizza receipts and all).
I've actually found the last new Gmail interface such an unpleasant pain to use that I just do
Re:No! (Score:4, Insightful)
You'd almost think that receiving large quantities of email from known senders was a solved problem. Oh wait, it is a solved problem.
They are called filters. You can filter mail: from senders (e.g. you-stupid-user@facebook.com); to addresses (e.g. you can give a different address to every site & company (e.g. slashdot.org.2013.may.29@example.com, assuming you own example.com and considering you can get domains for $2 a year, it's easy to own your own domain); based on subject line (e.g. if it's got [BEST SCAT PORN] in the subject); etc.
You filter them into different folders, and then you deal with each folder as you like. Some folders you'll just regularly delete (e.g. maybe all the Facebook junk). Some you'll mark as read, without actually reading. Some you'll scan the subject lines. And some you can open up individually and read (e.g. the scat porn).
Filters, they work. (They may not work with Google Mail, but would mean you should get your own bloody mail system.)
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Re:No! (Score:5, Insightful)
Please stop fixing what is not broken. Please.
my other account had just rolled over to the new(ehm old??) design in last month.
was nothing wrong with the older one either. it's not like I think it's a terribly great idea to write new messages in a fucking chat box on bottom right corner, wtf is up with that? is it making it more IM for fooling the cool kids??
Re:No! (Score:5, Funny)
I know right? I hate it when I have new options on how to look at things. I mean, when someone sends me mail I want to go get it out of the mail box and open an envelope, not mess around with some newfangled electronical mail.
Yes! (Score:5, Interesting)
There's actually a lot of room for improvement with email. It's one of the more clunky and archaic parts of the web and I'm really glad Google keeps pushing the boundaries on this as they seem to be the only ones doing so effectively. I personally have a hard time keeping my email organized and sorted so any attempts to improve email clients are welcome in my books. Even if the changes aren't necessarily better, trying new approaches and getting feedback on those changes will create an overall better product.
If you want a static and unchanging email experience you might be better served with Outlook. At my job we just switched from Corporate Gmail to Outlook after 6 years and Outlook has hardly changed since I last used it. It's downright ancient!
Re: (Score:3)
Actually, what google is doing now is how email was always ment to be read. It is how we read and organized email 20 years ago with procmail and a decent reader like mutt or gnus. Google is just creating more firendly interface on top of it.
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Gaaah!
I thought that the whole idea behind Google's email was "don't sort, search". And I thought it was brilliant. And now they want to sort things? WTF?
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There's little "pushing the boundaries" here. I've had several inboxes where different stuff is filtered to for about a decade. RSS feeds into on mailbox, bulkmail into another, notifications into another, etc.
Google has just added pretty icons to this.
Re:No! (Score:5, Insightful)
LOL, OMG, Email (in general) is broken, and has been, for years. Please start making Email into something new.
Gmail is trying to make sense of the countless amount of pure garbage sent to your inbox, even from your friends, family and co-workers.
Even at work, 90% of the email I get is only valid for the 5 minutes after it was sent, and is usually something I can toss away. In fact I have gotten used to the idea of being able to Ignore entire conversation threads in Outlook based purely on the fact the original message is meaningless to me, but I got CC'd on it.
While Google is trying to organize and make sense of it, I think that email in general needs to change. Its become a kind of sms/message service where people feel the need to try and maintain some kind of real time conversation, and email inbox's are just not designed for that.
I can't comment on the new Gmail until I use it, but email clients have to move beyond just a flat list of mostly useless content and evolve into something a little smarter.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: No! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's no so much the team of developers, as it is their management. Managers are always trying to find stuff to make themselves look important and necessary to an organization, even if it's really just make-work. Managers want ever-larger budgets and ever-larger teams to manage, to justify their existence and make themselves look good and justify a higher salary for themselves, so they push unnecessary projects on their bosses to achieve this. You're not going to find any corporate managers who say "OK, we're all done with this big product's development and roll-out, and we consider it done, so let's plan now on how to scale back the operation to a maintenance mode, and move extra people into other development jobs working on other products for the company." Companies do put things into maintenance mode, sure (remember IE6 when MS stopped all development of it?), but only because the top management directs this, not because the managers who are heads of those product divisions request it.
Sounds Horrible (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm very happy that Google is willing to conduct these grand experiments to solve age-old problems.
That said, this sounds just as bad as their last attempt, with the stupid "Priority" email box. All it will mean is that you have to occasionally open a new tab to make sure nothing got misfiled. Just like things that got excluded from the priority email box, and for that matter the automatic spam filtering.
Re:Sounds Horrible (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't have to use that stupid "Priority inbox", it's optional. As long as they keep these experiments optional, I'm fine with it, but Google has a tendency of removing options instead of adding them.
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You don't have to use it... yet. But you will eventually be forced to use it.
Re:Sounds Horrible (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
If I have to do that what's the point of even having a Gmail account? Nothing as far as I can see.
Re: (Score:2)
If I have to do that what's the point of even having a Gmail account? Nothing as far as I can see.
Aside from some web interface differences, a gmail account is no different than any other IMAP account.
Some of us prefer not to have to use a web browser for everything we do online (or offline, for that matter), and an IMAP client is perfect for that.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not seeing what your post has to do with what I said. I was saying if I have to use an IMAP client to get a usable interface for Gmail, why even keep the Gmail account since the whole point of Gmail is the web interface and the storage on Google's servers.
Re: (Score:3)
The point of gmail is email. Free email, frankly. The web interface is less than useful. It's an active impediment, but thankfully I don't have to use it. I can use their storage and their SMTP hosting with proper IMAP support for free with a proper MUA [mozilla.org].
Re:Sounds Horrible (Score:5, Insightful)
The point of Gmail is to get you signed into Google.com so that they can track your search keywords across different machines to show ads related to them. e.g. at home and work.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not seeing what your post has to do with what I said. I was saying if I have to use an IMAP client to get a usable interface for Gmail, why even keep the Gmail account since the whole point of Gmail is the web interface and the storage on Google's servers.
I don't know if you remember when GMail was introduced to the general public, but its web interface wasn't the draw. It was the (for its time) ungodly amount of space for users to take advantage of.
It's only been over time that they've changed up the web interface. For those of us that have used GMail since its beginning, we don't really care about what whiz-bang thing they've done with the web interface.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know if you remember when GMail was introduced to the general public, but its web interface wasn't the draw. It was the (for its time) ungodly amount of space for users to take advantage of.
That, and the fact that it actually put spam in the spam folder instead of spewing it all over your inbox like everyone else did at the time.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, from your post you list two reasons to use gmail: 1) The web interface 2)the storage on Google's servers.
So, from that it follows if you stop liking the web interface, you use it for the storage.
Mind you, there is no reason with this new option to stop liking the interface.
Error: tepples@example.com does not use Gmail (Score:4, Informative)
If I have to do that what's the point of even having a Gmail account?
To get past the "does not use Gmail" screen when using some other Google services. Android Market prior to Android 4.0, for example, required a Gmail account; an ordinary Google account wasn't enough [androidcentral.com].
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't the priority inbox just more spam filtering?
The spam goes to spam, the ham goes to the inbox and what they think you want to read is priority inbox?
Re:Sounds Horrible (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, basically: It's another spam filter. Has always worked great for me once I got past the newness-deprecating "WTF?" moment.
With minimal training and setup my "important" stuff is the only stuff that that makes my phone notify me of email, which is actually useful to me, while "unimportant" stuff can be read or ignored some time later.
All of this conspires to make email less annoying.
Re: (Score:2)
I use it in the same way. It still goes into my inbox so I don't have most of the pain associated with filtering into a bazillion folders, but I can at least get a notification when somebody RSVPs to the event that I'm hosting in 15 minutes, and not when Aunt Tizzy sends out cat pictures.
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Yeah, I can barely tolerate the new compose. It's bad enough that I might want to Greasemonkey that mother.
I already make my own categories (Score:3)
Re:I already make my own categories (Score:5, Interesting)
So what's the best alternative to gmail thse days?
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I'd like to say mutt....but I can't figure how to hook it to gmail, and not have to spend time downloading EVERY fscking old email on the server (thousands and thousands) each time it polls gmail.
Re: (Score:2)
That's easy, use the IMAP interface for mutt. It even caches headers
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Re: (Score:2)
I like the great spam filter gmail uses, but I'm growing tired of everything else.
I'm also tired and weary of Google having all my email they can look through.
I guess I need to reeducate myself on setting up postfix, and finding out what good spam utilities (spam assassin still good?) are good for setting up with it.
Re: (Score:3)
So what's the best alternative to gmail thse days?
Dovecot+SSL+postfix
Re: (Score:2)
FTFY
If gmail didn't have imap, I wouldn't use it. But it does, and my ISP doesn't.
Riiight (Score:5, Insightful)
The announcement notes that if you aren't interested in the new view, you can switch off all the tabs to go back to the classic inbox view.
Uh huh. Until they decide otherwise and force it on people like they did with the current redesign.
Re:Riiight (Score:5, Interesting)
"We're Google and we can do whatever the fuck we want because we're so cool and if you don't like it you'll just have to suck it up and deal."
That's how they currently approach every product. And when I say every product, I mean every product. They're not even trying to compete anymore.
Re:Riiight (Score:5, Insightful)
That's how they currently approach every product. And when I say every product, I mean every product. They're not even trying to compete anymore.
That line of thinking didn't work for the automotive industry in the 70's and 80's. It won't work for google either, all it will take is consumers being fedup and an alternative.
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Aside from their search and ad-related services, none of their services really have a dominance in their particular market. Yes they are very popular, but it's not like there aren't alternatives that are just as good if not better. GMail isn't the only webmail provider. Google Drive isn't the only file storage locker. Google Maps i
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Google News is pretty damn popular. Google Maps as well.
The only place they can't seem to do well in is social networking, e.g. their competitor to Facebook (Google+) and Flickr (Picasa).
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Yes they are very popular, but it's not like there aren't alternatives
That was pretty much the reasoning from the big3 and others, and it still didn't help them. It took AMC dying a grueling death to wake them out of their stupor.
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Nobody's saying it works, either in the short or the long term. But that's how they're approaching it anyway.
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They still compete! --granted, it's now called Trickle Down Competition, where companies race to bring their products, service, and general quality downward fastest, instead of upward...but they still compete! And now you can Join The Conversation(tm) on Google+.
Re: (Score:3)
"We give our shit to you free, and you use it willingly."
So, you mean they're not creating massive databases filled with the private information of their users in exchange for use of the service?
FYI, just because you're not handing them legal tender does not automagically make it a "free service."
Re: (Score:3)
FYI, just because you're not handing them legal tender does not automagically make it a "free service."
The fact I'm handing legal tender to my ISP, who decided with almost no notice that they were outsourcing all their email services to gmail and are thus passing some of that legal tender over to gmail, makes gmail much less than a "free service".
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Free? So they're going to pay me back the ad revenue they generate?
Retrograde available ... for now (Score:2)
The announcement notes that if you aren't interested in the new view, you can switch off all the tabs to go back to the classic inbox view.
Until they feel like not making that available, and want to force feed their shit down everyones' throats.
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How about letting us easily see unread messages? (Score:2)
At the moment I have to manually search "in:inbox is:unread" - -which is really frustrating.
Just searching for unread mails is of no use to me, as I subscribe to several mailing lists and have that stuff filtered to its own label before I read it.
I only want to see unread emails in my inbox easily and conveniently (without having to rearrange my inbox and have all unread emails at the top), yet I can't do this simple thing. Why is such a basic feature of every email client not available in Gmail?
Perhaps thi
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Enable the "Quick Links" labs, I use it for exactly the same query. You can add any query you want
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Why don't you just connect your email client via IMAP?
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Thank you for staying off mine, I guess?
"Let me just take care of that for you." (Score:5, Insightful)
It's kind of like having someone come in and reorganize your music based on their own crazy thought process.
At least you can turn it off... for now.
But this is endemic of a larger problem using Google products, they're tinkering with the things that aren't broken and shutting down projects that people use.
There's something not quite right with that attitude.
Re:"Let me just take care of that for you." (Score:5, Insightful)
It's kind of like having someone come in and reorganize your music based on their own crazy thought process.
At least you can turn it off... for now.
But this is endemic of a larger problem using Google products, they're tinkering with the things that aren't broken and shutting down projects that people use.
There's something not quite right with that attitude.
You got it. It's designer-driven change for change's sake. The same problem as Gnome with Gnome3 and the same problem that MS have with Windows 8. Changes that nobody wants or needs - except bored designers.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You got it. It's designer-driven change for change's sake. The same problem as Gnome with Gnome3 and the same problem that MS have with Windows 8. Changes that nobody wants or needs - except bored designers.
Change for change's sake? I don't think Google is as mindless as that.
A list of emails that a person gets only says so much about the person. You don't quite control what other people are sending you - they do. On the other hand the way that you interact with your email and how you categorize and prioritize it (did you find that "mark as important" feature useful?) tells so much more about you.
Of course that feature is there only to alleviate the stress from you and stop the inbox from being your mast
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On the other hand the way that you interact with your email and how you categorize and prioritize it (did you find that "mark as important" feature useful?) tells so much more about you.
Your weak link here is I don't want to tell some megacorp more about me.
Re: (Score:2)
yeah so you categorize to them that you want spam from subjects x, y and z.
problem with googles design rollouts is that once the designers get bored with their new experiment, they start with the new experiment and roll out the old graduated design forcibly on everyone. because that's how they roll.
now design is the driving factor and not utility or technicalities or technical possibilities. somewhere along the line utility got mixed up with design...
Remember (Score:2, Informative)
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Hopefully they won't deprecate that any time soon, as my primary gmail access point is Thunderbird.
I can order stuff how I want, and have a real desktop app
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My most sincere condolences.
(I stopped using TB at about 3GB of mail, when it was incapable of storing and indexing all of it)
Browser Reminders (Score:2)
Workaround (Score:2)
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You know, it is technically possible to run a proper browser and still have IE8 on your system?
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Not on a work computer, at least in some workplaces.
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Chances are if he can't do that, he shouldn't be accessing personal email either (by any means)
"Sponsored emails" (Score:2)
It could be worse. Google didn't add "sponsored emails".
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they already have ads. now they'll know what sponsored emails you want..
I had been doing this with labels (Score:2)
I had painstakingly created labels and filters such as "social junk" that marked mail read upon arrival and were easy to delete.
I like this it's a good idea the inbox can fill with crud shockingly quickly.
This sort of incremental innovation shows that even email can still be improved and that people are looking at ways of doing improving it.
Re: (Score:2)
If you call that incremental evolution, then you'll have to credit AOL, not Google, with this increment (altomail.com [techcrunch.com]).
false positive rate (Score:2)
I get really tired of the automated GMail filtering. Not sure about others, but for me the false positive rate on all these things (spam, notifications, etc) is through the roof these days, to the point that the majority of my gmail spambox is legitimate mail (although sometimes bulk). At this point I just wish for a way to turn it all off, I'd rather go through a couple of dozen of spam messages than having to check and mark as 'not spam' messages every couple of hours.
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Spam is flawless for me. Important, however, seems completely random and I'd love to turn that functionality off completely.
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Really? You must have some really spammy sounding friends and lists. I am subscribed to at least 4 lists, and get a reasonable amount of both business and personal mail though apps accounts I have. I might find a false positive twice a year. I've noticed that Google must have a master and a personal list, as there are some advertisers I couldn't get rid of by unsubscribing so I marked them as spam and they get filtered.
Of course, it could be people who mark unwanted advertisements as spam which are fouling
Google copying AOL? 8-/ (Score:3)
So Google plans to copy what AOL was trying to do with Alto [techcrunch.com]? Sheesh. I have an account at altomail.com; I wasn't very impressed and haven't been using it.
Getting out of GMAIL (Score:2)
Anyone know how to get all of your email out of gmail and sent to another server?
Screw it up yet again (Score:5, Insightful)
I too am an online social networking laggard (Score:2)
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I pay 15 bucks a month for my smartphone, assuming I don't use it that much, which I don't. If you're also in the category of people who don't use their phones a number amount per month (huge being, for the purposes of paying 15 bucks a month, being defined as 100 minutes, 100 texts and 100 megabytes of data), perhaps you should look into Ting. I didn't have a smartphone until a few months ago when I discovered I could have one for that cheap, either. It is kinda nice, though. (If you use more than that, it
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You should move to the U.K. They had TV specials about us.
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Just because people can manage to adapt to corporate-forced change doesn't validate that change as actually useful for anyone except the corporation(s).
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It works just fine if you use a proper client and connect via IMAP.
Webmail is for tools, or fools without their equipment.
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Works just fine for me, my phone, my laptop, and my desktop. I get control over my UI, my searching etc.
Seems to answer the problem quite well, so why don't you get over your own self?
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If it was another company I would let sleeping dogs lie but this is f'ing Google. Their web search is SOOO good and improving all the time, that makes the gmail search so ridiculously outdated in comparison.
Thank you, citizen, for your support. We will be moving your email over to the general Google search software in the near future, which I am certain you will accept as a vast improvement over the current situation. This change will allow you to read your email anywhere you have a browser, using a simple Google search for your own email address.
Unfortunately, this means that deleting your email will require the full "remove a link" process that the current Google indexing system uses, as well.
Thanks again
labels = folders; you == uninformed; (Score:5, Informative)
Many people are wrong-headed on this, labels are superior to folders.
With folders, an email message can be filed to one and only one folder.
With labels, any number of labels can be attached to a message.
This means you can have labels like "vendors" and "Project X" and a single message can be labelled as both.
In addition, you can easily set up filters in gmail to apply labels, set read status, etc.
In gmail the idea of "inbox" right now is just a label that gets applied to (most) incoming email. You can archive it out of your inbox by removing that label.
Regarding filtering, if you are going to slam gmail for missing a feature outlook has, at least don't be completely wrong.
You also seem to misunderstand the new mailbox and thinking about "tabs".
RTFM.