Does Gmail Want To Be Instant Messaging? New UI Experiment Says 'Yes' (arstechnica.com) 19
Does Gmail want to be an instant messaging client? From a report: Last month the popular webmail app shipped an emoji reactions bar in the mobile app, where a single tap would send a new email with your emoji response. Now, a wild new UI experiment spotted by Android Police goes another step further: a quick reply bar that looks just like instant messaging input. Rather than the usual input block you get for writing paragraphs of overly formal text, this new Gmail experiment has a one-line input bar at the bottom for replies. A drop-down menu just above it lets you pick from the usual "reply," "reply all," or "forward" options. Besides that, you get an attachment and send button. An "expand" button will presumably launch the usual compose interface.
Your Email Now Comes With Instant Regrets (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Your Email Now Comes With Instant Regrets (Score:2)
I feel a little locked in by Google and others because the torrent of spam and phishing has made it a real hassle for little guys to run a reliable email server.
The Internet has become like the rest of the outside world: everyone is trying to sell you something or steal from you.
Re: Your Email Now Comes With Instant Regrets (Score:4, Interesting)
Switched to Proton with my own domain name; never regretted it.
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I feel a little locked in by Google and others because the torrent of spam and phishing has made it a real hassle for little guys to run a reliable email server.
I switched to using my own domain with a managed email (I don't run the server, I get a cpanel interface and can create unlimited mailboxes). I create 1 alias per website. An airline I flew with was hacked and I started getting phishing to that alias. Deleted the alias, and poof no more spam. A drawback is overhead work in managing the aliases (and paying the hosting 1 eur/month), for me it's worth.
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before they shit things up any more with added features that no one will want/use/need or even ask for, could they please, please PLEASE re-enable the ability to pop individual conversations out into a separate window?
i hate these people so much and would absolutely love to educate the person(s) who thought removing a useful feature was wise, with a hammer. I'm guessing it was to train you to perpetually keep the gmail window in full screen so they can eventually shovel ads down your eye-gullet, but it's s
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Latest? Google has been trying to turn g-mail into instant messaging for almost 20 years.
Their best one was Google Buzz, a sidebar for gmail that would share stuff for you. Without asking.
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In a few short years, when they have facial recognition on phones, Google will show you an ad and then demand you bow your head in payment.
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Email is becoming a bills and payments only medium (Score:5, Insightful)
I get two types of async communication.
1) Email - bills, official notifications, messages from my kids' schools and hobby groups, city government etc. Most of them require me to do something. Pay, confirm, fill in a form, return a book to the library, take some action. Or they carry pointless info "service X updated its ToS".
2) Messenger and Whatsapp - chats, jokes, travel photos, party arrangements. That's where the friends are.
With this seperatation - I want to avoid email, or at least not frequent it. I just check it once per day. The stuff there is mostly official, time-consuming or negative in some way. All the cheerful, happy, emotionally positive comms have shifted over to messaging. Thus this is where we hang out. And our attention (the product to be resold by facebook etc) is more and more affixed there as well.
Of course email providers would want to reverse this trend.
Will they succeed?
I don't think so, but let's watch and see.
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Chat attempt 5? (Score:2)
I lost how many times Google has changed their chat..
I just get the occasional message "We are removing chat XX and switching to chat YY" never paid much attention to those so..
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5? More like 25! [arstechnica.com]
Just what I want... (Score:2)
... for my email to start seeing the feature/UI churn that's been part of every other Google communication-related initiative.
You'd think Google would eventually figure out that, aside from their core ad business, the only "services" that've actually worked for them are their stodgy boring email and office apps. They don't have the talent, cachet, or (for that matter) staying power to succeed in the social media realm.
Reject this crap! (Score:3)
Nowadays there is simply too much emphasis on quick reactions and responses. There's a value in cooling off, collecting one's thoughts, and only then taking time to form a cohesive response (if even necessary) that will result in something beneficial. If it's that urgent, grab the phone.
I hate the over-emphasis on chat apps in the workplace these days. Something important has been lost.
the usual compost interface? (Score:1)
Don't make it too popular, or they'll kill it
Turn into? (Score:2)
Email has always been instant messaging. Compared to snail mail, email is instant, despite Microsoft's best efforts to make it appear more like fax.
What email doesn't have what people expect from instant messaging is presence: Who has been online when, who is online now, and are they typing or not? The old finger protocol that provided some of that has been retired for privacy and security reasons
Outlook has this already (Score:1)
At my work Microsoft Outlook presents these kind of preprogrammed response buttons also at the bottom of the mail. So nothing new. If you can't beat them, join them..
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It's quick and easy in Outlook to send a thumbs up or similar in response to an email, but my clients that use Gmail never got these. Hopefully Gmail has caught up now - it's a time saver so a useful feature