My Google Gmail Review
Posted by Stuart at 08:25 AM on May 06, 2004I've been very curious about the new Google Mail service after since it was announced a month ago. It is not publically available yet, but a few lucky people have been given access to the Beta version. A friend of mine was one of those lucky few, and out of the goodness of his heart, he let me use the account as well! Woohoo!
So, since some people might be as curious as I was, here is my take on Gmail. First of all, it is very different from any web-based email I have ever used before. It is taking me a little bit of time to get used to it. It's not just a few new features, or a different interface, it is a completely different way of thinking about email.
Here are some things that I like:
- Your inbox is organized by conversations. For example, if I write my friend, and my friend writes back and we repeat that cycle 3 times, instead of having 8 separate entries in my inbox, I will have only one. That one entry holds all of the 8 emails that we sent each other. Not only that, but when a new email in the conversation is sent or received, the conversation goes to the top of the inbox.
- The other cool new feature is that instead of folders to store your mail, you have labels. It took me a while to get used to this idea, because I rely on folders a lot to stay organized. But by just "labelling" an email with a topic instead of putting it in a folder means that I can add several different labels to one email. For example, if I get an email from my Mother with her recipie for Creamed Tacos (my favorite!) I can label it as "Family" and "Recipies". In other words, I put the email into two "folders", not just one.
- The interface is Google, not Orkut, in case you were wondering (Whew!)
- One gigabyte of storage will hold a lotof email.
Here is a list of things that I really don't like. In general, it looks like Google needs to hire a few information designers instead of letting their (brilliant) engineers design the interface. But who knows, perhaps some of these will be changed before the product is released to the rest of the world. We'll see.
- There is too much reliance on pull-down menus. I hate it when I select an action from a pull-down menu and the action happens immediately because sometimes I chose the wrong thing. I want buttons instead. Especially for actions like "delete" (even though Google doesn't want you to delete email. More comments on that later).
- There is no ability to edit filters. You can only add and delete.
- The logic for filters is too simple. I want ANDs ORs & NOTs.
- To reply, I have to scroll down to the bottom of the email
- Whenever I am reading an email, and I do an action to it (delete, add label, etc) I am taken back to the message index. I want to save a click by automatically going to the next email.
- Filters don't always work correctly (maybe 90-95%?)
The one new "feature" that I am trying to get used to is the luxury of not having to delete any emails. Instead of deleteing, you click the "Archive" button where the email goes away to some unknown location that can only be retrieved if 1) you added a label to it and you click on the label name in the menu or 2) it is part of a search result.
Also, there has been a lot of controversy about the ads that will be placed in your email. I don't think I have seen a single ad yet. At least if I have seen them, they are so unobtrusive that I haven't even noticed them. I almost never notice Google ads anyway.
So, that's my take. It has a lot of promise but right now there are a lot of minor annoyances that I hope will eventually go away. If it were public right now would I use it for my main email? Not yet. But I will definitely keep an eye on it and see what happens over the next few months.
Hello Sri.
Thanks so much for the comment. Your post brings up one feature that I haven't really tried yet: keyboard shortcuts. I am a big fan of keyboard shortcuts in MS Office (for example) but I have never used them in a web browser. So, I think I will have to file "keyboard shortcuts like R for reply and G then A for all mail" to my list of "Features I am trying to get used to." It's just one more example of how gmail is completely changing the way I do my work.
Oh, and it took me a little while, but I finally figured out I have to turn the keyboard shortcuts "on" in the Settings menu.
Thanks again :)
- Stuart
You are welcome. And stop using Yahoo! (! being, spam ;)
These are the keyboard shortcuts I most frequently use:
g then i: to go to inbox
C: to compose
R: to reply
tab then enter: to send the reply
j: to go to older
k: to go to newer
x: to select
y: to archive.
> The logic for filters is too simple. I want ANDs ORs & NOTs.
Some cool tricks. Terms enclosed in parens ( ) are ANDed together. Terms enclosed in braces { } are ORed together. Here's an advanced search:
from:{fred marty} subject:(lunch wednesday) beets
This means messages from fred or from marty AND subject contains the words lunch AND the word wednesday, AND the message contains the word beets anywhere. You can put all this in the "Has the words" section of advanced search or filter creation to do whatever you want. Cool!
> To reply, I have to scroll down to the bottom of the email
An alternative to scrolling is to click "More options" then "reply" or "reply to all". This puts you into a reply box without scrolling. You can also enable hotkeys and type "r" which other people already mentioned.
Chris
Sometimes I wonder if Gmail's beta account & Orkut's "invitation only" are publicity stunt. If they are, they works almost perfectly :P I'm lucky with Gmail, but had waited a very long time before able to try out Orkut.
Anyway, what I don't like about Gmail is the lack of some simple things I expected
- IMAP access
- contact groups
- displaying inline attachments (images attached to e-mail, like in Hotmail)
The rest are GREAT!! :)
Chris #1, thanks for sending the tips on how to do AND and OR in gmail. But this just reinforces my point about how it looks like the interface was designed by computer science guys, not by information designers. If I was grading, I think I would give the technology an A and the interface a C. Ditto goes for the Reply. Just give me one button instead of making me scroll or chose from a pull-down menu, please! :)
Chris #2, I agree, I would like to display inline attachments as well. I don't want to have to click on an attachment to read it.
Thanks for commenting, y'all :)
- Stuart
Thanks for the thorough review, Stu. Sounds pretty neat, right?
Could you throw me one Gmail Invitation @ sceptred@hotmail.com? Thank you in advance.
Nope, sorry, I don't have any Gmail invitations to give away.
- Stuart
You wrote "To reply, I have to scroll down to the bottom of the email".
You could simply press 'R' key and your cursor will automatically be ready to take your input in the reply box.
You wrote "Instead of deleteing, you click the "Archive" button where the email goes away to some unknown location that can only be retrieved if 1) you added a label to it and you click on the label name in the menu or 2) it is part of a search result."
When you archive a message or a conversation, it disappears from inbox. You can always find it by clicking on 'All Mail' or the keyboard shortcut, g then a. The archived msg/convo needn't have a label or be searched to be accessed.
Congrats on obtaining the Gmail account :)