Google Feb. 24 said it is advancing six features in its Gmail Labs and retiring five, a sign the company's programmers are dutifully keeping up with user interest or lack thereof in the experimental tools. If nothing else, Google's Gmail team is watching what the 176 million Gmail users are doing in the Webmail app. What will be interesting to see is the interplay of Gmail Labs features with the Gmail-hosted Google Buzz application, which leverages Gmail contacts to build a social network of conversations. Google Buzz already leverages the same keyboard shortcuts and formatting tools as Gmail.
Google Feb. 24 said it is advancing six features in its
Gmail Labs and retiring five, a sign the company's programmers are dutifully
keeping up with user interest or lack thereof in the experimental tools.
Graduates include Search Autocomplete, Go To Label, Forgotten
Attachment Detector, YouTube Previews, Custom Label Colors and Vacation Dates.
Muzzle, which conserves screen real estate by hiding Gmail
contacts' status messages, Fixed Width Font, E-mail Addict, which lets users block
the screen for 15 minutes to take a break, Location in Signature, and Random
Signature, which rotates e-mail signatures, will all be turned off in the next few
days.
Google
launched Gmail Labs in June 2008 to let software programmers for its Gmail
application write new features to augment Gmail's functionality.
Features that made the grade would "graduate;" features that failed
to spark interest would be retired.
With the Labs' feature list growing to about 60, the
Tasks to-do list feature became a standard part of Gmail in July, with
Offline Gmail getting a
promotion in December. Right-side labels
were
retired last July.
If nothing else, Google's Gmail team is watching what the
176 million Gmail users are doing in the Webmail app. Gmail Software Engineer Mark Knichel
noted:
"We've received countless comments and kept an eye
on our stats: some of these experimental features were adopted by
millions and
others trickled along with little usage... Today, true to the original
intent
of Gmail Labs, we're graduating six more features and retiring five."
Knichel said Gmail Labs team improved some of the
graduating features before making them default Gmail features.
In one such instance, Google
combined Go To Label with Search Autocomplete to make it easier for users to
search Gmail.
Go To Label has also been integrated into this search box.
Gmail users of keyboard shortcuts can type "g" then "l" and
instead of getting the old "Go to label" pop-up, they will surface in
the search box with the "label:" operator filled in for users to
begin typing the label they want to go to.
What will be interesting to see is the interplay of Gmail
Labs features with the Gmail-hosted Google Buzz application, which
leverages Gmail contacts to build a social network of conversations. Google
Buzz already leverages the same keyboard shortcuts and formatting tools as
Gmail.
Will Gmail Labs features such as SMS Chat and other tools
find their way into Buzz? It's quite possible. Google officials have
said the Buzz programming team will constantly iterate on the product.
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