GMail – changing e-mail as we know it

Nimish Dubey

All messages exchanged on a particular subject are grouped under a conversation with the complete text of the latest one displayed and the rest arranged in tabs.

There are those who believe in following the leader and there are those who prefer to take over the mantle of leadership. Google belongs in the latter category. Before it came along with its plain-looking search engine, searching on the Web was associated with Yahoo! and Alta Vista. Google’s search swept them away and redefined how we search for information. It did so by focusing on user needs and delivering a product that was quick and easy to use.

Naturally, when Google announced on April 1 this year that it was planning to launch a Web-based e-mail service called GMail, it was enough to make the likes of Yahoo! and Hotmail hope that it was just an April Fool’s Day joke. The days that have followed have seen considerable speculation about GMail. Other webmail providers are already working to counter it –Yahoo! has increased its free storage space to 100 MB and Rediffmail is offering a gigabyte for free. All this when Google has not even fixed a launch date for its service.

I have been using a beta GMail account for more than a week now. Google’s approach to GMail is similar to its take on search; it has provided a simple and speedy interface reminiscent of its search engine. Although most users have welcomed Google’s initiative, some critics have been cautious, expressing reservations about Google’s ability to provide so much space without any charge and its plan to insert advertisements based on the content of e-mails, which could be a violation of privacy. However a true indication of just how seriously the market is taking GMail can be seen from the reaction of other e-mail providers, who are rapidly revamping their services to match those of GMail.

It’s got the look and speed

The first thing that strikes one about GMail is its simplicity. Unlike other services, which insist that you fill in huge forms to register for their service, GMail just asked me for a username, password and a question that would be asked if I ever forgot my password. Then there are the GMail pages. Unlike other webmail services, which seem to take some perverse pleasure in cluttering up their pages with flashing advertisements, GMail serves up clean-looking pages with lots of white space and text advertisements. What’s more, logging in takes you straight to your inbox, with no intervening pages.

The legendary Google speed is also very much in evidence. Although the GMail page does take time to load, once it does so, all GMail operations (composing mail, forwarding, etc.) take place at a speed that makes other webmail operators look pedestrian.

Innovations galore– conversations, labels…

While most talk about GMail has centred about the 1 GB space it offers, the mail service offers a number of innovations that would make it worthwhile even without all that storage space.

Perhaps the most prominent of these is the concept of conversations. Quite simply conversations in GMail refer to a group of messages on the same subject that have been exchanged by two people. So if I sent a mail to the editor and he replied to me and I in turn responded to his reply, all three messages would be grouped under a conversation in GMail. Clicking on the conversation would show me a list of the messages exchanged, with the latest in the series opened and the others arranged in tabs.

Composing and reading e-mail is quite easy. One can even choose to open the original mail in a separate window while replying to it. The advertisements that appear on the right hand side of the pages are relevant to the context of the message. For instance when I received a message from a software company, the page displaying the message had text advertisements on software. A welcome change from Yahoo! that has been thrusting Personal and Dating advertisements on almost every page. Google says that the advertisements are automatically generated .

Another little tweak is the introduction of labels. Whereas other webmail sites let you to store messages in different folders, GMail goes a step ahead by letting users add labels to messages or conversations. If that does not sound very different from mail folders then consider the fact that once you allot a label to a conversation, all subsequent mails in that conversation automatically get slotted under that label without your needing to transfer mail to a particular folder! You can also add stars to messages that merit special attention.

GMail's powerful search option allows you to search according to a number of parameters - term used, date, person who sent the mail, etc.

Running right through GMail is Google’s phenomenal search facility. You can search e-mail messages for words or phrases or even search the Web from the Gmail Inbox. Incidentally, if you are the type who dislikes using the mouse, there is an assortment of keyboard shortcuts at your disposal.

Although I used the e-mail ID liberally and signed up for a few newsletters, spam has been conspicuous by its absence – something I wish I could say about other webmail services.

Here come the bugs

Of course, that is not to say all is well with GMail. The service is still in its beta version and comes with its share of bugs. For one, GMail functions only with the newest versions of most browsers and does not work at all with Opera. Mind you, Google is said to be working on this and the final release of the service should work with all browsers. There is also the matter of reliability – I have not yet received a mail I sent out to my VSNL account more than a week ago. Logging in to GMail also occasionally poses problems – the box containing the login details does not appear, although the remainder of the page does. You cannot save drafts or automatically forward e-mail. There is no POP access – so forget about trying to access GMail from your e-mail client.

What the future has in store

Google says that it will iron out most of GMail’s bugs and add services such as automatic forwarding, multiple language support and POP access when the service is finally released. There has been no talk of fees as yet, although paid membership has not been ruled out. As matters stand, GMail will offer subscribers a fast, feature packed e-mail service with 1 GB of storage space at no cost. Whatever happens, webmail will never be the same again. We are not complaining.

nimishdubey@gmail.com