Google free webmail, Gmail, is a service that inspires fierce loyalty among its users – even if its total market share pales in comparison to that of Yahoo Mail. The reasons for Gmail’s success can’t easily be boiled down, but a few of the stronger points are a clean interface, advanced organization tools, massive storage, and features designed to accommodate the lazy. Three such “step skipping” features, designed to help users save a few precious seconds, have been implemented in the last week.
The first two are the “Bob” labs from Gmail. Previously dubbed “Don’t Forget Bob” and “Got the Wrong Bob?,” these two labs were designed to look at patterns in your email usage. If you normally send message to Tom, Charles, Clarissa, Dee, and Bob, then you only need to type in one or two of those names and Google will suggest other likely recipients. Users can then click on the suggestions to CC them on the current email.
“Got the Wrong Bob?” takes this a step further by notifying you when a potential misstep has occurred in your “To:” field. If you were to be sending a message like the one above, and you were to send it to all the expected recipients but selected a different Bob – say, one you emailed once to close out an eBay transaction – Google would ask you for a quick confirmation before sending the message.
The third feature is designed for the mobile interface. For those of you who, like me, have big, ungraceful fingers that often push the wrong button on the smartphone’s interface, this feature is a minor miracle. After many actions on Gmail’smobile interface, users will now be able to select an “undo” option that prevents you from wasting time manually undoing your latest mistake.
As with many Google features, these releases have been met with some degree of controversy. Frank Watson of Search Engine Watch, for example, brings up potential privacy issues with Google examining our mail usage patterns.
[via Search Engine Watch and the Gmail Blog]
