Lovers of Google's Inbox will be disappointed to learn that the company is pulling the pin and shutting it down in six months' time. Some of Inbox's features have already made their way into the regular Gmail service, while others, it seems, will be gone forever.
When Inbox first launched in 2014, we didn't really know what to do with it. But after using it for a short time, many of us were sold. Its ability to intelligently bundle emails into useful categories, moving the most important emails to the top of the list instead of the most recent, was a gift from heaven for folk like tech writers and others who get bombarded with piles of messages daily.
Using intelligence from Google Now, it would handily stick all your flight and hotel bookings in a separate folder, and place all your online shopping receipts and tracking emails in their own spot. You could then make them all disappear at the click of the "done" tick, getting them out of your inbox without having to delete anything.
Inbox was where Google tested new email ideas like Smart Reply, snoozing emails and others. Many of these made it through into a revamped Gmail inbox that launched in April this year.
However, the bundling did not, it seems. New Gmail uses tabs and tags to categorize certain messages but doesn't seem to have Inbox's intelligence around travel, for example.
In a blog post, Gmail's product manager Matthew Izatt explained that Inbox was a great place to experiment with new features, but the Google team wanted to "take a more focused approach that will help us bring the best email to everyone" – not just those of us who knew about Inbox.
Here's hoping that bundling makes it through as a Gmail option before the switch gets turned off in March 2019. And for those in mourning the loss, you can check out a transition guide to help you readjust.
Source: Google Blog