Google attempts to reinvent email with new Inbox

Last Wednesday, when Google announced their new “Inbox” app, which heralded a supposedly radical new approach to email management, very few people were 100% sold on it. Early reports from beta-testers, however, has been incredibly positive so far, so much so that invites to participate in the trial have even been sold on eBay for as much as $205! Everyone invited to the Inbox trial will also be given three invites to give away as they desire, with the invites depicted as “Golden Tickets,” and interested parties can email Google themselves ([email protected]) asking for an invite, though the waiting list is undoubtedly rather hefty.

Invites to participate in the Google Inbox trial have been sold on eBay for as much as $205!

The service, which will be available as a Chrome app and as an iOS and Android app, delivers a new take on email that aims to make email organisation more straightforward and the Inbox itself more useful. New features implemented in Google's new service include a “Reminders” button for messages that you wan't brought to your attention later and “Highlight” pins you can put in posts and messages that are particularly important. The Highlight feature also allows information within an email to be highlighted, which will be particularly handy for flight information or event tickets (for example).

Google Inbox

The most radical feature that's being touted by the company however, is a refined version of the “Bundles” feature that was introduced to Gmail last year. This allows users to bundle their own custom collections of emails together or have them automatically bundled by category (news, promos, social network updates, finances etc.), which could potentially save users hours of sifting through junk mail. There's also a handy “To Do” list, which can be synced with your emails so that your messages and calendar work as one.

The app, which was created by the same team who built Gmail almost a decade ago, follows Google's new commitment to “Material Design” principles

Sundar Pichai, Google's senior vice president of Chrome and Apps said “We get more email now than ever, important information is buried inside messages, and our most important tasks can slip through the cracks, especially when we’re working on our phones.” He feels that “For many of us, dealing with email has become a daily chore that distracts from what we really need to do, rather than helping us get those things done,” and posits Inbox as a solution to this problem. The app, which was created by the same team who built Gmail almost a decade ago, follows Google's new commitment to “Material Design” principle, which takes many of its cues from social media and allows for (according to Pichai) a “Unified experience across platforms and device sizes.” Whilst Microsoft tried (and failed) to implement a similar principle with Windows 8, Google's efforts have proven far more effective thus far, so things are looking good for Inbox. At the very least it has to be better than Hotmail!

Benjamin Hiorns is a freelance writer and musician from Kidderminster in the UK who has been struggling with Gmail for a while now. He has high hopes for Inbox.