Google invited members of the press to its main campus in Mountain View today to unveil Gmail Labs.
Gmail Labs is essentially a stage for Google employees to develop new features for Gmail under the public eye. Starting at 6pm PT tonight, all Gmail users in the US and UK will see a new tab in the settings area called “Labs”. The tab will show a selection of beta features, such as “Pictures in Chat”, which (unsurprisingly) puts portraits in chat sessions, and “Mouse Gestures”, which allows you to navigate Gmail using mouse gestures.
After testing these features, users will be able to submit feedback directly to the developers themselves. Google will decide to incorporate some of these features into Gmail as default enhancements based on the feedback and total usage of each. This makes potential beta testers out of the millions of Gmail users out there (although not all Gmail features under development will go through Labs first).
Gmail product manager Keith Coleman says that any Google employee can add their creations to this tab once they go through a simple code check. Pretty much any idea will fly, even recreating the game Snake within Gmail, or creating a fun feature that locks users out from Gmail for 15 minutes so they can take a break. Developers are given full access to the entire Gmail code base, so they can modify almost anything (although Coleman avoided the question of whether a feature could be developed that removed ads).
Google isn’t saying when they might open the development environment up to the public, but they have shown interest in doing so eventually. The company has encouraged internal development for Gmail by holding a 2-day hack-a-thon, and of course, Googlers are encouraged to use 20% of their time on projects unrelated to their main positions.
Google has traditionally tested feature additions to Gmail within the company by making them available first to other employees. This is the first time they’ve opened the testing process and brought in outsiders on such a large scale (however, they have held small-scale usability tests with visitors).
It’s yet to be seen whether Gmail Labs will evolve into a more sophisticated development environment, perhaps one that integrates Open Social and other social networking standards. Coleman says this Open Social is something that has been discussed internally, but no announcements regarding its integration are being made now.
Another Gmail PM, Todd Jackson, was also present at the event. See our video interview with Todd here.
Here are some screenshots of the Gmail Labs features that will soon be available:
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And what have Yahoo and Microsoft been doing with their mail-apps?
Nothing.
Google leaves them in the dust.
I am a huge fan of Gmail. I have been using them since the private beta stages. But when the heck are they going to add folders????
Google is so innovative in its future web strategy. Apart from their own bread and butter closed source search engine, every other project which they are now involved in, is completely open source.
Many of their open source projects may eventually fail, but all they need are a few to really break big and they may leave Yahoo and Microsoft even further behind, both in revenues and in marketshare.
Whilst both Yahoo and Microsoft are playing catch up with Search, Google can play around in other key web applications, such as Email.
I have an Gmail account which I must admit I don’t use that often. But Google can develop a lot of new and interesting features with Gmail, then it may become my email address of choice.
Chris: aren’t labels good enough? That’s what I use.
This is a great move by google, I surprised its taken this long to do.
Just assume the tags are folders. Just make yourself not put two tags on the same mail.
And if you auto archive mails you don’t want to see in the inbox.
Happy now?
@Chris – Yeah, labels are way better than Folders.
maybe this is not a good place for a suggestion, but I can’t tell what I’d give for the keystroke to lock windows (the windows button + L) to also change my status in gmail to “busy”. I think that would be incredible.
Yea I really don’t see any use for folders. Labels work the same way. Make usability much better.
want to use !
My gmail account (via google app) is at 32% of the 6Gb cap. can anyone beat that?
I am a G fanatic. google docs + gmail are a necessity to me now. It took a while to migrate all my outlook data but i finally did and never looked back again.
Why only US/UK?
Yah, so unfair. People who marketed Gmail in other countries and who have been Gmail users since alpha/beta are excluded just because we’re outside the US/UK.
So much for helping them beta test their other Gmail features in the past. All efforts were for nothing. They ended up locking alpha/beta testing regionally than working with the people who are more serious with testing bleeding-edge technologies.
—-
Gmail will never have “folders” because they replaced it with “Labels” or “Tags”. That’s what made Gmail popular (other than the fact that it’s Google), if they add “folders” then they are no different than Live Mail and Yahoo Mail.
I’ve got an idea for a GMail feature to demo… take the beta tag off!
And after that if there’s time, make it load reliably in IE.
Unfortunately, I fail to see usefulness on any of those additions.
Signature rotator? What about signature picker?!
Superstars? What for!?
I’d like the possibility to have embedded images alone a whole lot more.
C’mon Gmail team, you can do much better than this. Really, I found the feature set mediocre…
… but maybe it’s just me having a bad day
H’m. It is 6:15 and I don’t see it…
It’s past 6, I don’t see a Labs tab, does anybody else see a Labs tab?
Unbelievable… 20 minutes after the deadline and millions of B-E-T-A accounts have not changed yet.. we should sue google immediately LOL
No Labs tab here.
One day – one day! – they we’ll let me sort my email by date – i know that – it will happen
would any of you please tell G that i do not need to “search” my inbox – but only – very simply – just to “sort” it?
thx
Nothing for me either, signed in/out – no dice.
Looking forward to it. Still nothing for me on the East Coast.
I hope they’re bundling Canada into the US role out…
I’m at 33% usage.
By god, I wish my company (30,000+) would just deploy Gmail already… it’s a total nightmare searching 5 years of email split across 14 different Outlook PSTs.
Wow…. It’s almost two hours past 6 PDT. What is going on?
Looking at the items that were in your screenshots i’m dissappointed…
*I WOULD LOVE TO SEE A TODO LIST ADDON TO GMAIL SOMEWHERE!!!*
Right now I send myself reminders/todos in emails to myself. Its a waste. Just a simple todo list on the side of gmail with checkboxes will do wonders since I leave gmail open almost all the time! Thanks!!!
Here we go. I see it. Sweet. Thanks Google.
Chad, have you looked at using Remember the Milk’s GMail sidebar for task management?
(and since everyone else is commenting… I have yet to see a Labs tab)
Henry Work,
I’m in agreement with Chris, I’d like “real” folders over labels. And no, I don’t think labels are the same for this reason: folders can be heirarchical, so I don’t have to see and be bothered by infrequently used labels unless I’m looking for something specific.
Agh! It still hasn’t happened… What ever happened to 6.00pm Pacific? It’s bloody 8.49!
right there with ya, still waiting to see it on my gmail
For those who aren’t seeing Labs show up in their Gmail yet, Google actually said it’ll take a day or so for them to roll it out to everyone.
I still don’t see it!!
You guys are dreaming if you think this makes a difference to any competitors. Y! signs up more people in a quarter than the entire userbase of GMail. GMail isn’t even 2nd.
Anyway I love it..I liked the signature hack.
@Fez
I am at 53% usage!
The role out should include early beta testers, without this regional cap
How about a general API, so I can…
- Sync contacts
- Plugin other IM networks for archiving chats in Gmail (MSN, Yahoo etc.)
- Aggregate labels with tags from my other services (Flickr, del.icio.us etc)
- Use Gmail to archive *all* my communication…including phone calls (http://imran.al...n-remember.html)
What I’d really love to see is server-side plugin/extension support, so if I wade between machines, I don’t need to worry about Greasemonkey or FF extensions being installed. I’d always have RTM “installed”, as it were, no matter where I accessed Gmail from, say. Seems weird to me that there’s no way to even tie a central repo for this to any given acct.
Still waiting for HTML templates (and a different one for each account), I’d like to have put my logo in e-mails I send.
I think they should first improve its anti spam filters before socialize it.
Have they fixed all the Gmail problems with Opera?
Yey!! Got the stuff. Added quick links and pictures for faces. Wont bother with the other ones, but would really like to see a todolist (preferrable categorizable). I guess I’ll just stick with RTM addon for now.
By the way, I am from Norway but I always have my language setting for US, in that way I can always get the latest google-features since they get launched for US first.
– love my Gmail
If you want hierarchical “folders”, then use the Folders4Gmail Greasemonkey script–that’s what it does. If you want folders, then you don’t want threaded conversations, because you can’t have both. RTM for Gmail works great–does way more than a simple to do list though. Superstars may indicate that someone is already working on a to do list that integrates Gmail with Calendar … maybe.
I hope they extend this to third party developers in the future. Imagine a platform coming out of a webmail service. How about starting by allowing some Greasemonkey scripts to run within Gmail, rather than the Firefox browser?
I’m in Australia have have the Labs tab – it’s not restricted to any region, obviously.
Glenn – a sub-folder is no different to a top level folder. If I archive a mail thread in a primary folder or a sub-folder, what on earth difference does it make? There is nothing technically mutually exclusive about hierarchical archiving and threaded mails. A folder is a folder is a folder.
@chris
Why do u need folders ? Google uses an alternative Labels which is most convenient that Folders…