Inbox: A New Email Service App From Google

|

google-inbox-new-service

It seems like Google is never cease to amaze us with its latest invention.

Recently, the company has introduced a new email app. It comes from the same team that builds Gmail, yet the app is intended as something completely different from Gmail.

The app name is Inbox. It is available to a limited user group only, and will be expanding its user pool via an invite system similar to the one that Google used for Gmail. It is available cross-platform, however, as an app for iOS, web and Android. You can also email Google at inbox@google.com to request access, if you don’t like your chances of getting an invite from a friend.

The difference between Inbox and Gmail lies on the way it provide your information in a way that’s aimed at making content contextually relevant instead of just presented as it comes in. Email’s evolution has resulted in an unwieldy system – what began as system for occasional correspondence from a single virtual location is now something with take with us everywhere, with a volume that can baffle users. Inbox has a number of features to try to help email users stay on top of things, including Bundles (a way to group similar types of email together automatically, for instance all receipts); Highlights (which brings up flight information, event details, and media from close friends and family so you don’t miss them); and a variety of Google Now type features listed as Reminders, Assists and Snoozes that act as a built-in to-do list, complete with contextual information finders, like listing opening hours next to a restaurant when you have a meeting there booked.

Inbox looks like a project with some promise, still it leaves a big question of why this app needs to exist outside Gmail. It seems like Google is worried about these features turning off longtime users, so the company will keep the experiment in the form of an independent app before integrating it back in. Here is Inbox’s official video promotion: