“We may have launched Gmail on April Fools’ Day, but the last 15 years have been no joke. And we’re looking forward to what’s to come.”
Tom Holman, Senior Product Manager, Gmail
Back in 2004, email looked a lot different than it does today. Inboxes were overtaken by spam, and there was no easy way to search your inbox or file messages away. Plus, you had to constantly delete emails to stay under the storage limit.
On its 15th year anniversary, Google revealed that Gmail was made to address these problems, and it’s grown into a product that 1.5 billion users rely on to get things done every day.
Describing what is next for Gmail, Tom Holman, Senior Product Manager, Gmail said the service that has been different from its launch will now become more assistive.
You may have already used Smart Compose, an AI-powered feature that helps you write emails quicker. It’s already saved people from typing over 1 billion characters each week.
Holman said: “Today, we’re updating Smart Compose to include more languages (Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese) and bringing it to Android (previously, it was only available on Pixel 3 devices), with iOS coming soon.”
Smart Compose is also getting, well, smarter. It will personalize suggestions for you, so if you prefer saying “Ahoy,” or “Ello, mate” in your greetings, Smart Compose will suggest just that. It can also suggest a subject line based on the email you’ve written.
Next up, you can decide when your email gets delivered to someone else’s inbox. A new feature has been added and it lets you schedule email to be sent at a more appropriate date or time, which is helpful if you’re working across time zones, or want to avoid interrupting someone’s vacation.
Lastly, you can now take action without leaving your inbox. You can respond to a comment thread in Google Docs, browse hotel recommendations and more, directly within emails. This way you don’t have to open a new tab or app to get things done.