It has been universally acknowledged that Gmail is the best email service, though it may not have been the first email service launched.
Gmail was launched on April 1st in 2004 and since then it has completely revolutionized the way people use email. The application remains technologically ahead of all other email apps becoming the world’s most popular and largest service for sending mail.
Search and Storage
Today, with more than a 500 million-user base, it is almost a religion, being the dominant service. The basic reason for this could be that Gmail was able to solve the basic problem of mail, which is the storage and search functionalities. It completely blows out the competition with the sheer gigabyte of storage that it offers.
The search features in Gmail were a great leap forward. It made it possible for the user to have the Google web-searching feature in the inbox, saving a lot of time and making life easier as well.
Never Static
After incorporating these two important features, Gmail did not merely cruise along or sit on its laurels. It still remains innovative even after attaining the top position. Gmail has continued to add other user-centered features, like auto save for a mail that is still not ready. The priority inbox is another user-centered features that allow only important mails to be stored in it. The best feature of them all is the integration of Gmail with other Google services, like Google + and Google Drive. The chat and calendar were always a part of the mail service.
Updates
Gmail has always been offering useful updates and small fixes interspersed with the bigger roll out of new features, so users are always looking forward to some new feature and the service never feels dated or lacking. Whenever Google realizes that users are not too happy with some service aspect, changes have been made immediately.
Rough Patches
This is not to say that there have been no rough patches in Gmail’s journey with users. There have been certain redesigns that have not always proved successful. The new inbox that filters out promotional emails and social ones have also led to some confusion among some users. Another disastrous attempt was the launching of Buzz, which was to be a social networking system within Gmail in the year 2010, which failed to take off.
New Gmail Feature
An upcoming feature added to Gmail is that you will be able to directly send emails to your Google+ contacts from the Gmail site, even if you don’t have their email address. This is a very practical feature, but some might consider it rather invasive. Anyone on Google+ will be able to email you with this option, unless you make adjustments to your settings to block this feature. You can view this feature as you start to type out the name of a contact on your ‘To field’ while sending an email message. Your Gmail matching contacts start appearing first followed by Google+ contacts or connections.
Ensuring Privacy
However, as mentioned, there are some control features that you can implement, so that you can specify who is able to send you email. You can select No One, Circles, Extended Circles or Anyone in Google+. To ensure greater privacy, your email id will not be visible to connections in Google+, unless you have sent an email to the person and vice versa. In a step forward from this, mails from your Google+ circles appear in the Primary mails, whereas those who are not in your circles get filtered and they start appearing in the Social section. Such users can start a chat or an email conversation with you only alter you respond to them or if you add the person to your Google+ Circle.
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