Keith Coleman

"For those of you senders who are interested in this feature, the most basic requirements are including a standard "List-Unsubscribe" header in your email with a "mailto" URL and, of course, honoring requests from users wishing to unsubscribe. You'll also need to follow good sending practices, which in a nutshell means not sending unwanted email (see our bulk sending guidelines for more information)." - Keith Coleman

It's funny, but I'm so pragmatic when it comes to marking spam that I'd never think to mark a newsletter as spam unless I'd specifically never requested it. It would be great if Gmail compiled some metrics on whether I read a given newsletter, in the same way that Reader does for feeds. It'd be great if I could go to a page that would remind me that of the 20 newsletters I get, I never (or almost never) read 8 of them, and would I like to unsubscribe? - Kevin Fox

Does Google use the action of reporting spam to shape their spam filters for everyone? It's one thing if it shapes the personal spam filter (if I'm unsubscribing from something, I don't want it and don't care where it's going), but I'd hate to see legitimate syndicated email get blacklisted because of regular subscriber churn rates. It's odd that "report spam" and "unsubscribe" are in the same action. - Mark Trapp

The button I would want is "Unsubscribe, and if they send me another one, mark that as spam." - Seth

Seth: Or the 'Send as last word' button, which will send your email and automatically bounce further emails from the person. - Kevin Fox

The line between spam and non-spam is pretty blurred: Google apparently has a whitelist from trusted newsletter senders for this feature (as they say the dialog won't be displayed for spammers), but where do sites fit in which send dozens never-opted-in-to "x wants to be your friend" or "y updated their address book" etc. messages? - Philipp Lenssen

(And why does the button read "Unsubscribe *and report spam*", when they say they only use whitelisted non-spam senders to trigger this feature anyway, and also ask senders to support the auto-unsubscribe option?) - Philipp Lenssen

I'm really happy to see this is finally out. Philipp, I'm guessing that this feature is based on sender reputation (computed from spam reports), not a manual whitelist. At least that's how it was supposed to be done. I agree with the "needs unsubscribe" button comments -- many people use "report spam" to mean unsubscribe unfortunately. Also, the unsubscribe option should appear in the little arrow menu between "delete" and "report phishing". - Paul Buchheit

I hope other email providers adopt this approach as well -- unsubscribe should be part of the standard email interface. Also, if you aren't seeing this in Gmail, be sure to reload (I had to). - Paul Buchheit

"I'm guessing that this feature is based on sender reputation (computed from spam reports), not a manual whitelist." Paul, but that's exactly what doesn't make sense with the buttons. If you pressing "it's spam" is supposed to influence what is spam and what's not, and this dialog will only show for currently-defined-as-non-spammers senders, then you'd be forced to mark them as spam to unsubscribe (because the button reads "unsubscribe *and* report spam"). - Philipp Lenssen

Ah, Google added an update to their post: "Update (1:50pm): If you want to unsubscribe without reporting the message as spam, click "show details" in the top-right corner of the message, then click "Unsubscribe from this sender."" - Philipp Lenssen

Ahhhh safe, familiar Beta. - EricaJoy

im using back to beta :) - Georges Harik

I'm back too :) - Kaspar Minosiants

Congrats! Who would have thought hide-able labels and drag-and-drop would be the features to bring Gmail out of beta? ;-) - Kevin Fox

Kevin LOL - Susan Beebe

Sweet. - Paul Buchheit

I don't have it yet though. - Paul Buchheit

Keith, dude, this blog post is too long. I can't figure out what changes you've made (complicated by the fact that I don't have the feature yet)! - Ana

It is seriously wordy. I think the new feature is that they added a red line to the graph ;) - Paul Buchheit

Maybe they A-B tested "label" vs. "move to" and move is about to win Thunderdome style - Daniel J. Pritchett

Here's the "what's new" post: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009... The link I posted above is to Michael Leggett's overview of how we got from original Gmail labels to today's labels. It includes the interim changes that we launched a while ago. - Keith Coleman

I'm glad that the settings let me hide them all, even Spam :) - Sam Grover

Great information. Good use of Friend Feed. - Bob DeMarco

Nice! - Kevin Fox

Here's what you get when you move to the Google Apps cloud! ¶ * Lengthy downtimes when your internet connection breaks down or Google's server has a bug. ¶ * The restriction to use RATHER SMALL FILES ONLY (but saved on THEIR computer)! ¶ * The thrill of wondering whether the government recently "backed up" your data to check up on you. ¶ As a bonus, your software may be removed any time that Google decides to end the service! - Philipp Lenssen

PS: Just kidding. I guess :) - Philipp Lenssen

Philipp, that's pretty silly. Google supports offline access and storage for Gmail (with Docs presumably coming soon, or is it out already?) and you could always use your beloved Outlook with Gmail. I'm pretty sure it's more likely that you're going to lose or trash your own computer than Google's going to discontinue the service without notice, but you can keep it both places, just to... more... - Kevin Fox

Kevin, you were thinking of Gmail, but I was thinking of Google Docs (the eBay description I satirized was a take on cloud computing vs desktop computing and did not specifically refer to email or the Outlook product sold -- it referred to "Google Apps"). In Google Docs, I was indeed hitting file limits when preparing a book recently (Google helped out though). As far as Google ending... more... - Philipp Lenssen

google notebook's still there, just not the toolbar version for firefox, but i always used a bookmarklet anyway. google pages going away will be annoying though, i liked using it to try random bits of html/css stuff & although i can use opera unite for most of the same stuff now it does require my laptop to stay on+online - immaterial

Congrats to Darren & the GMail team! This is so awesome. - Jess Lee

Thanks, Jess! - Darren

So are we on for hiking? - Jim Norris

Wow, that was one of the more 'out there' ideas I never thought would actually make it to the head of the feature queue. Awesome!! - Kevin Fox

This was one of the very earliest Gmail brainstorming ideas (from before there was any Gmail). It's very cool to see it live! Gmail labs is a great idea Keith. - Paul Buchheit

It's not working on mine. :-( I turned it on in Labs and my UI has the extra line of space under the To: box but I can add several people and it makes no suggestions. Tell me who my friends are!!! :-) - Kevin Fox

Very cool :) Happy Sneezy Sleepy LOL!! - Susan Beebe

These labs are continually coming up with stuff that genuinely help! Keep it up! - Dan Walters

It works for me. I would post a screenshot, but editing images (to remove email addresses) is nearly impossible on my mac due to lack of mspaint. - Paul Buchheit

You could install VMWare to get mspaint, I suppose. - Kevin Fox

Why overkill and install VMWare when you can just install Paintbrush for the Mac? http://paintbrush.sourceforge.net/ - Edmund Tay

Nice - I always want to peak at my contact list to see who I'm missing - BEX

awesome. glad we got this out. - Dustin

Great! - Stanislas Jourdan

Very nice :) Now only if Gmail would stop asking me "Send message without a subject?" - Ralph Harik

@Ralph Would you rather like a lab feature that replaces empty subjects with "Don't you like informative subjects so that you can organize your emails?". That's so much better for your receivers :) - Jérôme Flipo

@Jérôme Ideally, I would like Gmail to keep track of the contacts I send email to without a subject line. Having to deal with the popup every time, slows me down. It's ok if Gmail asks me once or twice per contact, to learn my preference. However, after that it becomes frustrating to deal with. It can replace empty subjects with the first X characters of my email. - Ralph Harik

+1 Jérôme! :) - Stanislas Jourdan

Have features been graduating out of labs? I'm looking forward to seeing some of the more helpful, less controversial features graduating to the beta version. (Heh. Graduating to beta...) - Kevin Fox

++kfox, start graduating stuff! :) - Jenna Bilotta

Rolling out to all accounts now... - Keith Coleman

I like the name "floaty bar" - Benjamin Golub

Hmm, gmail.com won't load on my android at all for some reason. Other sites load fine, so it's not my network connection. Maybe it's not rolled out to my account yet? - Evan Parker

Floaty bar: the best feature name since Maps added floaty balls. - Jim Norris

It would be great if the Android Gmail app got a similar facelift, since I doubt I would use this site over the native app. Guess Google's left hand isn't talking to the right. - Daniel Sims

Ah, gmail.com finally loaded. Slick, but mobile web apps, even with gears, can't come close to equaling native apps on android yet. Loading the new version of gmail in my android browser (by hitting refresh after already loading the page once), it took 15 seconds to display my inbox. Opening the andriod gmail app, it only takes ~4s from a cold start, and less than 1s from a warm start (re-opening the app after having used it a couple minutes earlier). - Evan Parker

Its really good. Like it alot. - Roberto Bonini

Works really well. Now if I can use that on the native gmail on iPhone... - brainno722 (Peter)

@daniel, the Android Gmail app did get a face lift, its awesome, you can run the magic firmware on your G1, it has a sort of floaty bar in it and it way faster than the dream gmail app, if you want to learn how to get the latest build, head over to http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthr... - Kyle Weller

This is quite amazing. Been using it all day instead of mail. Sometimes I'll use mail to know new stuff has come in but the Gmail interface is so much more fluid and easy to use. Labels make it pretty nice too! - Brandon Titus

haha i just did that mistake. accidentally send an email. ah i wish i had that feature 1 hour ago! - Eren Emre Kanal

That's a BIG Feature! - directeur

Sanjeev will finally be happy! - Bay Chang

Yes I am! - Private Sanjeev

I could have used this a few times when I was working at the G!;-) - John Piscitello

this is awesome ... at this point everyone should be using gmail! - Jay

@Paul Thanks for your original blog post on undo -- It came at a time I was trying to convince some that a 5 second delay would bring way more value than it would harm. It was nice to be able to say, "Well, Paul thinks so." - Michael Leggett

i just used this for the first time a little bit ago. it was awesome! - Dustin

It's very cool. I just used undo on a message I sent in 2002 and now I have my old job back. Thanks gmail! :-) - Kelly Norton

@Kelly Undo Send only let's you undo for 5-10 sec after you send the message. What you want is our Custom Time feature - http://mail.google.com/mail... :) - Michael Leggett

@Michael :) - minus-one

You could always use http://www.deferredsender.com if you want a time window of more than 5-10s - Deepak Jois

I've been waiting for this for a long time. - Benjamin Golub

@Michael Leggett Unfortunately, that won't work either. It will only undo as far back as April 1, 2004! - Anne Bouey

"And in the spirit of open communications, we designed this feature using Internet standards such as XMPP, RTP, and H.264, which means that third-party applications and networks can choose to interoperate with Gmail voice and video chat." Come on libpurple! - EricaJoy

Awesome! Where was this last week when I wanted to video-conference in to all the election night festivities from China? :) - Ana

I wish it didn't require installing a plugin though. I'm sure there's a good reason for it but without it working out of the box I doubt I'll ever be able to use it to chat with certain people (my Grandparents use Gmail but I don't think they'd know how to install this). - Benjamin Golub

@Ben Send them to http://mail.google.com/videoch... and tell them to press the big button? - EricaJoy

1/2 Skype + 1/2 Tokbox + Google = death to Skype and Tokbox? - George Lee from twhirl

Benjamin, you're right. And if you have to install something, why not just make it a standalone program? Like an update to the Google Talk client? My mum and sister both use Google Talk but they've never used the web interface of Gmail because they know how to use Outlook Express already. - Tony Ruscoe

no linux support yet =( - Evan Parker

Side-note: When you have Google Update installed as Firefox plugin, then clicking Google's installation button won't trigger a security dialog, but just start the installation. - Philipp Lenssen

@Evan If libpurple can get this implemented, you could just use Pidgin. - EricaJoy

A plugin? Reminds me of the original Google video. Why don't you use flash Keith? - Paul Buchheit

Tony: Updating Google Talk leaves all the Mac users out. Now if I could just get a free VNC client or something that punched through firewalls well on Macs I could install this for my parents now instead of next time I see them. - Brett Cannon

Brett: If you use the listening VNC viewer, you can have your parents make their VNC server connect to you. - Gabe

'Bout time!!! (also, awesome!) - Paul Buchheit

yes! finally! yihu! - Eren Emre Kanal

I've already been making heavy use of this as I'm working on a paper and my co-authors and I have been sending lots of files back and forth. It's super-awesome! - Ruchira S. Datta

yeah, this is pretty bad ass. i'm glad we finally shipped this thing. - Dustin

Love it. - Caleb Elston

wait, are linux users not supposed to use this? - Ashwin Bharambe

The Gmail/Apps tradeoff would go away if Apps admins could change the favicon (via <link rel="icon"...>?) -- and then this would be perfect. - Tudor Bosman

What Tudor said - I really like having the read count there, and a favicon would also make my bookmarks toolbar easier to use. - Bret Taylor

I like this in principle, but in truth as an infinite inbox user my title would read, at this instant, "Inbox (7780)" which doesn't mean much. I totally want custom favicons. Didn't we used to offer that? - Kevin Fox

Looking at the page source, it seems that this may actually be on the way: <link rel="shortcut icon" href="https://www.google.com/a..." type="image/x-icon"> -- the favicon URL is already per-domain. Yay! - Tudor Bosman

I much prefer this order to the default - Howard Trickey

Great idea. - James Hull

1. I want a count of the # of unread messages that are above the first read message. 2. My tabs are too small, I want the number before "Inbox". - Jim Norris

Who wrote this blog post btw (I mean really wrote it) -- I agree it was quite good - Carl Sjogreen

Keith wrote most of it. - Michael Leggett

You should write an iPhone app that does voice recording and then sends it off to google for voice2text and immediately adds it to the task list. I usually think of tasks while driving, and it's difficult to type on the iPhone without bumping into the other cars. - Paul Buchheit

'"Many people use their email inbox to store notes, reminders, or to do lists. Denote makes this simple and easy on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Use Denote to capture a thought that is keeping you awake or save a brilliant brainstorm before it is forgotten. By getting ideas out of your mind and into your inbox as quickly as possible, Denote frees your attention back to the moment at hand.... more... - Michael Muller

@paul that would be called jott :) - Christian Burns

I tried jott a long time ago. Making a phone call was just too slow. April tried their iPhone app and had some kind of problem with it, so I never bothered. Being integrated with Gmail is kind of a big plus too. - Paul Buchheit

@Paul That was my first feature request when I first got wind of Tasks. :) I don't think I'm allowed to post the teams response. - EricaJoy