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Gmail: a first look

Matt Loney ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 22 Apr 2004

What do you get with Gmail?
First of course, there is 1GB of space. This is significantly more than most other free email accounts, and also puts many corporate email allocations to shame. Google plans to subsidise the cost of all this space through advertising -- in the terms and conditions, you have to agree to Google serving targeted adverts. In place of banner ads or pop-ups, you get the familiar text-only Google ads ranged down the right-hand side of the window containing the email; they are not intrusive, and the ads only appear in your Gmail window -- they are not attached to emails that you send out. Below the ads come a couple of related links from Google’s search engine, picked according to the subject matter of the email. Google says that emails are scanned automatically, and that no personal information that could link subject matter to a name will be divulged to any advertiser. One issue that's raised by having 1GB of email is: how do you manage your emails and find those that are stored? Predictably, Gmail is search-based. It is also heavily thread-orientated and uses labels to classify threads, which Gmail calls 'discussions'. These are the three central themes of the service.

The inbox view, showing emails and threads, which are called 'discussions' in Gmail parlance. Labels, where assigned, are shown next to the subject.

Threading becomes apparent within your first few emails; instead of displaying every email by default, Gmail’s inbox view simply displays the first message of each thread, or discussion. Organisation is aided by labels. You can define as many labels as you wish, and Gmail has four types set up by default: Inbox, Starred (a simple highlighting device), Spam and Trash. Unlike folders, labels can overlap, meaning that mailing list items in your inbox from, say, Politechbot.org, can be labelled 'Politechbot', and all those concerning privacy could be labelled 'privacy'. You can then choose to display only Politechbot emails or only emails regarding privacy issues, but some emails will appear in both views. It’s a simple Boolean ‘OR’ function, and currently there's no way to apply other Boolean logic to the views. For instance, you cannot exclusively select those emails that are labelled both ‘Politechbot’ and ‘Privacy’ (‘AND’) or just those that are labelled ‘Politechbot’ but not ‘Privacy’ (‘NOT’), and so on.

User-defined labels are used instead of folders for organising emails and discussions. An email can be assigned any number of labels.

For finding emails, you'll probably rely heavily on Google’s search engine, which is typically and necessarily thorough. By default, it operates on content, subject and email addresses. Search options allow you to search any of these fields exclusively, identify which (if not all) labels should be searched, search for conversations that do not contain a particular word (again in a particular label if you like), and specify whether the search should be performed only on those discussions that have attachments. A useful date feature lets you search only those emails that arrived on a particular date or within a range of days, weeks or months from that date. Instead of displaying every matching email at the end of a search, Gmail displays the threads; you have to click on one to see the whole thread with matching words highlighted.

Search is used for finding old emails; the advanced search is particularly useful.

Alongside Search is the Filter option. This contains many of the same choices, allowing you to filter incoming emails by email address, subject, words either contained or missing in the content, and by whether they have attachments. For each filter, you can specify whether an email should skip the inbox and go straight to the archive, get a particular label assigned to it, or go straight to trash.

Users can create any number of filters to organise email as it arrives.

Archiving is a term that simply means an email (or discussion) ceases to show up in the inbox. It will still be included by default in searches, but that appears to be the only way to reach it -- there's no option to view the archive in Gmail. Beyond archiving, you can send emails and discussion to the Trash folder/label (which you can view). The only way to delete email forever (at least as far as the user is concerned -- Google specifically states in its terms that it will not guarantee that the data that makes up the email is ever actually wiped from its servers) is from the Trash folder. This, presumably, is Google putting weight behind its claim that Gmail users will never have to delete email again. Google has obviously paid a great deal of attention to the interface. Changing a search option has a corresponding effect on the discussions that are returned, but there is no apparent whole page refresh; only the list of returned discussions refreshes. It’s very slick in practice.

Emails are organised as discussions. Performing a search returns the entire discussion, which can then be browsed. The text-only adverts are shown down the right-hand side of this view.

Another nod to usability is contained in the keyboard shortcuts. These are turned off by default, but when turned on allow you to navigate between discussions, through emails within discussions, and perform most other essential functions without touching a mouse.

The mail settings window has only very basic options, such as switching on keyboard shortcuts (which are set to off by default).

Google has taken a characteristically simple approach with Gmail, which means, for instance, that there's no POP3 or SMTP access: you have to use Google’s Web interface. Also, the shortest username that Gmail will accept is six characters, which some people are bound to care about. In its terms and conditions, the company says the service can only be employed for personal use, but it's likely to find favour among many professionals at least as a backup email service, or as somewhere to forward all those emails with big attachments that eat up their miserly corporate space allocations.