The death of reader wasn't as bad as this for me. Soon after reader died, alternatives popped up left and right, and some of them are better than reader ever was.
What alternative is there to gmail/inbox? Unlike an RSS reader, I think it's much more difficult to make an email service that's close to being as good as gmail/inbox while having the same level of features, especially across platforms.
Sure, alternatives popped up, but wit the friction of finding something free and reliable, in my case at least, it resulted in abandoning my rss sources.
The problem is that the death of Reader also inflicted a death blow to blogs in general. Aggregation was entirely forfeited to Facebook, and clickbait became the norm for driving eyeballs, not fascinating writing that Readers shared and loved.
Also, "sort by magic" provided an excellent feed of articles to me in Reader, and all of the alternatives I tried either didn't have a comparable algorithm or their userbase was too small to train it.
What do you consider better than reader was? I'm still looking for something that scratches that itch in the same way so I'd really like to hear your opinion.
> A radically analytical approach is powerful, but it can blind you to the factors that cannot be measured. Factors such as user passion.
This is not true. You can still align KPIs to stuff like that... The problem is looking at 'vanity metrics' or one-size-fits-all metrics like pure user growth, without proper segmentation of high-value and high-engagement users.
Or worse marketing/positioning failing to pull its weight and blaming the product. Or giving it a half-hearted attempt, limited resource/talent-wise, and then comparing the results 1-to-1 with other successful products which were heavily prioritized.
There's plenty of opportunity to miss the boat. Aligning metrics with business goals is a dynamic process, not one-size-fits-all, which is lost on many business in the big data world.
The part that gets me the most about killing Inbox and forcing users to go back to Gmail is the accumulation of Pinned emails.
I was happy to oblige to using pins when I transitioned from Gmail -> Inbox. Stars were replaced with pins but there is no direct mapping. But now that Inbox is dead, the years of pinned emails are effectively useless when they should've been starred in Gmail. It's a frustrating experience for users especially when this is not the first time for Google.
This is why as an Android Developer, I'm in the majority community opinion believing that Dart/Flutter/Fuschia shouldn't be trusted. These products/dev tools are going to be in perpetual beta and not worth taking the risk of going to prod with.
I'll miss reminders the most because I use my mail client as my ToDo lost as well. I switched to Gmail preemptively and I'm back to writing emails to myself again...
This. My inbox is a to-do list for things I need to act on. Anything else gets snoozed until it needs to be done. Having non-email to-do items here too worked so well for me. Having to move back to a separate to-do list will be a pain. If they could just add this I'll happily return to Gmail.
Gmail’s tasks are inferior to Inbox’s reminders. For one they don’t have recurring tasks. The ease of creating a reminder and snoozing it just like an email was killer. Of the hundreds of todo apps made over the decades, Inbox finally nailed it. I’ll greatly miss Inbox.
It does, but it’s a separate list to the right of email. It’s easy to forget about it. The way Inbox made tasks no different than email was something special. Hit T, type the task out, enter, and it’s now impossible to ignore.
I think people are overlooking the big picture here. Inbox had a lot of machine learning features that Gmail lacked, like Smart Reply. I think this was just because they really couldn't afford to run Smart Reply on all the incoming email. Now they can, so Gmail has gained Smart Reply and they no longer need to partition that out for cost reasons.
While Gmail still lacks some of the other email intelligence features that I will miss, like the Trips bundle, I have a feeling they will emerge in Gmail shortly.
I've only used Inbox since the very first day it was released, and I loved it; it's a simple mix of concepts that resulted in an experience that has made mail much more pleasant (and less of a hassle) to me. I don't think anyone that has intensively used Inbox in the last years may think even remotely that the new Gmail is a similar experience, because it definitely still has a completely different look and feel.
I think I'll switch back to Thunderbird on desktop for the time being, given that the hassle (and delays) of having several POP3 accounts configured on the Gmail website isn't really worth the effort without Inbox.
I don't see an endgame that wouldn't have resulted in outrage.
I doubt Google would be committed to keeping both Gmail and Inbox around forever.
Either Gmail would be merged into Inbox, or Inbox features would be merged into Gmail. Both of those choices would outrage a large group of users. Frankly it seems that getting rid of Inbox involves pissing off far fewer people than getting rid of Gmail.
I use and like inbox, mostly because I took straight away to using the snooze function - the best thing I've found in an email client, full stop. While this can apparently be done in Gmail now, I'd like to look for an alternative at this point - paid - to move from Google.
Any suggestions for an email client that has decent android support, and offers a snooze function?
Google Inbox did one evil thing. To delete an item in iOS's Inbox, you swipe left to right, whereas pretty much every other app in iOS you swipe right to left. This has thrown me into such confusion now in all apps that I'm happy to see Inbox go away.
It easier to keep my work account separate from my personal by using two apps (the majority of my work uses Inbox as well so I like to keep on the same).
I see in these comments a lot of bitterness, where I think there should be opportunity: if you think Google made a mistake in killing Inbox and it was a feature beloved by many users.. why don't you spin up your version of it? They have already done the hard part for you: the idea.
When google killed greader, Feedly, The old Reader and other products rose up to the challenge. They felt there was market, and they launched (or just changed and marketed better) their product.
I believe that the hacker news general attitude is correct that the idea is not the hard part. The hard part is execution and getting adoption. Inbox works and is use by many. Hundreds of functional imitations can/will die, even when readily available on github.
I don't agree with the conclusion that passionate users are going to take their passion elsewhere. This feels like more of an idle threat by a scorned user.
Eventually I failed to see much difference if Inbox and GMail app. I just deleted Inbox because it seemed redundant. Gmail isn’t that good either with their auto categories. I always have to go thru multiple folders to find mail that I was expecting and arrived, never rally know which folder they’ve put it. Is like your mom came into your room and cleaned it but she misplaced stuff and you’d have to find it.
If they'd just implement the reminders and grouping features in Gmail I'd be fine with this. I don't particularly care about how the UI looks. I use snoozed reminders so much and being able to unclutter my inbox with groups makes a huge difference. Doesn't seem like it would be hard to optionally include them in Gmail. Without them moving back to Gmail feels like a step backwards.
I'm up for a good Google hate as much as anyone (man alive, I could give a good rant on how they seem to be trying to screw up in the chat space), but is there any evidence that Inbox users are more passionate than the top N Gmail users when sorting on the passion index, where N = the number of Inbox users (and a likely small fraction of total Gmail users)? I highly doubt it.
I am convinced that in the roadmap of Gmail, the greatness of Inbox is planned to be integrated. This is my opinion only, and time will tell how wrong or right I am.
There are 2 Types of Gmail users, gmail.com and G Suite.
I think Google prefer maintaining two types of backends, rather than two types of front-ends.
I'd settle for them actually releasing new visual themes for Gmail. They've had the same cartoony themes for near 8 years now I think. Maybe longer. I liked them initially, but that was it. They don't even allow anyone to submit their own or anything like that....
Meanwhile in a different topic, people are criticizing Google for the confusion of having way too many chat services.
I think in the end, Google doesn't want more than one email service. If Inbox showed enough growth to someday replace Gmail, it might have had a chance.
im not sure whats going on in google when it comes to email, but i really hope when this new look is enabled again in 2 weeks i can still go back to classical...
Same here. I've been accepting the new look when prompted to try it out, but I keep switching back within a few hours. I hope those metrics mean something.
I'm sure one of their metrics is "time on site", which often doesn't distinguish between "spends more time because they enjoy the product" and "spends more time because they can't find the things they're looking for and are becoming very frustrated with your service"
Are you suggesting google is using their analytics data naively? With all due respect, these large tech corporations are ran by adults who understand user experience.
Then explain Material Design? When I have to hunt around and try to figure out what an icon actually means, that isn’t demonstrating an understanding of UX. Google UX is “great” if you already know how to use it. Apple UX by comparison is friendly even to complete rookies. The only Google UX I actually like is their search page.
The latest UI changes(all the rounded corners and soft shadows, for example) in Chrome and elsewhere seem to show that they're even moving away from Material Design too,after years of hyping it
I never bothered with Inbox because I figured Google would cancel it some day. I understands user's disappointment, but it can't be a surprise. This is what Google does.
It's amazing to me that a company with close to 90 000 employees and that attracts top talent can't find a way to support their services longer than a few years. How much does a handfull of indian engineers and space in their own datacenter cost?
Isn't that were US companies are outsourcing to? Why would Google use expensive Silicon Valley-engineers to do bugfixes on a product they'd rather cancel? Are you denying there's a price difference?
I can tell you that I am going through the experience for the 3rd time now of my entire team being let go in favor for engineers in India.
So far it seems to be like this.
1) Have a big spin up in the US. Create a new product in 1 year or less.
2) Stabilize the product over the 2nd year.
3) Slowly lay off US engineers and support teams in favor for guys in India.
Don't get me wrong, I have no issue with Indian engineers. The problem seems to be management cares about headcount and not quality. It would be one thing if we were being replaced by better engineers, but that is not the case.
I'm sure they could support all new services for a decade if they wanted to. But that's a costly commitment to make, to the point that exploratory projects like Inbox might never make it out of planning in the first place.
I use Inbox for all my mail. I'm fine with Inbox being EOL'ed because the migration is effortless and only relatively minor features remain in limbo.
My least favorite thing about Inbox was the low-density UI. I want side-bars. I want to be able to have a high-density list view. Inbox never integrated my hangouts transcripts. I'm fine with going back to a much-evolved GMail.
What alternative is there to gmail/inbox? Unlike an RSS reader, I think it's much more difficult to make an email service that's close to being as good as gmail/inbox while having the same level of features, especially across platforms.