Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) will begin offering a new feature this week the company calls “Priority Inbox.” The inbox will automatically predict which incoming emails are more likely to be read and therefore important, over mail from senders that are likely to get ignored.
Some are worried that Gmail is getting a bit too nosy, but other time-strapped e-mail readers could embrace the technology as a better way to check email. Here are the big features – and possible drawbacks.
The new application will split a Gmail user’s inbox into three sections, “Important and unread,” “Starred,” and “Everything Else.” The goal of the priority inbox is to free users who receive a high volume of daily emails from having to manually create divisions for their incoming mail, such as the “Labels” function provided by Gmail.
Since the service’s initial beta release in 2004, Google has built Gmail to satisfy user needs that users aren’t even aware they have before they start using the interface. When Gmail launched, the most popular free email services, namely Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) mail, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Hotmail, and even America Online (NYSE: AOL) offered around 4 MB of memory for users. That means it was almost impossible to keep a proper history of received mail without backing up to a personal hard drive. Gmail offered users 1 GB of cloud-based storage, more memory than most business or personal email users can fill up in a decade. The service currently has above 176 million users.
The “Priority Inbox” may raise Gmail’s user base by a significant margin provided it works as intended. Google has had great success with Gmail thanks to its effective spam filter. Spam filters from competing services like AOL and Hotmail tended to block both spam and legitimate emails, frustrating users more than helping them. The “Priority Inbox” runs the risk of alienating users if it ends up filtering personal emails into the “Everything Else” category while advertisements from businesses that a user is a regular patron of end up in “Important and unread” just by virtue of the sender getting more views.
Google also hasn’t stated how the new feature will interact with its contextual advertising interface Google Ads. The company has received harsh criticism over privacy concerns in the past chiefly because Google Ads scans user emails to inform what ads appear on the Gmail interface. The questions of advertising and how effective the new feature is will be answered when “Priority Inbox” is made available to Gmail users later this week.
As of this writing, Anthony Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here.
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