Gmail: 5 Years Later, Should Microsoft Be Worried?

5 years ago today Google played its best April Fools joke ever. It announced a new web based email service that would let you search your mail with the same search power you use to search the web. I'm sure at the time yahoo, hotmail and other web based email services saw it as a joke. "Google doing email? but they are just a search engine right?"

Today we know Gmail is not a joke. Its by far the best web based email platform. People like me will even argue that its the best email client period. Now you can even host your domain with google apps and use Gmail across your entire organization for free along with docs, calendar and other google products.

Google is changing everything and you either get it or you don't.

So why do people still pay for Outlook?

Because they don't get it. Do you?

EDIT: Google posted about this a day later, here's the link.

Gmail Labs: 10 Features You Can't Live Without

Late last year when Gmail Labs was enabled for hosted domains the great email debate ended for me. The features available with Labs transform Gmail from an already amazing email client into a highly productive and free alternative to Outlook. Here are my 10 favorite Gmail Labs features in no particular order. To enable these features in your gmail look for the labs link in the top right corner.

1. Offline - Allows you to access your mail when offline. Great for those times when your flying or on the road. Requires Google Gears.
   
2. Tasks - Adds an easy to use but highly productive to-do list to Gmail. My favorite part of this is that you can create tasks from an email message. When viewing a message go to "More actions -> Add to Tasks". This will add a task with a "related email" link that will take you back to the message. I use this as I'm reading my mail each morning to flag messages I need to come back and respond to later in the day.
   
3. Superstars - Add additional star icons to gmail.
   
4. Signature Tweaks - Moves your signature to before the quoted text when you reply to a message.
   
5. Canned Responses - Create templates for common emails you sent out.
   
6. Default 'Reply to all' - Another favorite of mine. Replaces the default "reply" button with "reply to all". Never forget to reply all again!
   
7. Forgotten Attachment Detector - We have all done it. Typed up a long email and hit send without attaching the files. This feature will alert you of this when you hit send as long as you mention something related to attachment's in the body of the message.
   
8. Send & Archive - This is a great time saver for those that respond to a lot of mail. Sends your mail and then archives the conversation with 1 click.
   
9. Undo Send - Stop a message from sending. This feature will give you a 5 second window to cancel that embarrassing email you regretted as soon as you hit send.
   
10. Vacation Time! - Set a start and end time for your vacation responder.
    

Import/Export your filters in Gmail

This is a great new feature just announced on the Gmail blog. It is good news for me seeing as I have been using Gmail exclusively for email for as long as I can remember and my list of filters is pretty long. I had always wondered what i would do if I lost my filters and had to look at all my mail in my Inbox. Good to know i have a backup now should that ever happen.

There is more we can do with this feature though other then create a backup. If your organization uses mailing lists for incoming mail you can now create sets of filters for each list and share them among your users. Now everyone can have the same filters and labels setup across your business. This should make training new users much easier for those wise enough to be using Gmail in their office. Of course this assumes your lucky enough to already be using Gmail and in your office and not Outlook like most people.

Once you have enabled Import / Export in your Gmail labs settings page navigate to Settings then Filters. Next use the check boxes to select the filters related to the mailing list then click export at the bottom of the page. Now save the file and send it to the other people that are on the list (or just send it to the list!). They can now import your filters into their Gmail account and will have the same setup as you.

It may seem like a small feature, but its importance from an IT management perspective is great. This is leverage for all those out there trying to convince the higher ups to switch to Gmail/Google Docs over Office. It will allow you to lower your setup times for new users and make training them much easier. How could they argue with that?