I don't mean to throw out the same old "you can't get attached to Google products because they kill them at any time" thing, but holy shit, this one feels like a real kick in the balls. Email is one of my most important workflows and I've spent a great deal of time over the past few years attaching myself to the zero inbox mindset through the bundles feature and having my reminders as first class citizens in the inbox. Going back to Gmail without these features is a serious regression in my life.
I never even tried Inbox because I didn't trust that it wouldn't get killed. Ironically I was just thinking about finally giving it a try since it survived longer than I expected.
I logged in for the first time to see what it was.. same deal here, have stopped adopting new Google products since 2013 (the Reader debacle naturally)
I'm sorry you maintain such a low opinion of yourself, but just like my lifespan, my attention is finite and I consider it priceless. If I'm forced to burn energy on something it better be for my long-term benefit, because let's face it, either of us could be dead tomorrow, and let's not waste our last breath cursing the fact we spent our final day alive on a new e-mail client, or in servitude to some other bullshit tool.
Google have broken that trust on countless occasions, and as a consequence for half a decade they have been deprived of the opportunity to waste any more of my time. You should consider doing the same
Yep. I was reluctant to try it for this very reason. I just started using it recently, and started liking it. Now I realize that, of course, I shouldn't have bothered.
If only I could easily use something like notmuch/isync on my phone...
Yeah, I thought Inbox would actually be safe to use since it was tied to email, but nope.
Gmail doesn't have the automated bundling features that Inbox does, and like you, losing Inbox will be a pretty significant blow to my ability to manage email.
I've been slowly migrating away from Google's services for a long time now because they keep pulling stunts like this - it's like they're completely unable to keep their engineers focused on maintaining any kind of product consistency or long-term support.
Android Pie's awful UI/UX changes and discontinuing Inbox are very nearly the last straw for me. I can't avoid Gmail entirely as I'm too attached to the address, but worst case I can always just forward to a new one.
Same here. Their quality control (even on vanilla Android) has been terrible. Play Music is so broken at times and even Gmail has lots of bugs now. Search and Chrome are some of the only consistently reliable things they do now.
I don't think it's intentional, but it's a side-effect of Google's bonus structure[1]. There's more money to be made (by employees) if their team successfully launches a new product. Maintaining existing products isn't as profitable, in fact, launching and deprecating popular products as frequently as possible is the optimal scenario for maximizing bonuses.
1. From the information I've encountered. I'm not a Googler.
Wow, when I hear about perverse incentives, I don't usually think about people spending their lives showing their clients a taste of a possible future until a high enough reward gets them to stop caring. Reward hacking for humans.
- Resume Driven Development: wherein enterprise contractors and developers inject as many fad frameworks, architectures, and uncalled for features unnecessarily.
- Vendor Driven Development: wherein the application architecture is tie to a cloud solutions billing model as much as possible.
- Search Engine Driven Development: wherein the code is just a bunch of copy/pasted code that isn't really understood, and doesn't really work together coherently.
- Ignorance Driven Development: wherein a perfectly serviceable solution which is better in every way was not used, simply because the developer saw a problem and immediately went to code, without looking at how everyone else in the world solves the problem.
- Delusion Driven Development: wherein a completely useless application is beautifully crafted based on the obvious delusions of a manager or founder, which have successfully spread to the development team without any critical push-back or data to back the deluded assertions of the authority that has deemed the software necessary.
Except the things that a salesman sells don't stop existing once they're promoted, because the company is invested in the products, which Google seems singularly unable to do.
Google is an R&D company really, not a consumer one.
I was just about to say basically the same thing. This move only reinforces the same thing that really the only consumer products that are safe are Gmail and Docs (G Suite, essentially). Anything else is basically a psychological experiment into how humans deal with loss of a beloved technology.
Bundles don't skip the inbox; that's the point. Stuff in your inbox is stuff you haven't had a chance to deal with yet; prematurely moving emails out of your inbox that you haven't had a chance to look at would break that workflow.
The beauty of inbox was that you didn’t have to set anything up. Promotional emails, newsletters, bills etc just went to the appropriate bundle. 99% of the time it Just Worked.
Maybe. Can you add custom search queries as tabs? Something like "in:label AND in:inbox" would probably be a reasonable substitute (though perhaps a bit more clunky).
that's the thing, after i switched to inbox from gmail i never had to touch that feature. sometimes i'd bump against my old labels/containers in gmail and wonder how i used to live like that. honestly this is depressing
