Arabnet Arabnet

Most of us are Gmail users, but how many times do we think about new features that “will just” enhance our emailing experience?

Gmail Labs are available to serve this need, however they’re rarely used. Actually, lots of avid Gmail users don’t know about them.

Although Google decided to discontinue the Labs 2 years ago, they're still alive and kicking.

We selected a few Gmail Labs to review, in order to help you achieve a smooth emailing activity:

Undo sending

How many times do we send emails, and regret them a couple of minutes later? Enabling this Lab will make you capable of stopping “dangerous” messages from being sent for a few seconds after hitting the “Send” button. It’s a kind of an e-anger management.

Signature tweaks

How many times were you obliged to go through a long history of emails in one thread just to remember the exact position of your contact in the advertising agency? This Lab places your signature before the quoted text in a reply and removes the "--" line that appears before signatures.

Background sending

Busy sending multiple emails? This Lab sends your mail in the background, while you move on to other important stuff. Just make sure that you stay logged in until it has all been sent!

Multiple inboxes

This Lab adds extra lists of emails in your inbox to see even multiple conversations at once. The new added lists are configurable, so you can choose to view labels, starred messages, and drafts simultaneously. This is different from multiple sign-in, which is a default service that enables you to login to different Gmail accounts during the same session.

Message sneak peak

Peek into a conversation without opening it by right-clicking on a message in your inbox.

There are loads of your other interesting features in Gmail Labs, like: Creating a document within the email; Flickr, Picasa, Yelp, docs, maps, and videos previews; Google Voice player embedded in the mail; inserting images; adding authentication icons, similar to Twitter verified users, to avoid being fooled by a spam, among many others features. Go to Mail/Gmail>Settings>Labs and start experimenting!

You could also send feedback to the engineer who developed the Lab.

On the Labs page, Google states that, “[Gmail Labs are] experimental features that aren't quite ready for prime time. They may change, break or disappear at any time” which clearly describes the hazy status of the Labs. I remember a “libertine” Lab, which forces you to take simple maths test before hitting the “Send” button after midnight, in order to avoid sending drunken emails to your employer that you regret in the morning. Alas! This Lab isn’t available anymore.

Gmail Labs existed at least since 2006, when the company described them as “a playground where our adventurous users can play around with prototypes of some of our wild and crazy ideas and offer feedback directly to the engineers who developed them.”

However in 2011, Google discontinued Labs saying, “we’ll incorporate Labs products and technologies into different product areas.” Different product areas imply Gmail itself, Google Play Store, and Android market.

After a couple of hours, the post was weirdly updated to reverse what was published earlier, “to clarify: we don't have any plans to change in-product experimentation channels like Gmail Labs or Maps Labs. We'll continue to experiment with new features in each of our products,” which added yet another sequence to the mystery of Gmail Labs.

Regardless of the unclear status of Labs, most of them are still available for normal Gmail accounts and Google Apps accounts as well.

Worthy to mention that three Labs have “graduated” at the end of 2012, and become default Gmail services: Quote selected text; send and archive; and reply all by default.

Quote selected text is easy to use, just highlight text from an email you want to include in your reply, and then click reply, the compose template will be just what you selected.

The two other features are clear and useful, one combines sending and archiving in one step, and the other has made the default choice is to reply to all parties in the thread.

Other Google projects like Maps, Calendar and the discontinued Wave used to have their own Labs as well.

In 2012, Yahoo! removed Next, a service similar to Google Labs.

Testing on the Labs website was/is often conducted on an invitation-only basis, a process Google used in the initial rollout of its Gmail, and Google+.

Gmail beta was launched in 2004 as an invitation-only, and became available for the public in 2007. Only in July 2009, it was upgraded from beta status, along with Google Apps suite. The mastermind behind the service was the programmer Paul Buchheit.

Gmail Labs is totally different from Google X Lab.

What is the future of Gmail Labs? Nobody knows!