With the average U.S. business executive spending 3.2 hours daily on work email alone, it’s no surprise that email is the bane for many. After many years of stagnancy, email innovation if finally accelerating.
In 2015, Google Inbox became available to the more than 5 million businesses that use Google Apps for Works. The Verge put it best, “using Google Inbox feels like the future of email.” Here’s what sets Google Inbox apart:
- Amazing simplicity – The Google Inbox interface is simple and uncluttered, this is all the more remarkable because Google is not particularly known for making things easy, as anyone who uses Google Analytics or AdWords will tell you.
- Email intelligence – Incoming email is automatically bundled in categories such as travel, finance, shopping, etc. Emails are also automatically parsed for travel information and other actionable data.
- Snooze email – Email can be snoozed for later handling, which makes it easier to plough through a very busy inbox.
- Searchable archive – Email is either snoozed or checked off — which archives it and makes it easily searchable using Google’s powerful search capability. This is the recommended email management method.
- Smart Reply – Smart Reply offers canned phrases that can be used to respond to emails on the go. Google describes Smart Reply technology as a “deep neural network that writes email.” In other words, artificial intelligence or machine learning.
Gmail has always been a powerful email service, and is rapidly becoming an open platform with a host of third-party solutions amplifying its powers. Google deserves kudos for advancing the state of the art in email.
Google Inc.
Website: http://www.google.com
Year (of first major innovation): 1999
Innovations: Search, AdWords, Google Maps, Google Photos
Innovation Types: Product
