Gmail Turns 15

Google’s GMail, which touts over 1 billion users worldwide, celebrates its 15th birthday this April. To commemorate this milestone, Google announced some useful new GMail features: improved Smart Compose and email scheduling.

Smart Compose aids in drafting emails by making suggestions and attempting to autocomplete sentences as they are typed. The latest improvements include algorithms to identify commonly-used greetings (for example, if you prefer “Hey team” instead of “Hi,” Smart Compose will retain that information) and for suggesting subject lines based on an email’s contents.

Smart Compose is now available on all Android devices, whereas it was previously limited to Google’s Pixel platform (iOS support is coming soon). It is also now available in Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese.

The second announced feature, email scheduling, may have more impact on everyday use. GMail’s Send button now contains a dropdown menu which will allow users to schedule an email to be sent at a desired time in the future. Google is pitching this feature as a digital wellness tool, allowing GMail users to be considerate of the recipient’s downtime if they happen to be drafting emails during non-business hours. Overall, it gives users more control over when emails are sent without having to manage emails manually.

For Google’s official announcement on GMail’s 15th anniversary and the new features, check out the Google Cloud blog. If you have questions about deploying GMail or Google’s G Suite services at your facility, reach out to Nodal!