We’ve been tracking the progress of Google’s interface refresh for Gmail since February, and as promised, the company says it’s now becoming available for all Gmail users. The rework pulls Meet, Chat, and Spaces closer together as part of the overall experience and includes elements from Google’s Material Design 3.
It’s not stopping there and says that, later this year, we should see improvements to Gmail for tablet users, better emoji support, and more accessibility features, among other upgrades.
I don’t like the Gmail web experience at all, and the changes over the recent years have done little to change my mind. I’m old-fashioned and prefer proper email applications that are fast, native, and integrate with my wider computing environments.
Thom Holwerda,
I am in complete agreement with this. Like it or not the viability and livelihoods of non-google providers and developers are not fairing well against the monopoly. As much as I wish the world would boycott the giants, the reality is most don’t and it’s the small competitors that are dying year by year. This hits close to home for me in my line of work 🙁
I’m glad to see osnews covering the EU’s antitrust legislative efforts, which is so important! But at the same time I wish osnews would do more and actually support smaller competitors with their wallet instead of sending that money to google services & data centers. Yes it’s chump change to google, but it’s the aggregate effect of everyone making the same choices that leads to such dominant market monopolies.
Absolutely agree that it is sad, but I just wanted to comment that it is also hard. Just speaking for myself, I’m interested in having a diverse computing environment and don’t want to be tracked or locked into one of the big companies. There is a cost benefit analysis that is happening as an individual user. Looking at the full stack beyond purchasing an email client how much time and money is a person willing to invest in maintaining a non Google/Apple/Microsoft experience. IMHO it gets harder and harder when you balance the ‘free’ services being offered versus time with friends or family.
Straylight,
I agree. Technology didn’t have to turn out this way, but for better or worse dominant corporations just kept growing and the power imbalance is a given now. These corporate Goliaths have all the cash in the world, set the standards, hold all the resources, control all the customers and devices. They can crush everyone else without flinching. Competing against them is like trying to recapture monopoly tiles as an under dog at the end of the game…it’s not going to happen. Things become so unfair for those in the long tail that the dominant players are virtually guarantied to win no matter the merit and strategy.
It sucks, but there’s really not much we can do about it unless regulators do something. I personally do run my own email, but at this point it’s more symbolic resistance than any realized benefit. I can’t even send emails to most of my contacts without them ending up on google’s servers anyways.