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So, whilst most of the tech press was busy watching Apples latest unveiling of phones missing a chunk of their screen, google slipped out some rather bad news.
As of March 2019, they will be shutting down inbox.google.com - which is their current "best of breed" email client. For those that don't know, inbox was launched in 2014/2015 as a new project to enable you to keep working with your gmail account/address, but in a vastly more streamlined way. Inbox was focused on making email very quick and simple to manage, and to enable you to very quickly get to an empty inbox every day - automatically learning about your email and sorting/grouping it according to your priorities.
This was achieved via a concept known as "bundles", which is like a really clean, simple and vastly more flexible version of the current 5 tabs you can enable in gmail, and a magic "done" button you can press when you are finished with an email, which then automatically files it away. Inbox also included really nice functionality like automatically creating "trips" when it spotted emails about travel/hotels - grouping all those emails together, auto creating (or just suggesting if preferred) calendar entries and reminders. You can also create reminders directly within inbox (No need to use google tasks or similar), or use it to copy URLs between machines without having to send emails to yourself.
This article provides some overview of the key differences.
https://www.androidauthority.com/gmail-vs-inbox-881961/
Ultimately though, putting the above aside, inbox just has a MUCH simpler, cleaner, more intuitive design/UX that makes managing email simpler. Google are trying to claim that they have incorporated the "inbox" features into gmail, but they have not - the key features like a clean UI, Bundles, Trips, Reminders, Tasks and the "done" function (which is very different from archiving) simply don't exist in gmail.
The only options people like me who have fully switched over to using inbox have is to swap back to Gmail, which simply isn't a viable option as its *Horrible* to use in comparison (its like going back in time 4 years), or to swap to an alternative like Simplehuman, and deal with the sync issues that brings.
So, if you are an inbox user, or just have some spare time - can you please make some noise on social media, give feedback via the gmail or inbox feedback panel, or post on the google product forums to express just how bad of a decision this is by Google? They have changed their mind before when under pressure from their user community and we have 6 months to try and get them to see sense on this one!
Also if anyone has any suggestions of a similar service/product to Inbox (other than Simplehuman) any suggestions are gratefully received - I won't be going back to using gmail so will have to evaluate some alternatives
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