[ex3ndr]

Article is a little bit biased as a one who worked on messaging apps claiming that messaging (eg Slack) solve communication is just wrong. Outlook screenshot is very simple and clean but... it mentioned as an example of nightmare.. Looks like author got in the his own bubble just like google.

[ex3ndr]

> An efficient way to categorize, filter and search content.

No, no one likes to categorize emails, this is work for someone else or for power users that's not a case for GMail.

> A tool to help users fix mistakes they’ve made, such as sending someone the wrong email, or spelling something incorrectly.

For a long time Telegram didn't want to introduce this feature since if you sent something this should be in other's inbox. If someone can modify your inbox than you won't be able to trust that some random email won't disappear.

> Allowing users to handle their business better through Gmail (e.g. sign documents, approve things, review things).

Uh, guy just want to put everything to GMail while claiming that this is not an "innovation".

> Allowing users to design their emails in a better way.

Do you want to receive emails from your lawyer in comic sans? There is a reason why FB, Slack, Telegram, etc don't allow you to style your text easily.

> Letting users know if someone read their presentation and what parts interested them (DocSend).

Breaking fundamental flow of an email. No one will see if you read and no one will be upset. There are a reason why slack dosen't have read status.

GMail probably have a lot of problems now, but (sorry) this all just unprofessional judgment.

[xoxoavi]

I think these suggestions make some sense since they are still problems that exist. The way you'd imagine solving them could be different if you were on that team, with the data and would iterate to find the solution. The bullet points under the innovation section are not suggestions for solutions, on the contrary, they are problems that users still have. For each of these problems, there are services that are trying to solve that problem. Take scheduling a meeting as an example. Google's solution was to bring the calendar into Gmail and increase complexity. X.AI's solution is to make a bot that coordinates. Some other companies will have different solutions. The point is, what is the best solution for a user who is in the frame of mind of emailing. It is very easy to stuff things from different places one on top of another and it's called sustained innovation (if I'm not mistaken). But what ideally should happen is finding new ways to adapt these extra services, including these problems in a way that is matched with the main use case. Otherwise, it gets complex.