[matmann2001]

So first we have a new Gmail app, and now a new Google Calendar app. What's the roadmap here?

Is Google going to roll out new versions of their other apps? Do they plan to maintain both apps in parallel, and for how long? Is this just an experiment or do they plan to convert all users to the new apps eventually?

[jordanthoms]

Are you referring to inbox? Or the Gmail app redesign?

All the Android and Web apps are being updated at the moment for Material Design, with the higher priority being on the Android ones it seems to get them ready in time for the imminent 5.0 launch. They're just updating the app for everyone (the new ones are backwards compatible with less flashy animations). Inbox is a separate app though.

[yincrash]

The intro video for the calendar app also shows a new Maps icon.

[knicholes]

I'm betting that this has something to do with deprecating GWT and supporting AngularJS.

[StevePerkins]

Putting aside the fact that GWT 3.0 is about to come out... neither Gmail nor Google Calendar even use GWT. Like the overwhelming majority of Google's real-world web apps, they're primarily based on Closure Tools. GWT is only used in a handful of places these days, the most significant being Google Maps (assuming they didn't remove that during the last rewrite).

Despite being famously "backed by Google", I'm not sure about how many real-world Google properties actually use Angular yet. Most actual Google web apps still very much revolve around a technology stack from 5 years ago. Do as I say, not as I do...

Regardless, what does the JavaScript library for their web apps have to do with their native mobile apps?

[cromwellian]

Inbox is about 70% GWT code, 30% Closure.

The new Calendar uses the same architecture as Inbox, read into that what you will.

Google Sheets uses GWT in much the same way as Inbox.

Then there's AdWords, Google Shopping Expression, Flights, Hotels, Android Play Console, Google Wallet, Google Groups, and a bunch of new apps coming up.

There are 3,000 engineers internally using GWT, and we record 150,000 monthly active unique users hitting our SDK update servers. Last time I checked, about 20,000 unique domains use GWT.

Apple (iAds Workspace), Amazon (AWS Console), Nike, etc use GWT.

Google Maps has never used GWT, although there were internal prototypes.

As to what this has to do with native mobile apps, it has a lot.

We have built separate Hybrid apps. Hybrid not in the sense of PhoneGap, but in the sense that we mix native code and cross-compiled Java together.

Inbox has a core set of client side (non-UI) logic representing about 70% of the code base. This is written in Java.

GWT is used to cross-compile this code into a library for the Web, it is type-annotated with JsDoc, and then the remaining UI code is done with Closure. This gives us cross-language type-checking and optimization (Closure will flag as error if JS->Java or Java->JS calls are wrong)

j2objc is used to cross-compile the shared code into Objective-C for iOS. The remaining portion (UI critical code) is done with traditional XCode toolchain.

For GWT Users who are interested, I am giving a deeper presentation on GMail's Inbox architecture at this year's GWT.create conference (http://gwtcreate.com/).

[Touche]

The new Inbox uses GWT.

[twistedpair]

* Google Groups is GWT

* Google Contacts is GWT

* Orkut was/is GWT