Technology leader Google decided to shut down its popular mobile mail app ‘Inbox’. The announcement is not new as the company last September made it clear that it will pull the plug soon for taking down Inbox.
Though the company didn’t give any exact timeline for the move last year, this time it is clear that Inbox will finally be shut down from the coming April. As the company started sending emails to the present users of the Inbox regarding the move, the shutdown date finally surfaced as April 2. Interestingly, on the same date, Google Plus is also going to be shut down.
How the new message regarding the closure of Inbox reads? It says that that the Inbox app will be going away in the next 15 days or so. The company in its message to the users of the app is also saying that all the features of the app will be available from now onwards through the Gmail app, the consolidated email app from Google. The message also alerts users that all their communication and messages are already transferred to the Gmail app.
It is time to take a brief look at the starting point of this popular app. The Inbox was launched by Google in 2014. The primary aim of creating the app was to boost productivity for all those users who receive a lot of emails every day. The app was received by users with positive applause as it helped the users with many productive features. The users could generate auto-replies and create email bundles, easily.
While initially the app looked smarter compared to other email apps of that time in the market and offered quite a few productivity-boosting features for the users, within a few years down the line Inbox lost its appeal as similar features were included in the Gmail app of Google which continued to become more popular than all other email apps in the market.
There were many features that at first have been tested on the Inbox app before being incorporated into the Gmail app. Some of the key Inbox features that were made available for Gmail users, later on, include Smart Reply, inline attachments, Snooze, connected tasks, Google Keep integration, etc. The only feature that remained till now an exclusive one with Inbox is the Smart Compose that utilised Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning for composing precise emails faster.
As a last note, we must not forget that the shutdown also coincides with the shutting down of a popular social networking app from Google called Google Plus. Google already referred to the various challenges in maintaining and continuing the service and gave notices to the users for downloading all images and videos from the Google Plus site before it gets shut down on April 2.
13,960 total views, 6 views today
