Gmail Loses the Thread

Is Google’s decision to offer customers the ability to unthread their Gmail conversations innovative, or a needless compromise designed to increase their business at the cost of undoing one of their signature features? While the customer is always right, it may be possible that Google is trying too hard. Gmail owes a great deal of its popularity to this innovative feature; to offer customers the option of unthreading seems to signal a willingness to step outside of its previous brand identity into a realm of products designed specifically for a changing customer base. Which, again, is hardly shocking: business demands some level of conformity and repeatability. But does it signal the end of the age of free-wheeling innovation?

The balance between being innovative and being socially acceptable is a fine line. Without challengers to the status quo, we would never advance as a civilization. However, there’s a difference between being brilliant and being insane, and quite frequently the two overlap. Society separates visionaries from fruitbats primarily by how their insights contribute to the greater communal whole. By being able to offer customers something they have never experienced—in this case, related email conversations that are accessible in one click—Gmail made possible a different way of thinking about how we organize our data. While the system has its flaws (some conversations, for example, can become swallowed into a larger whole without being noticed) it also is cleaner and more efficient than traditional inbox designs. An entire email chain can be followed effortlessly, and filed neatly away.

The next few years will be challenging for Google as it navigates away from blazing creativity to more solid, reliable, and marketable products. People who are lucky enough to have been conscious during this largely unprecedented time of transition wherein email was free, the internet unregulated, and business models flexible, should not stop pursuing unexplored regions of innovation and uniformly adopt old business demands. These companies should continue to sell their attitude as much as their products. The ‘can-do’ spirit of innovation is more valuable than any yearly business subscription package; if Google conforms too quickly, they’ll be selling themselves short.