With almost half a year of receiving feedback from individuals, Google is ready to offer enterprises test drives of its Inbox email app.
The Inbox app now begins its methodical rollout into Google Apps, Google's enterprise-ready collection of software. Similar to the method of delivery of the Inbox for personal use, enterprises will need to petition Google for use of the Gmail spinoff.
"Inbox wasn't created to reinvent email, Inbox was created to help you reinvent the way you get things done," said Alex Gawley, director of product management. "This means we need to understand more about how things get done, or don't, today. And with your feedback, who knows, we could reinvent the way people work."
The Inbox app will be available to Google Apps customers in March. The search engine company wants to know if enterprises feel they can use Inbox as their primary mail app, how much their employees rely on mobile apps, and how willing they are to share metrics with Google.
"To start, we plan to work very closely with the early adopter companies, so not everyone that applies will be accepted right away, but the program will continue to expand over the coming months," continued Gawley.
When Inbox was originally announced in October 2014, the tech world heralded the app as Google's attempt to reinvent email and replace the Gmail app. Google called it an evolutionary step in email's development. The app has long since surpassed 1 million downloads, but it doesn't appear close to replacing Gmail.
"With this evolution comes new challenges: we get more email now than ever, important information is buried inside messages, and our most important tasks can slip through the cracks -- especially when we're working on our phones," said Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Android, Chrome and Apps. "For many of us, dealing with email has become a daily chore that distracts from what we really need to do -- rather than helping us get those things done."
Many early reactions, including ours at Tech Times, concluded that the Inbox app appears to underserve power users. Still, this reporter hasn't uninstalled the app since receiving an invite in October and continues to use it alongside the Gmail app.
The word "perfect" may be used to describe the Inbox app's ability to complement the Gmail app. The Inbox app delivers on its promise of added utility by allowing users to snooze messages, swipe messages away into the "Done" archive, swipe messages into the trash folder and group messages into bundles.
