And Now A Word For Gmail Users

Gmail is an online email service run by Google. While it’s still (seemingly perpetually) in Beta release, those who use it know that it is head and shoulders above other email interfaces.

Unfortunately, Google has just schmutzed up Gmail by integrating a bunch of chat features into it. The intro to these new features by the Gmail team was positively giddy. Apparently the folks who work on Gmail behind the scenes are really, really into chatting, and these new features may be really cool and exciting for folks who are that into chatting.

But not all of us are.

I’ve used chat clients in the past, but these days I just don’t have the time available for it, my writing schedule is so full.

I suspect that the majority of Gmail users, even those who do some chatting online, found the new features confusing and annoying. Particularly annoying were pop-up boxes that appeared whenever you moused over a person’s name in your inbox. Simply trying to open an email to read it caused a chat-contact box to appear over the sender’s name, which was a huge distraction.

The badness of that Bad Idea seems to have sunk in on Google, and from what I can tell, that feature has  now been shut off.

But there’s also the Quick Contacts box in the left margin that populates itself automatically with the names of all kinds of people who have emailed you (even if you don’t know them) and that has no explanation of what the green, orange, and grey dots are that appear next to some (and not other) folks names (though they seem to have to do with who is online).

This Quick Contacts box has a default position (which is changeable in Settings) that puts it above the special email filters (called Labels) that the user has set up. For me this meant I had to scroll down through the incredibly long Quick Contacts link in order to see if my friends had sent me any email, which would appear under the Friends Label I created.

So I think that Gmail has committed a serious error here, and I went to their suggestions page and suggested that they give users a way to completely shut off the new chat features.

I’m curious to know what other Gmail users’ experiences have been with
all this, and would be interested to hear their impressions–positive
or negative. Also,

IF YOU’RE A GMAIL USER, SUBMIT YOUR OWN SUGGESTION.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

26 thoughts on “And Now A Word For Gmail Users”

  2. Hi, Jimmy. Actually, Google has already included a means to turn it off (since “day 1” I think:
    Open Gmail in a browser window, and then scroll to the very bottom of the page. You should see the following line of text, which includeds links:
    “Gmail view: standard with chat | standard without chat | basic HTML Learn more”
    Click on “standard without chat.”
    🙂

  3. That works! Thanks. But I do think Google still has a usability issue in that it should be a lot more obvious how to turn the silly thing off.

  4. Works for me too. Thanks, whosebob!
    To second Geoff’s comment, it would also have been nice if the Google team had allowed people to choose the option of adding chat rather than defaulting everyone’s accounts to “standard with chat.”

  5. I tried Gmail, but when I couldn’t pick a user name that I wanted, I went back to the e-mail that I have, which isn’t anything to write home about, but at least I get to keep a semblence of my own name.

  6. Mia Storm, I haven’t useing my Gmail accont much (months?), but when I recently visited my Gmail account, it did ask me if I wanted chat features, yes or no. I suspect that is because I hadn’t logged in when accounts were automatically converted.

  7. I use the POP feature so I don’t have to bother with the web interface. You should be able to use it with any of your favorite E-mail clients (Eudora, Kmail, Evolution, Thunderbird, The Bat, Outlook (eek!), etc. I can’t stand using mail from a webpage. 😛
    This feature and its instructions are found in the Options section (see the upper-right-hand corner after you log into Gmail, under the POP and Forwarding tab.)

  9. Jimmy, are you kidding? You get no credit for noticing the superiority of the Gmail interface when you overlook such basic things like the “standard without chat” link at the bottom. Oh, and on the chat sidebar, there’s a convenient option in the status indicator for “Sign out of chat” (I know — it compares with splitting the atom in terms of difficulty to figure out, doesn’t it?). As for the colored dots in the chat screen… hmmm, green for available, red for busy, yellow with a little clock for “away,” and gray with an “X” for offline. You’re right — there’s no way someone could have figured that out without Sergey Brin or Larry Page personally giving them a phone call and explaining it (Sergey and Larry are the co-founders of Google, Jimmy, just in case you didn’t know…).
    You know, Jimmy, if you don’t like GMail’s talk feature THAT much, you could just go back “home” to AOL.

  10. Gee, with such a *nice* fellow explaining it so politely, I feel like totally changing my perspective about a Google “oops” that would mess with folks who didn’t grow up with computers.

  11. As a Gmail user, all I can say that I’m extremely pleased of it and thought the chat feature was a great idea, even if I’m not somebody who will use that feature often.
    I was a bit cautious about Gmail at first, but once I started using it, I simply couldn’t go back to using yahoo as I had been doing for years. Their spam filter is top-notch, and the issue I had the most trouble with (having to go to the ‘More Actions’ tab to select ‘Delete’, instead of having a Delete button on the top menu) has been taken care of successfully. In short, Gmail rules! 🙂

  12. Dear Anon,
    Thank you so much taking a moment out of your busy day–no doubt this quite digital combox deprived innumerable co-workers or classmates from such a saintly flood of charity and humility.

  13. I have gotten such an incredible flood of spam from the gmail domain that I finally blocked all messages coming from it. It seemed to me like another hotmail.

  15. I love the gmail talk addition to gmail. If you’re travelling, you don’t have to download the gmail talk client to chat with people and you see them online right when you log into the email. Unfortunately, my friends are scattered across 5 different Instant Messengers. But yes, I could see how it would be annoying to a lot of people and I’m glad they have a way to turn it off.
    Jimmy, when I first saw the feature and saw the green dot beside your name, I slapped my head and thought “poor Jimmy, he’s gonna be inundated with messages”, though I hope it has not been so.

  16. Giacinto,
    Try Gaim for cross-platform chat. You can log in to all your chat accounts and manage them from one interface. Works with Gmail, Jabber, AOL, Yahoo!, and I don’t know what all else…
    http://gaim.sourceforge.net/
    You will like it.

  18. “http://www.google-watch.org/gmail.html
    There are links at the bottom of that page that are really enlightening too. Everyone considering gmail should read it.”
    I read that information before I opened my gmail account, which was why I hesitated at first about it, but I’m glad I did. Gmail is the best email provider, hands down, and I’ve never had a problem with it. Everybody should give gmail a try! 🙂

  19. Gmail is the best choice for me. It took me a while to use it for my main account but here’s why I chose it:
    Yahoo didn’t catch enough spam. Every day I had to log in anew, because I had X new messages, all spam. No *free* POP option to at least let my own spam filters sort them out.
    Hotmail – had so much spam that I had to exclusively let only people in my addressbook mail me there–everyone else got filtered to the Trash. This is worrisome because of the possibility of legitimate mail from long-lost friends or businesses who change their addresses, going to the Trash without my knowing.
    My ISP’s provider: Deutsche Telekom. I have a .de address. I have several friends and relatives with .mil addresses. Sometime, somebody somewhere thought it was an excellent idea not to let .de addresses mail to soldiers and civilian personnel, despite the fact that there are many German nationals working with the U.S. military, sometimes from home. I wouldn’t even get error messages returned to me.
    SBCGlobal.net is another one who decided to descriminate against .de addresses.
    My own domain – I opened up my own domain and set up sendmail on my personal computer. Unfortunately too many people use this as a method for spamming, so if you don’t have a static IP address, many mail servers consider you suspect and filter you out. Not everyone, but enough to aggravate me. An SPF record didn’t help.
    Gmail – so far it works and I’m not aware that anyone I correspond with is not getting my mail. Anonymous, thanks for the tip, though. Those things are good to know but for right now I don’t seem to have much choice; at least if I want the storage space and reliability.

  21. My son has Gmail and uses the chat feature every day when gaming with friends or when consulting on homework. He’s computer savvy and had no problems figuring it out and eliminating the “features” he didn’t want or need. I use Gmail sometimes (I have email through my own domain which I use almost exclusively, so I really don’t need Gmail), but I can’t use the chat because my work laptop blocks that feature.
    ‘thann

  22. I like the Gmail Chat interface, I use it with my brother all the time.
    To each their own, but if there had been an option I would have selected it.

  24. I used to be a big fan of Google, used it all the time, until I heard that they’re facilitating China’s repression of their own people. The report this week of two more chinese Catholic priests jailed put me over the edge.
    Can a christian, in good faith, support businesses that helps a government jail christians?
    I love chinese food, and still buy it, but I’m having an increasingly hard time accepting commerce with China as having any positive effect on freedom in that country.
    How many martyrs have been crowned in that country, and how many businesses, like Google, are helping the Chinese government create more?

  25. That’s an issue on which it may be impossible to coherent.
    Examples.
    Our own local and national governments use tax dollars to fund some things we may consider immoral. Every time you buy necessities in a store, you’re paying taxes. Every time you use cash, you’re part of the system. If you want to “opt out” you’ll need to move to Antarctica, or buy your own island somewhere and live on subsistence farming and pre-iron age technology, since manufactured goods are all part of the system.
    Do you have any stainless steel items in your kitchen or anywhere in your house? Do you have anything with stainless steel components–your car, your telephone, your watch, the computer you’re using to post on this blog? Those stainless steel products or components are all probably “Made in China.” Are you willing to throw everything out?
    Do we boycott some Chinese products and businesses, but keep the ones that are convenient for us?
    Do Chinese Catholic clergy who need to fly to Rome from time to time have to boycott travel simply because they would be paying Chinese businesses to fly them out of the country?
    I’m no fan of China. I have the “Martyrologium Romanum” (calendar book of martyrs) that the Vatican published in 2001. Practically every day of the year has groups of martyrs from China, most of them murdered long before China went communist.
    The Roman tax (“Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar”) that Jesus addressed was part of tribute to a corrupt and immoral system. If you can’t check out of the entire system with rigorous 100% integrity, then at least give God 100% percent of what is his. As Jesus put it, “Give to God what is God’s.” If Caesar’s system kills you for loyalty to God … well, “Amen” to that.

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