The oldest email in any given person’s inbox probably confirms their account’s password. After that, there may be some important note-to-self stuff. But if the following messages are just moldy jokes or ancient conversations, some tidying up may be in order, and a new experiment in Gmail Labs should help.
Pal Takacsi explains both his approach to a neat inbox and the new feature on the Official Gmail Blog, writing, “More often than not, as I reply to a message I also want to archive it so I can enjoy the satisfaction of a pristine inbox. Having clicked ‘Send’ followed by ‘Archive’ a few million times, I started to wish there was a way to just click once and accomplish both actions at the same time.”
Takacsi then continues, “So I decided to turn this idea to a Gmail Labs experiment. Turn on ‘Send & Archive’ from the Labs tab under Settings, and you’ll see a new button in the compose form labeled just that. The button does what it says: it sends your reply and then archives the thread with one click.”
The risk of this backfiring (which should always be considered when something’s being tested) seems rather low, so if it sounds appealing, we say go for it.
Then, in other Gmail-related news, the apparently permanent “beta” tag isn’t scaring people away. Gmail’s user base grew by 43 percent last year, according to fresh comScore numbers. AOL and Hotmail, the market leaders, may want to watch out.
