What Google Needs

Big Blue says on May 4th, 2007 at 8:41 am

There should be a google politics portal analagous to google finance that aggregates all of the news, voting records, finance data, etc. about candidates and politicians either in your location or who you select.

Leo Babauta says on May 4th, 2007 at 8:58 am

That’s a great suggestion, Big Blue! Google Politics would be very cool.

G Convert says on May 4th, 2007 at 9:05 am

Google toolbar actually does give notification when new mail is received!

great list though and the suggestion by Big Blue is spot on!

Groovymarlin says on May 4th, 2007 at 10:14 am

I adore all of your suggestions. Google should hire you!

(BTW I use the Gmail Notifier extension for Firefox, which works really well.)

Manjunath says on May 4th, 2007 at 10:21 am

why not integrate Gcal with Orkut, where in all B’days of the buddies can be viewed in Gcal with reminder option from Gcal. that will be real cool feature….
one day it may also replace birthdaycalendar.com completely

Steve Brandon says on May 4th, 2007 at 10:23 am

Gooogle Notebooks already works great for lists.

ThirstyEar2 says on May 4th, 2007 at 10:58 am

As for what you’re saying GMail needs, sounds like you need MS Outlook.

John says on May 4th, 2007 at 11:46 am

Rather than GContacts, I’ve suggested that they implement LDAP.

JimF says on May 4th, 2007 at 11:47 am

Regarding opening a message in a new tab in GMail, if you hold down {shift} while you click on the message it will do just that. I understand it’s not as easy as “right click>Open in new tab”, but it’s not all that hard, either :).

I would love to be able to click on a sender’s name and get all of the mail I’ve received from them. I know I can just search for that email address, but I want a one or two click solution. Or I’d happily hold down {shift} while clicking on the sender name ;).

-JF

Kara says on May 4th, 2007 at 11:48 am

Gmail already has a notifier. It stays in your taskbar and works with Internet Explorer and Firefox (and probably other browsers). http://toolbar.google.com/gmai.....ndows.html

matty blue says on May 4th, 2007 at 11:55 am

Reminders in GCal are not great – you can only pick from the drop-down, you’re limited to 1 week max (if it’s an event that I need to do long-term planning for, I usually want a reminder before it’s one week off), and no “snooze” button for reminders…I despise Outlook, but it handles reminders very well.

Couldn’t agree more about contacts, too.

Michael says on May 4th, 2007 at 12:23 pm

Google Carpool:
With all the talk about global warming, greenhouse gasses and alternate fuels this is an idea that will give Google credit for saving our country Billions of dollars and helping solve our energy problem.

Say next time I go to Google Maps for directions I see a link that
reads: “Need a ride to work? Want to help the environment? – Click here”
So I click it and it ask for where I work. Then it tells me that there is not yet a group set up but that I can register my own vehicle to give rides to others. I register my Car and send an email to HR and they forward it to everyone. As the company opens the link in the email it automatically knows they are charter employees and each person enters their address or the area code where they live and the hours that they come and go. Now we have built networks of people in different areas and for every person who registers their car they are asked how many passengers they can carry and a route is generated using Google maps/directions for their morning commute.

Now what happens is this becomes viral and we have set up about twenty carpools across the company. Each car pool may take an additional four people off the road. So less cars on the road equals less gas burned and less traffic. We are also getting to know co-workers and getting to work earlier.

Next is reporting. Each month we get a report (with targeted cuopons and adds for breakfast places along our route) detailing how much money, gas and pollution we saved. Each carpool participant would pay a nominal fee through their Google account to re-imburse the cost of gas and car maintenence. This saves them money. At the end of the year they get a tax deduction statement to write off their spendings for work purposes. Companies could optional pay for this and get the tax write off.
I’ve already suggected this to Google.org and I think it would be awesome!
Tell me what you think of my idea!

Bogdan says on May 4th, 2007 at 12:47 pm

great list. Everything is true. If they’ll implement the majority of functions you’ve mentioned, I’ll be grateful to infinity.

Chris says on May 4th, 2007 at 12:59 pm

Gspace allows you to use your Gmail account for file storage (auto filters help with this), and you can also use Google Groups for file storage (and sharing).

Glenn Walker says on May 4th, 2007 at 1:56 pm

This is a great list, but the one feature missing from Google Reader is a print button. I mean how hard is that!

Leo Babauta says on May 4th, 2007 at 2:40 pm

Great responses, everyone! A couple of my responses:

1. You guys mention a few of the add-ons I referred to, but I think it should be built in to Gmail.
2. MS Outlook isn’t a great program, and is a very suboptimal solution for me.
3. JimF … When I shift-click a message, it opens in a new window … does it open in a tab in your browser? I think you should be able to wheel-click it into a new tab, like any other link.
4. I’ve tried GSpace, and it’s not that great a solution … kind of a workaround. Google can do better if they try.

Thanks for all the suggestions, everyone!

sean says on May 4th, 2007 at 2:50 pm

i think it would be if there was an option for making events in other calendars mark your primary calendar as “busy”. Right now you have to copy every event to your calendar, so you end up with multiple entries for the same event.

mikshir says on May 4th, 2007 at 2:51 pm

GCal really needs to allow quick-add to non-default calendars. I keep a personal and work calendar. Quick-add only posts to the default. There needs to be something like “cal:work” that I can add to quick-add to post quickly to non-default calenders.

Greg says on May 4th, 2007 at 3:22 pm

I agree that Google reader is pretty much perfect… except… for me it would sometimes be really helpful to be able to print… at all… but especially an individual blog entry.

foxydot says on May 4th, 2007 at 3:32 pm

I’m with Greg. I want to be able to print out a single entry, or an entire view of entries. I could have something interesting to read in long meetings.

Melanie says on May 4th, 2007 at 4:13 pm

I sync GCal with my mobile phone and that works pretty cool as an offline calendar.

Scottix says on May 4th, 2007 at 4:25 pm

Some problems with suggestions:
Off-line viewing – It seems like they should be able to do this but in reality would suck because you have to download every single e-mail to your hard drive and that takes time. With gMail you can use pop3 to download messages into an external mail program.

Drag-N-Drop – Yahoo actually does this with their photo album but the problem with drag-n-drop web browsers don’t natively support it and with yahoo you have to install an addon.

Two Pane – You can shift click to read the e-mail without leaving your inbox. That would solve that problem.

Google offers a lot of free apps and services. A lot of them a lot better than other sites and their GMail is the best free web-mail out there.

BruceMagnus says on May 4th, 2007 at 4:42 pm

Responses to some of your suggestions:

_Gmail_
- Two panes would clutter the interface, but I guess it would be ok if there was an option to do this

- GCal integration: you can create an event from your email and google will fill it in with parsed info if it sees certain things like dates,etc.

- How would Gmail notify you if you’re not on their site? They already built a Windows Gmail notifier for Windows and Macs, and there’s “checkgmail” for Linux. Do you want them to build their own custom firefox extension?

- I don’t think any other webmail service has a specific “open email in new tab” button; this is really more of a browser-based thing. I bet an amateur JavaScript coder could come up with a greasemonkey script to rewrite the links to dynamically open in tabs(maybe you could get someone to do this for you, or diy).

- If you want to read mail offline, then that’s exactly what an email client(e.g. thunderbird) is for, and Gmail has free POP capability builtin. I wouldn’t expect google to write a whole new client just for this, although adding labels(perhaps as headers?) and maybe even writing code for label-reading capability would be nice. (adding labels to the email specs i.e. RFCs would also be really cool)

_Gcal_
- offsite popup notifications and offline scheduling is similar to their Gmail equivalents above. There are already third-party solutions(Lightning, Outlook, Sunbird, Evolution, etc.) which could be improved by sync-to-gcal ability but otherwise work fine. you could export your calendars as XML or ICS(this is supported by many calendar applications)

_GDocs_
I really doubt that a full-featured online office suite (which could compete with desktop office apps) will be built by anyone in the next several years mainly because of network speed issues. Google is doing ok in this area considering that it is going into unexplored territory. Offline work = 3rd-party desktop suite(OpenOffice is cross-platform and free). There’s also a greasemonkey script (http://lifehacker.com/software.....256812.php
and the DownloadThemAll extension which allow you to mass-download your docs.

If Google starts going more into desktop apps, this will take a lot away from their web apps, since they will need to devote time and people to create them on multiple platforms(MS Win, Mac,*NIX) which isn’t a great solution and drains their employee pool. Google is doing well so far, and they should stick to web apps.

P.S. Your other google app ideas(and the rest of your suggestions) sound cool, and I agree that GReader rocks.

Luigi Montanez says on May 4th, 2007 at 5:06 pm

I think Google Reader is missing one hugely important feature — the ability to order your folders and feeds the way you like. I use Bloglines, and I put the top feeds that I read at the top. If I don’t get time to read some of the feeds on the bottom, well no big deal.

I’m not moving over to Google Reader until they add in that feature.

Allen Gregory says on May 4th, 2007 at 5:55 pm

I use iGoogle with the gadgets for Google Notebook, GReader, Gmail, and Gcal. This makes it very handy to be able to get an update of all the services in one place but for the most part all it is an update. To achieve all my mail I still have to go to Gmail, their should be a button to do this from the gadget.

I think Google should get a todo list manager. Right now I use Remember the Milk but I would much prefer if Google made a tool so it would be integrated with all their other great web apps.

Also, one thing that really annoys me is that in GDocs you can’t use the spell checker from Google Toolbar which I prefer much more because it spell checks as you type instead of having to hit the button to see were you made a mistake.

Overall I love all the Google tools because they allow me to do all my work from almost any computer.

hhggrr says on May 4th, 2007 at 6:24 pm

Love Google Reader but besides the Search feature I would like to be able to keep the tags once you share/star the items. There is no easy way to find any of the articles you’ve starred/shared. The search feature would help but it would also be nice to be able to sort or navigate your starred items through tags.

Jamie says on May 4th, 2007 at 6:45 pm

Google already has great notification programs.

Brett says on May 4th, 2007 at 7:03 pm

Google Reader needs a good mobile interface. What they have now is why I’m still using Bloglines.

And I got around to using google desktop recently and was shocked to find out they don’t have a gadget for google notebook. That’s ridiculous.

Mark says on May 4th, 2007 at 8:53 pm

One thing about Google Reader that I wish they’d add is something showing me how many items I have starred, the same way it shows you how many unread items you have in your feeds. I star stuff and then forget about it, and the number would help remind me.

Oh, and the little menu that Gmail has in the upper left hand corner with other Google apps, why can’t that menu be in all the apps? And why can’t I customize it so it shows just the ones I use, or the ones I use most often?

Justin Roepel says on May 4th, 2007 at 9:07 pm

The one really pressing thing I would love to see come straight from google would be the ability to easily sync gcal and contacts from gmail into uggh outlook. This way I can have my contacts and cal info uploaded onto my ipod, cell phone, etc… I’m still looking at third party work arounds that just don’t do the job. Google should be able to do this with such finesse.

Will says on May 4th, 2007 at 10:03 pm

I just discovered this website and I love it. Great work. I use Google Finance a lot, but I would love to see it offer historical stock prices – download.able to a spreadsheet, more ratios, and a portfolio simulator would be cool (though not necessary at all, it would keep me coming back and seeing the ads)

Mephy says on May 5th, 2007 at 12:55 am

I just found out that Google Reader has a small but useful update. Notice the bottom of your items, and you will find Email(updated), click that and it gave you a quick email sending form. this is quite convienent compared with opening new gmail window before. And the information you received also becomes more detailed.

sandy says on May 5th, 2007 at 1:47 am

hi,

You can also make comments/suggestion to this site it has all info related to google work and tools.
http://www.googleutilities.com

adam says on May 5th, 2007 at 2:32 am

Google can be read offline just sync it with an email client before leaving, likewise with the calendar. Outlook, Thunderbird, Eudora etc. all support this. Or get a smart phone and have all your alerts sent to you. Plus you can have the gcal email you reminders and I am pretty sure you can get text message remindars. In addition you could use the gspace plugin for firefox or in windows you could use viksoe.dk – GMail Drive shell extension

I do agree with many of your critques. solid article

Live TV says on May 5th, 2007 at 2:34 am

how about more reliable servers, Gmail server are sooo slow nowadays.

mr happy says on May 5th, 2007 at 2:55 am

How about GoogleYourself?
You upload yourself to google and you save lots of space and money.

isharci says on May 5th, 2007 at 3:01 am

What google really needs is a custom version of Firefox that integrates their entire suite.

In addition to the “to-do List” i would love the ability to create a hierarchy that would allow anyone higher in the hierarchy assign tasks. Task complete, hierarchy is notified of the completion and is time stamped. Would be awesome for Google Groups which I use for my small business.

isharci says on May 5th, 2007 at 3:01 am

What google really needs is a custom version of Firefox that integrates their entire suite.

In addition to the “to-do List” i would love the ability to create a hierarchy that would allow anyone higher in the hierarchy assign tasks. Task complete, hierarchy is notified of the completion and is time stamped. Would be awesome for Google Groups which I use for my small business.

Charlie Hayes says on May 5th, 2007 at 3:23 am

God, your a tool.

“insanely useful”
Are they so useful you go insane?

“they aren’t perfect”
Thats for sure.

“Don’t get me wrong — I love these apps”
Noted, Google tool.

“I couldn’t bring myself to use anything else”
Especially the desktop equivalents with more functionality and speed. Those suck!

Almost all those features are in those desktop apps. Your not losing anything by going to them.

Lib4 says on May 5th, 2007 at 3:25 am

Google toolbar needs to let you organize better and create subfolders for bookmarks

Adam Pope says on May 5th, 2007 at 3:50 am

I’d like a ’save as’ button in GCal. I’m often setting up recurring events that don’t fit into the weekly, monthly or annually categories – like a raining course that runs three times a year on random days.

Currently I have to re-enter all the information into a new event, but if I could just ’save as’ into a different event, it would be sweee-eeet

neil5280 says on May 5th, 2007 at 3:50 am

You’re probably aware of all this, and I think your point is that you want a solution delivered by google from within the app you’re currently using, but here’s my two cents.

Off-line reading: You can use a mail program like Thunderbird to download your emails locally and read them off-line. I have issues with this though, because at least last time I tried, it archived everything I downloaded.

Open emails in new tab: If you use the Google personalized home and add the gmail widget, you can click on your latest emails and they will open in a new tab.

Quoting: Message size. I should be able to see how big a message is, and sort by size. Would make deleting emails easier.

I delete the occasional email, but isn’t the entire point of gmail that you never delete an email? I can see sorting by size for other reason, but the idea of deleting emails seems so foreign to me now.

To-do list: I just want to make sure you know you can add the Google to-do list widget to your personalized home. Again I agree though, it should be integrated into their calendar application. I’m sure it will be sometime in the not too distant future.

Thanks for the rest of the items. A lot of fun things to ponder.

Peace,

neil5280

passerby says on May 5th, 2007 at 3:58 am

{ server side; no-java; no-javascript }

whizack says on May 5th, 2007 at 4:07 am

What Google needs to do is stop pretending that their web based office tools are any good at all and just scrap all the projects completely and start focusing on what they’re good at… search and advertising.

Gmail has been in “BETA” for like 5 years now. I think the cat’s out of the bag at this point.

friend says on May 5th, 2007 at 4:21 am

amen! nice list and well thought out.

bugs says on May 5th, 2007 at 4:29 am

I would really like some improved security for my Google Account.

I mean, i have all my shit up there, including emails dating from 2004 till today, contacts, events, analytics for my websites, personal notes (including passwords for other websites), chats, private pictures…

If someone got my password by now (most likely with a key-logger), they could be be very easily spying on me and get every available information (most of it unknown even for my mother or girlfriend).

What i would like to see on Google is some feature that will alert me whenever someone logs on my account at the same time while i am also logged.
“It seems that someone with ip address 100.100.100.3 is also logged on your Google Account at this moment. If this is not you (perhaps from another computer), there is a good chance that your password was stolen and someone is reading your mail.”

Also, some event-log that will keep track of the last 50 successful and failed logins, together with IP addresses would do a magnificent job.

My 2 cents.

Mas says on May 5th, 2007 at 4:49 am

Google tools are great… but Google “Ajax” office-applications-like (such as Spreadsheet) will never be usable enought as long as they will be written in Javascript (too slow, too limited documents conversions, very limited features compared to the “real” applications on so on…).
A small company seems to have dared a new approach, still based on Ajax (I would say “meta-Ajax”) still with a native web browser only (no plugin, no extension, no flash… nada) and it looks impressive.

With this tech people can use ANY “real” application through their WebBrowser and even do collaborative work:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZRHYW-vCa0

Wayne Booth says on May 5th, 2007 at 4:58 am

Looking for a ‘GContacts’
You should check out:
http://www.myContactDetails.com/

Emanuele Ruffaldi says on May 5th, 2007 at 4:59 am

nice list. One comment regarding multiple upload of files. There is a Firefox extension for doing that:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2190

Bashar says on May 5th, 2007 at 5:04 am

You read my mind, and added a lot more. Very good topic, thanks. I’m sure Google will take this feedback for consideration.

jewellpage says on May 5th, 2007 at 6:11 am

In reader I want to be able to email a feed to a group.

JMG says on May 5th, 2007 at 6:46 am

I would like to be able to be able to send mail at a certain time – send at 6 AM – need it all the time & winder why no program does this!

life3e says on May 5th, 2007 at 6:46 am

Google Bookmarks.
That could be a decent addon. The google search page could have a small ajax enabled button what could make it easy to add links to their bookmark list. Google already rules the search engine market.. this feature would make it a leader at this sector too.
Similar could go with picture library that would work similar to the bookmarks feature except this would exclusively be for pictures.

This could integrate with Orkut so people can see other’s bookmarks.

life3e says on May 5th, 2007 at 6:51 am

additonally though google reader allows you to see other’s favourite news articles, the link to this is pretty cryptic. I should be able to view other’s fav articles with the link like i do with picasaweb… some link like… reader.google.com/life3e

nLite Addons says on May 5th, 2007 at 7:50 am

Some nice ideas here :)

stuckinOK06 says on May 5th, 2007 at 8:29 am

I love the “save automatically” feature but the google servers are slow. It might be faster if we could automatically save to the browser cache & then to the google server less often.

Fable says on May 5th, 2007 at 8:31 am

Good article, Leo. There are some great ideas you have listed there that I wouldn’t mind seeing implemented too. ;)

htiawe says on May 5th, 2007 at 8:46 am

Google Reader needs a fix for all thoose feeds to forum posts thats uses a login/pass to show postings or links.

grizzly says on May 5th, 2007 at 9:04 am

Security – two factor auth. nothing loaded locally.

https for everything without customizegoogle even spreadsheets

Ability to encrypt docs spreadsheets and email without loading anything locally. (see two factor auth.

gmail – make it easy to attach a doc or spreadsheet to an email without downloading the file locally.

google should store my music collection.
google hard drive with encryption.
google tax software I can trust.

make it easy to store my contacts on my phone. (I don’t access the web from phone)

Kevin says on May 5th, 2007 at 9:04 am

I was just talking to my business coach (who’s a huge fan of GTD) about the shortcomings of Google and how they need to embrace the support of GTD. It’d be amazing to see how quickly the new features affect adoption simply because of the integrated features.

Great post!

Rambo says on May 5th, 2007 at 10:10 am

Yahoo! Mail Beta already has many of those email feature requests covered…Google needs to get with it.

Jason Hanley says on May 5th, 2007 at 10:33 am

A quick note about offline usage — Google Desktop let you _read_ your Gmail, and _read_ your calendar appointments when you’re offline.

What they really need is the ability to _write_ email and _post_ appointments when you are not connected.

I suspect this is coming down the pipeline, but might not be viable until the next generation of browsers are commonplace.

Hip Hop says on May 5th, 2007 at 11:57 am

These are very great suggestions

Rob O says on May 5th, 2007 at 12:28 pm

I would like one touch “Mark as Read then archive”. I get a lot of mail that I know what it is from the subject and don’t need to read it, but don’t want it bold in All Mail. The sometimes sluggish drop down for mark as read annoys the nice out of me.

Raymond says on May 5th, 2007 at 12:56 pm

Nice articles. if Google will improve on that that will be better. I will be awaiting for the gmail features like unthread, 2 pane, batch upload, progress bar and gcal to do list and greader search. Awaiting for that :)

Webice says on May 5th, 2007 at 1:37 pm

Hope Google is listening and will implement some of these, batch upload and progress bar would be great.

LU says on May 5th, 2007 at 2:16 pm

How about GMusic? To top all the various iTunes, Yahoo Music jukeboxes, Accuradio , pandora’s last fm etc. etc. That would be great!!! Make everything free like You Tube.

semantik says on May 5th, 2007 at 2:33 pm

Google should talk to my bank and deal a use agreement for their UI features. Imagine managing and downloading B.Account items, flagged , stared, noted and precategorized… Tax time could be shrunk to a half hour every year!
Fz

Brutha says on May 5th, 2007 at 3:15 pm

You should be able to add other recipents of an email to your own contact with a single click (like you can add the sender of the email).

amoore says on May 5th, 2007 at 4:27 pm

Can I get a “Google Sync”!!!! It sure would be nice to have a way to sync my Contacts & Calender with my mobile phone via bluetooth or USB!!! If Google wants a full office suite for business, its going to have to play nice with my PDA and cell.

Michael Yates says on May 5th, 2007 at 5:45 pm

Google Desktop does actually allow you to search and read your emails while offline. It caches them on your computer after it recognizes a new email. However, this is not available on Linux, though this shouldn’t affect many users.

Craig Baker says on May 5th, 2007 at 5:49 pm

Not sure the Reader is near perfect, I can’t even read comments associated with the blog post.

mauhumor says on May 5th, 2007 at 6:37 pm

A mind-map!! Google should create GMind!

Nahh .. forget it, perhaps a GFlow! An online, shared workflow, wiki style.

Imagine that! A google-quality ‘continued refined flow tool’ for the masses!!!
(integration API is a must!)

its CMMI-5 for everyone!!

stoopid says on May 5th, 2007 at 6:58 pm

You are plain stupid. Half of your “cool requests” doesn’t depend on google. How can you access a web service without internet connection, dumbass?!?!?

That’s just plain impossible. Maybe with a cached content, but that is not up to google, but your browser.

Obviously, you have no idea of what it takes to create a webapp and the limitations it has.

Oh, and I want google to iron my shirts and drive me to work every morning. Please.

Matt Ellsworth says on May 5th, 2007 at 7:28 pm

your spot on for some of these.

multitude says on May 5th, 2007 at 8:12 pm

Good start, but doesn’t go far enough! I think that Google should have a service that keeps track of everyone we have dated and every book that we’ve read. In fact, it should store every word that we’ve ever spoken so that we have permanent access to it. It should be able to have food delivered to our door (with records kept) along with information on our excretory patterns. All of this should be kept on-line permanently so that it can be mined for the profit of the owners of Google. Good article, keep it up!

Ben says on May 5th, 2007 at 8:42 pm

Do you really want a publicly owned American corporation to essentially own, control and ‘analyze’ all your personal data? I don’t.

quizmasterq says on May 5th, 2007 at 10:04 pm

Reading that list, it’s hard not to think “…Doesn’t Outlook already have these thing?” Sort, reading pane, great calendar integration, notifications, etc. Just saying, a solution is out there.

Zia says on May 5th, 2007 at 10:24 pm

Maybe this article is outdated, but doesn’t Gmail have a notifier? GCal does too, and they’re not third party. Also quick add is built in, unless I installed some extension without realizing it.

Your GTD related recommendations are spot on. Maybe I misunderstood your other comments or this article is outdated.

chandra says on May 5th, 2007 at 10:36 pm

How about an email scheduler?? I miss this feature a lot. They should provide a scheduler (integration with Gcal may be a great idea) so that one can send an email just on appropriate time (e.g. Birthday etc.).

sudo says on May 5th, 2007 at 10:44 pm

I want email auto reply.

joelpt says on May 5th, 2007 at 11:17 pm

I’d really like to see “infinite scrolling” added to Gmail, much in the same way they’ve done it in Google Reader. So instead of going page-by-page, you just keep scrolling and further messages appear.

IMO this is the one thing that standard email clients still have over Gmail. Indeed, calling it “infinite scrolling” just points to one of the inherent weaknesses of the web-based application model. Pagination is so Web 1.0!

Justin Roepel says on May 6th, 2007 at 2:46 am

Wow. I feel like I have placed my foot squarely in my mouth here. I can’t believe I have been having so much trouble looking around for how to import/export info to and from gcal and gmail… Google explains it all in thier Google help guide. I feel like such a dolt! Well here it is. I hope it might help some of you out who are in a situation similar to mine.
http://www.google.com/support/

clip ingles says on May 6th, 2007 at 3:20 am

google should let us include our foto in email in the body as a signature..could link right into googles picasa webfotos.cute idea!
google should create better newspapers likegooglenews but much more local..allow users to digglike articles from several of their local papers and create ciberpapers adding these articles to the already online google news aggregator.. allow commenting below articles. I live in murcia spainand i never get enough local news…..

Brett says on May 6th, 2007 at 4:02 am

Uh, a lot of your “problems” with Gmail could be fixed by using your own mail client (Thunderbird) with POP3. Then you get that offline access you want, you can add attachments like normal, drag into folders, etc. AND you don’t have to open a browser and log in every time.

Bob says on May 6th, 2007 at 4:11 am

how about intigration with Google’s newly aquired Jotspot. oh! and how about a button in Gmail called view more from sender.. so if you are viewing an email from someon you can quickly search for all of the email from or to that person.

Matthias says on May 6th, 2007 at 11:05 am

Every app of Google should have shortcuts or a pull down menu that helps you get to other apps fast, for example, it should be easier to click over from docs and spreadsheets to blogger. that shold work with one click.

Docs and Spreadsheets
Should have folders where you store your documents, instead of lining them up in an endless long line with the recently stored on top. Just like MS Word.

There is something seriously wrong with assigning fonts to lines of text, whole files or just paragraphs. It is very hard – or does not work at all. Or once you work on it it switches font on you, or when you open it for a second time, the font has changed back. Weird.

Overall, I love the concept and hope that Google succeeds. Microsoft cannot be left alone as monopoly.

Mash ups should be easier, point and click for computer dummies like me.

When will we have a database with integration into the other apps?

The personal maps is a great step forward, I love it.

Joe says on May 6th, 2007 at 11:24 am

I will love to sinc my Palm with gcal.

Rebecca Winters says on May 6th, 2007 at 2:41 pm

Re: #12 on your gmail list – I believe gmail can be integrated with a program such as Outlook or Outlook Express which would allow you access to email messages while offline. I believe the program called “Thunderbird” can do the same thing.

K says on May 6th, 2007 at 5:22 pm

You know what is great. I love the search feature that google provides us. But damnit, I want to be able to search the internet off line. Please, please please, make google do this, it would be awesome. While we’re at it, lets have dig off line. And FLickr, and maps, and … why can’t my computer just know everything always? I mean it is a computer. They are amazing things. Please make my computer all knowing google. That way I don’t have to get online at all…

Richard Terris says on May 7th, 2007 at 4:26 am

I use GMail on my PDA.

When composing a new email, i am unable to send an email to someone unless they are a contact in my list.

This means to send a mail to a new address, i have to add them as a contact and THEN create the mail, select the contact and add as a recipient.

Should be able to enter an email address, and then have the option of adding them as a contact.

rasqual says on May 7th, 2007 at 2:06 pm

Undo on the calendar. If you inadvertently drag an appt. to a wrong time or day and forget where it WAS — too bad. You’re screwed.

Gudinin says on May 8th, 2007 at 9:41 am

Good job, Leo,

On the issue of opening the GMail message in a new tab, please note the following: – You can have original item links open in a new tab in Firefox. In the preferences window’s ‘Tabs’ section, choose “Force links that open new windows to open in: a new tab.”

2 hhggrr (says on: May 4th, 2007 at 6:24 pm)->

In GReader, you can view the posts by tag, by going to ‘Trends’, and on the bottom you’ll see the Tag Cloud, where all your tag are displayed in different size and grayscale according to the number of articles you tagged and read (that’s for folder tags). Of course, I’d still want a good search (advanced preferably) function in GReader, but at least this one is a way to find what you are looking for.

I’ll support the idea of having offline access to the applications, but as far as I understood, there’s a trend of making the browsers able to handle such a feature; I hope Google will be in line and on top of the wave. For now, a good sync function will really help, especially for GMail (POP3 is good, but IMAP is certainly preferable).

Another really much needed feature would be ‘labels handing shortcuts’ (aka GMacros, but intergrated). I know, guys, you can use FireFox and install Greasemonkey to handle that, but I’m asking for is an integrated function. Although FF is good, I prefer Opera, and there are other who prefer a browser different than FF.

GCal
Apart from what’s mentioned, I would suggest “quick add” from e-mail, i.e. to be able to send an e-mail to a pre-defined e-mail address, and that would be automatically converted into an event. RTM (Remember the Milk) has done a really good job with that.

Hopefully Google Bot will pick this all up to the attention of Google guys.
By the way, thank you guys, you are on a good track.

Hac King says on May 12th, 2007 at 6:41 am

Ummmm… 90% of the G-Mail features you want and some other features already exist. http://yahoo.com/

MyScribbles: Write-ups of an Afghan says on May 12th, 2007 at 7:57 am

Great suggestions! Many of them are spot-on. Here’s my two cents, though:

Add an “add folder” feature to gmail. “labels” are cool, but for me this just doesn’t do the trick. Yahoo! Mail has this feature and it’s great.

Regarding the open-mail-in-new-tab, if you’re using Firefox, you can ctrl-click on a link and it will automatically open in a new tab (NOT a new window).

TumiinSA says on May 14th, 2007 at 7:43 am

Great ideas, love them to bits. what google also needs is googlemusic.com . people can download music for free, advertisers will foot the bill. you’ll need a google account to do this. An advetiser can decided to sponsor a certain genre and whilst they are downloading the advtisers add can play.my 2 cents

Joyce says on May 14th, 2007 at 1:44 pm

I would like to see different colored stars in Gmail and a polling option in Google Groups

Ryan says on May 25th, 2007 at 3:15 pm

As a gmail user myself, I am surpised no one mentioned the EXTREME need for Google to offer IMAP e-mail. If you use multiple computers like myself, and want to use an e-mail client–IMAP is a must. Anyway Scottix, some of your responses to suggestions are wrong. I know drag-n-drop is possible because Yahoo! and AOL have implemented this in their new webmail.

zensui says on May 30th, 2007 at 1:36 pm

“gmail: Open emails in new tab.”

to open a link in a new tab, in Firefox:
Mac: ⌘(command)+(click link)
Windows: control+(click link)

StarCraft 2 Wallpapers says on May 30th, 2007 at 3:50 pm

nice list man! :)

Add-Options says on October 5th, 2007 at 7:58 pm

One major problem with Gmail is the reply feature. Why is the signature clear at the bottom of all the quoted text from the sender? It should be at the top with the current message. I hate cutting and pasting when I have to reply. And the longer the back and forth of emails, the more work it causes. Signatures should make life easier.

Diego says on February 17th, 2008 at 9:49 pm

i found a workaround, although by no means perfect: access your gmail through an IMAP-capable email client (i use microsoft outlook express).

http://mail.google.com/support.....swer=75725

voila, unthreaded emails!

the problem is that google conflates sorting with searching. they think that the only reason why people would want to sort their email is to search.

Sarah says on April 11th, 2008 at 3:29 pm

I like your research. Great list!