Google Mail: Google's approach to email

What's new on Google Mail?

What we have been working on

• Coloured labels
  Organise your email better with new coloured labels. Just click the colour swatch next to each label to assign a colour. Learn more

• Group chat
  Chat with several people without multiple windows. Invite your friends to a group discussion. To start a group chat, click 'Group chat' from the 'Options' menu when chatting. Learn more

• New emoticons
  Go from :) to and start sending richer expressions to your friends. Learn more

• Free IMAP
  Sync your inbox across devices instantly and automatically. Whether you read or write your email on your phone or on your desktop, changes you make to Google Mail will be seen from anywhere you access your inbox.

  By going to m.googlemail.com you get the full Google Mail experience including conversation view, search and more. Learn more

• View as slideshow
  Now you can open PowerPoint attachments as slideshows, without having to download anything. Just click "View as slideshow" next to the .ppt attachment you want to preview. Since you can open .doc and .xls attachments with Google Docs and Spreadsheets too, there's no need to leave your web browser to check your Google Mail attachments. Learn More

• Embarrassment-reducing new message notifications
  Ever replied to a message only to find out that someone sent a better, smarter reply right before you? Now, if someone sends a reply while you're in the middle of reading a conversation (or replying to it), you'll get a notification that a new message has arrived. Click "update conversation" to see what you’ve missed.

• Forward all
  When viewing a conversation, use the new “Forward all” link on the right if you want to forward the entire conversation instead of just one message.

• Get mail from other accounts
  Now Google Mail can check for the mail you receive at your other email accounts. You can retrieve your mail (new and old) from up to five other email accounts and have them all in Google Mail. Then you can even create a customised 'From:' address, which lets you send messages from Google Mail, but have them look like they were sent from another one of your email accounts. Please note that you can only retrieve mail from accounts that have POP3 access enabled.  Learn more

• It's a Google Mail party and everyone's invited!
  You can still invite your friends to enjoy Google Mail's spam protection, lots of free storage and other great features, but now you can also just tell them to visit www.googlemail.com and sign up without an invitation.

• Google Mail for mobile devices
  Point your phone's web browser to http://googlemail.com to access Google Mail from your mobile phone or device. It is easy to use and it is free (but yes, your wireless plan could still charge you).

  It also has the following cool features:

  • Automatically optimises the interface of the phone that you are using
  • Opens the attachments that you receive in messages, including photos, Microsoft Word documents as well as .pdf files
  • Lets you reply by call to people whose phone numbers are in your Google Mail Contacts list

  Learn more

• Chat's what we're talking about
  Get in touch with your friends instantly, from right inside Google Mail! It's the biggest thing to happen to Google Mail, since well, Google Mail. Learn more

• Virus scanning is here!
  Get an automatic check-up every time that you open or send a message with an attachment. We try our best to remove viruses so that we can protect you against all those that we find. You are on your own with the common cold (try chicken soup). Learn more

• Vacation auto-responder
  Set an auto-response so that if you are lying on a beach or taking a train across Siberia, your friends will know that you will not be checking your email. Learn more

• Contact groups
  One of our most requested features is finally here! Now you can send messages to a group instead of having to pick out the individual addresses every time. Learn more

• View as HTML
  Now you can view Microsoft Office, OpenOffice or .pdf attachments as web pages by clicking on the "View as HTML" link instead of downloading. It is useful for times when you want to see it faster, you are on a mobile device or you do not want to install software just to view a document. Learn more

• Auto-save
  We spent 20 minutes writing this entry and then the browser crashed.
  Good thing there is auto-save. It saves. Automatically.

• Be yourself
  @googlemail.com or @yourschool.edu or @yourcustomdomain.com. Now you can customise the 'From:' address on your outgoing messages to display another one of your addresses instead. Use any alias or email address that you own, but do all your sending from Google Mail. Learn more

• Take your friends anywhere
  Now you can export your Google Mail Contacts. Save them in a file for use in another account or service – great if you're using Google Mail's free POP access. Or just back them up so you never lose another contact again.