Google’s Gmail was a hit from the moment it appeared as a beta product in 2004, with invites for the service originally selling for literal hundreds of dollars, but as of late, they’ve been losing ground to competitors including Microsoft’s Outlook.com, so they’ve responded with some awesome new features, and a new layout.
New Gmail Features:
- Send money via email. Paypal has officially been sent to the dinosaurs. With the click of a button, straight from your inbox, you can now send money to your friends just like an email. Birthday gifts, split dinner checks, anything you need to send you friends money for.
- Google products integrated into anything and everything.
- Is your friend from Google+ emailing you. Directly respond to G+ posts, hang out via video, or chat straight from Gmail.
- Is your boss sending you documents? View and edit documents straight from Gmail.
- What about money? We talked about this.
- Coupons. Google’s daily deal service now integrates seamlessly so deals can be found, used, and shared straight from your email. This is a defensive move against Groupon, their major competitor.
- Invite people to games on Google Play and Android.
- Schedule events onto your calendar.
- Many of these features have been available indirectly through Gmail in the past, but this is the first full integration, making email a much more powerful tool.
These features are very exciting as tools, allowing for further simplification of life, but certain security risks do exist with transferring money via email, and I’m wondering how they’re going to ensure the safety of those who put their bank info into it.
