Google is celebrating the 15th birthday of its Gmail email client. While I am left wondering what happened to the last 15 years (has it been that long?), the company is busy adding some celebratory new features. Among them is making the app more of a helper.
One new feature is called Schedule Send and it does what it says on the tin. Gmail users can schedule emails to be sent at any time. For example, you can choose a time of day, a specific day of the week, or even choose an exact date and time to send the email.
We class this as a major development and a feature we have wanted for years and we are probably not alone.
Elsewhere, Google has given Gmail's Smart Compose feature a boost. Specifically, until now it has only been available on the company's own Pixel 3 smartphone, but is now available for all Android devices. Google says the ability will also land on iOS, but not just yet.
Smart Compose is also, well, smarter because it will now remember the greetings you typically use and suggest them at the start of emails. Furthermore, it can now also suggest subjects based on what you typically send. Finally, Google says Smart Compose now supports Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French.
Dynamic Emails
Last week, Google announced Dynamic Emails for Gmail. Based on the AMP software technology that allows webpages to function significantly more quickly on mobile clients. For email services, AMPHTML is a format that uses AMP components to create a more interactive email experience, hence the term dynamic email.
Among the benefits of AMP are its ability to load websites in less than one second from Google search. Sites using the technology also use ten times less data than non-AMP services.