Is It Time to Dump E-Mail? Google Seems to Think So.

Is it time to dump e-mail?

My head hurts just thinking about that question. But as great as e-mail is, it has problems.

For one, e-mail is too linear. So while e-mail is great for communications that involve me sending you a message, you answering, and the subject either being considered addressed or me being able to ask the next question until the chain of e-mails reaches its logical conclusion, it’s limited.

And as much as I Hate Texting, I’ve come to realize lately that in cases like what I just described it’s just as effective as e-mail. There are storage issues to be addressed, but the linear nature and “answer when you’re ready” back-and-forth are of an identical mechanism in texting as in e-mail.

So maybe I hate e-mail as much as I hate texting.

A couple of weeks ago, Google added a new feature to GMail that at first made me think “a-ha!” and then made me realize that there’s a reason Google seems so much smarter than the rest of us. Now, you can have nested labels in your GMail inbox to organize your stuff in a way that resembles the way you nest folders in standard e-mail.

And as soon as I could do this thing that I’ve been wishing for I realized that it was best if I don’t. And Google explained why in the page linked above.

And they’ve explained it before, but up until now the explanation was just “it’s better our way”. Now, it’s more like “it’s better our way but while we’re finally ready to let you do it this is a business change that will be better left unused”.

Wow.

Let’s assume that not too many people who rely on Gmail are going to be all that interested in nested tags. OK, so Google is pandering to us in an attempt to gain greater adoption of Gmail and whatever other tools they can drag us into. Fine; business as usual.

What about people who have seriously stopped using e-mail? They really are out there, and in growing numbers; “I don’t care to keep a record and it’s already out there in the cloud anyway, so I’ll just use Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking sites to communicate”.

And so, we move on: the biggest business change of all as it relates to the issue of dumping e-mail is what we dump e-mail in favor of. And this makes me think for the first time in months about Google Wave. Is it ever going to be opened up for use by anyone who cares to figure it out?

Whether Google Wave, an existing social networking platform, or something else is the ultimate “winner”, it truly looks as though e-mail is on its last legs. This might be a tough business change to navigate, but it’s one you’re going to have to work through. And it’s time to start figuring out how.