First Look: The New Gmail
Google has made Gmail the hub of a business operating system
I finally got access to the New Gmail on my G Suite account, and I have been trying it out. I wrote about the New Gmail when word of it leaked, in Google Gets Busy, back in July. Now, however, I get to answer some basic questions in a hands-on way.
Note that I am referring to this generation of Gmail as the ‘New Gmail’ to distinguish it from the old, but Google doesn’t seem to have a distinctive name for it, like Gmail 2.0 or something. Which is confusing, because it is very different.
Here’s the way the tableau of the New Gmail looks:
At the upper left you see the familiar Mail-related menu elements, like Inbox, Sent, and so on. Below that you can see that I have enabled Google Chat to replace Hangouts (which is on its way to the dustbin of history), although I had not yet had a chat when I took this screenshot.
Below Chat you see the new Rooms capability, which is what I will be focused on in this post. Below Rooms is Meet, Google’s videoconferencing solution, which I won’t be touching on in this post.
In the screenshot, I had hit the plus sign and selected Create Room, and then I created one called First Look:
