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> Cool! I didn't know threaded conversations were a concept from usenet.

Usenet and e-mail. Both message formats supported referencing the message being replied to since the early days:

* https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc822#section-4.6

* https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc850#section-2.2.6

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversation_threading

I wrote a lengthy reply and then deleted it because I realized that I too used threaded email conversations. I think I forgot about them because Gmail doesn't have them, and it's been ages since I used Eudora or Thunderbird. (Or text-only Pine, but I honestly cannot remember if it showed threads).

GMail does not support threads?!

When they introduced labels they claimed threads were a thing of the past. I didn't even know you could still have them, Google certainly didn't advertise it (since they wanted us to use labels instead).

It's called "Conversation View" and it DOES exist! It's just disabled by default. You can find it in: Settings -> All Settings -> General.

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