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Comment by beaner | Hacker News Reader

That sentence in context applies to Inbox, not Gmail.

Edit: Not sure why downvoted. I'm not being sarcastic, please read the article, it's right there.

I genuinely can't tell whether the article is suggesting that Inbox is for advanced users or for non-advanced users (and GMail for whatever the other user is). I believe, based on my own understanding of the two products, that GMail will continue to exist for advanced users, and Inbox will be simplified. But, the article is not at all clear on that; the last sentence seems to flip the meaning of the rest of the article and indicate that Inbox is the "advanced" one, while GMail will be made more simple. Or something.

Author can't English good.

Inbox is created for high-volume users.

The backlash was because GMail was being used by high-volume users who struggled with the new, simplified version.

It seems to me the other way around. I am a high volume user and I have relied on Gmail for almost 10 years. I signed up for inbox (because I am always looking for something better). I found it slowed me down. It was pretty but superficial. I prefer the plain but functional Gmail. Just one data point, I realize.

Thank you for clarifying. It makes the last sentence of the article make sense, but I think one would have to already know the difference between GMail and Inbox in order to understand the article with confidence.

No, it doesn't. "The decisions" refers to those that the design/product team made (see paragraph preceding the GP's quote)---the same changes that were made and roundly panned by Googlers.

Inbox, on the other hand, is "specifically designed from the ground up for advanced users who have to handle a firehose of incoming emails every day" (last paragraph of the article).

To summarize the article: the Gmail team decided that Gmail should be geared toward non-power users; power users of Gmail (Google employees) hated this decision; Inbox was born as a product specifically for power users. In the meantime, (some) power user affordances were kept in Gmail, but better hidden.

No, the author misworded.

Inbox has the hidden power-user affordances, The real power-user Gmail is the old Gmail that is allowed to still exist.

That's not how I interpreted the article, but I may be missing something. I haven't used Inbox, but the description below indicates it's for advanced users, not somebody's Aunt Floe.

"In parallel, the Gmail team would begin working on a standalone product specifically designed from the ground up for advanced users who have to handle a firehose of incoming emails every day. And that’s how Inbox was born."

I like Inbox, but in my experience it is inferior to gmail for that particular use case. Gmail does a far better job of displaying a lot of information that I can scan quickly. Inbox treats you email like a todo list and expects you to deal with everything (that isn't automatically sorted out) individually.

I use Inbox for my personal email, but gave up on it for my work email.

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