Google mind reading comes to Gmail

I'm not the biggest Gmail fan. Sure, I use the service, but my inbox fills up too fast, and managing the madness is measured procrastination. Email in general is the problem; Google's service is simply easy to blame. But a new enhancement coming in days has me finally ready to adapt behavior to attitude -- and stop being the email file clerk.

Google is in process of adding nifty contextual, autocomplete capabilities to Gmail -- that is if you find this kind of soothsaying useful. I confess to making more typing errors when Google search autocomplete tries to anticipate my thoughts. Mind reader it is not enough, so what good is all that information Google supposedly collects about us all? :) As for Gmail, the new autocomplete starts with what you've got.

Isaac Elias, Google software engineer, explains:

Now when you type something into the Gmail search box, the autocomplete predictions will be tailored to the content in your email, so you can save time and get the information you want faster than ever before. For example, you might now get lax reservation or lax united as predictions after typing 'lax' if you have received an email with a flight confirmation for your trip to Los Angeles in your inbox recently.

I shutter to think how Apple's Siri might respond if I asked for lax. Constipation cure perhaps? I sold my iPhone, so it's all snarky speculation, since I can't ask Siri.

The Gmail feature will be slow coming. "We will be rolling out improved autocomplete in English over the next few days and will follow with more languages over the next few months. While initially improved autocomplete will not be available for Google Apps customers, we plan to bring this feature to Apps domains in the future", Elias says.

Why do these enhancements all seem to come to Apps last? This isn't the first time. Is it one of those businesses aren't early adopters things?

Anyway, the change means that I'll stop filing away email. I'll clear out my inbox to "personal" and "work" folders and sort everything by search. Gmail search already is quite efficient, but contextual autocomplete is enough for me to change my wicked ways -- well, some of them.

What does this mean for anyone emailing me. I might respond within days now. ;-)

Photo Credit: SOMATUSCAN/Shutterstock

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