In memoriam
Google Inbox
Born October 2014. Died 2 April 2019.
Google Inbox, which served the electronic correspondence needs of the discerning and the overwhelmed in equal measure, was discontinued on 2 April 2019, having survived four years and five months in a state of invitation-only exclusivity followed by cautious general release. It was born of Google’s ATAP division in October 2014, and brought to the thankless labour of email a coherence — bundles, snoozing, smart replies, reminders threaded beside messages — that its users had not known they required until the moment it was taken from them.
It is survived by a Gmail application into which certain of its features were absorbed without ceremony, and which has not been forgiven for it. Google offered no apology for the discontinuation beyond the assurance that the best of Inbox would live on, a claim its former users received with the particular sorrow of those who know precisely what has been lost.
Inbox is signing off. Starting April 2, 2019, Inbox by Gmail will be shut down. We built Inbox to experiment with new ways to reimagine email. And while we're ending the Inbox experiment, the best of Inbox will live on in Gmail.
Discontinued by parent company
Mourned by Mourned by those who had found, at last, a way to make peace with electronic correspondence.
Its bundling and snooze conventions survive, imperfectly transplanted, in a Gmail that has never quite understood what it inherited.