It was only a matter of time but Google has given in to a group of users who simply refuse to embrace conversation threading in Gmail. I have known for a while that Google was working to release this feature but was hoping they would try to drag the issue out a bit longer.
Conversation threading is a big change and like any big change it is both scary and at times painful. I remember being a new Gmail user several years ago and finding it hard to make sense of this concept. It's not complicated but it is definitely different.
For two decades we have been trained by Outlook that emails come into our inbox as if they were landing on top of a stack of paper. One on top of the other. This made sense when processing power as well as our appreciation for our reliance on email, and the sheer volume and complexity of content we would send, were relatively limited. However, with Gmail we move processing to Google's servers so we are able to do much more without crippling our personal machines or phones. There's no question that Conversation threading is a more efficient way to organize the inbox. The inbox becomes substantially smaller as Gmail treats multiple emails as single conversations - it treats them as they are to us rather than linearly which is how the computer traditionally looks at them.
We have been trained by the computer to think and manage information the way a computer does. This training is so entrenched in our behaviors many of us are simply unwilling to let it go. As Gmail and Google Apps become more mainstream there will be more pressure for Google to make applications like they "used to be" or "how we like it now" rather than imagine what could be or what should be. It's a tough challenge. Today technology changes faster than people.
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