Gmail’s next big redesign starts next week

Google is finally getting around to the Gmail redesign first introduced last year. The company is calling the interface in the update “Integrated View”because the goal is to integrate Google’s latest messaging service, Google Chat (a Slack competitor and successor to Hangouts) and Google Meet (a competitor to Zoom) into Gmail. The main section will remain largely the same, but Gmail’s navigation sidebar will get a lot of changes.

Currently, the Gmail sidebar contains the expected sections such as Inbox, Drafts, Trash, and a list of labels. The redesign will add a second, new, higher-level navigation bar to the left side of the page, allowing users to switch between Gmail, Google Chat, Spaces (Google Chat group chats) and Google Meet. Apart from the four app navigation options, the new sidebar also has a stack of icons at the bottom, and it’s not entirely clear what they are. They look like chat profile pictures, so they can either be active chats or starred contacts. Since no one has tried this interface yet, we don’t know many details.

In addition to the new sidebar, the new Gmail redesign also changes the colors and layout of Gmail. The main mail bar is now in a white box with rounded corners, and the navigation elements (currently the majority of the screen) are highlighted in light gray. The accent color for the New button and the currently selected section used to be red, but is now blue. Red was Gmail’s signature color, but with the new rainbow icon and the removal of the red highlight, things seem to be changing.

The actual purpose of the update is to monitor the use of Slack and Microsoft Teams among business users. Gmail and other Google Workspace apps are very popular among businesses, but due to their turbulent history, Google doesn’t have a dominant messaging solution. Google Chat was conceived as a business competitor to Slack and a successor to Google Hangouts. The presentation for business users is that you’re already spending all that time in Gmail, so why not use our chat solution as well?

The problem is that while Google Chat is a worthy replacement for consumer Google Hangouts, it doesn’t come close to replacing Slack. Slack is designed for your colleagues to ping you when you’re trying to work, so the service provides many different views to help users manage incoming messages. You can see a list of all your private messages, a list of all your @mentions, a list of each thread, and a multi-pane view that allows you to pin any of these lists next to your normal chat channel. Google Chat does not offer any of these options. With this new design, Google Chat is gaining an even more prominent place in one of Google’s most popular apps, but it doesn’t look like Google is doing anything to fix Google Chat’s major functional flaws.

It’s not clear how many of these features can be turned off if you don’t like them. Today, you can turn off Google Chat and Google Meet in your Gmail settings. We’ll have to wait for the rollout to find out more.

Image in Google listing