Why This New Gmail Feature Will Make You Furious

Gmail users must be aware of it by now. And reacted accordingly. The Gmail Team has already sent a mass mail (it reached my mailbox in India on January 10), letting people know of the latest change and how it would befit them. On the face of it, the new feature seems a value addition of sorts and more inclusive than before. From now on, you can directly send e-mail messages to anyone on Google Plus even if you don’t have their e-mail IDs and vice versa. Unless, of course, you have adjusted your settings. However, your e-mail address won’t be visible to senders until you mail them back. Similarly, you can’t see their e-mail IDs until they respond. But for all practical purposes, every Gmail user now faces the risk of a massive e-mail onslaught from a bunch of perfect strangers.

You will find this new feature when you start typing in your contact’s name in the ‘To’ field of an e-mail message. Matching contacts will appear at the top of the ‘suggestion’ list and the Google Plus connections come below that. According to the search giant, the feature will be fully functional in a few days, but do we really need this new level of integration between Google Plus and Gmail?

The integration of the not-so-social networking service with other popular Google products has been a pronounced business strategy for some time now. Gmail saw first Google Plus integration in late 2011 that allowed automatic update of address book with a contact’s most recent information. Google also added a widget to the Gmail sidebar to display a contact’s most recent Google Plus post and allowed you to add them to your Google Plus Circles.

Pushing Google Plus into the mainstream has continued since. But when the YouTube comment system was integrated with it in November last year, it certainly created a worldwide uproar. The new system requires users to log in to Google Plus for commenting on videos, thus forcing the social site down the throat of those who would not have it otherwise. Google still maintains it is a goodhearted attempt at cleaning up YouTube, but the latest move shows that the company would stop at nothing to spearhead its social network – even if it means compromising on user privacy.

As one can’t ignore the privacy implications of the current feature, Google has come up with specific measures that can check the potential deluge of e-mail messages. When it comes to controlling who can contact you, you can choose from ‘Anyone on Google+’, ‘Extended circles’, ‘Circles’ and ‘No one’ (in the mail I got, it’s in that order). Going for the last option means one can continue as before. If you choose ‘Circles’ or ‘Extended circles,’ the network broadens considerably. ‘Anyone on Google+’ may not be a palatable option unless you aim to become a LION (that’s what they are called on LinkedIn, the acronym stands for LinkedIn Open Networker) and boast your network size.

The new feature will also leverage Gmail’s tabbed interface that splits the inbox into sections such as Primary, Social, Promotions and more. Going forward, messages from contacts in your Google Plus Circles will appear under the Primary tab while e-mail from those outside your Circles can be found under Social. But in case you are still using the Priority Inbox interface instead of tabs, the additional load of messages will be extremely troublesome.

But at the end of the day, what we fail to understand is why Google has to be this invasive to push just one product. Gmail users may or may not be looking at a huge network or a Web wide party. However, people are certainly not keen to be bombarded with uncalled-for contacts just because the service provider wants to take them to a big, jolly get-together of networkers where millions will mingle and be happy. In fact, it should be totally by choice. LIONS become LIONS by choice and one is free to choose the number of Facebook friends without any suggestion of invasion from these immensely popular networks. If Google is in too much of a hurry to dictate terms and amass unwilling followers at the cost of privacy and convenience, it is bound to spoil the party.

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