Microsoft Exec Criticises New Gmail Feature

A Microsoft Office executive has had a little dig at a new Google Gmail feature that lets users sort email messages by date, claiming that Google should just hit the “like” button on Microsoft’s Facebook page instead of copying Office functionality.

Google 29 September introduced a toggle switch that lets its 180 million users choose to receive email in chronological order instead of the default conversation view the Webmail service uses.

Gmail Toggle Switch

Conversation view is Google’s term for threaded messages, where group messages between sender and recipient in a mini cluster.

The implementation of the toggle switch was a grudging nod to Microsoft Outlook, which uses the more traditional method of viewing messages by date. Outlook, used by more than 500 million people, is the world’s leading on-premise email client.

Google engineer Dong Chen chalked up Google’s reason for offering a conversation view toggle switch as allowing users to access email in more “familiar ways” and explained that “email traditionalists like many former Outlook users think conversation just complicates something that has worked for years.”

Microsoft Hits Out

Traditionalists isn’t a misnomer. Sorting email by date is something Outlook has done since it ran on the old DOS platform, said Andrew Kisslo, a senior product manager for Microsoft Office.

“For years now, Google has been saying “conversation view” (threaded) was the best way to read email,” Kisslo wrote in a blog post. “But apparently users petitioned for this feature so I can only imagine the water cooler chat at the GooglePlex in Mountain View “people and their ‘stupid options.”

He likened failing to give users a way to personally sort email is like having a car without adjustable seats/steering wheel.

Google’s move is certainly symptomatic of a company whose ethos is to  start with a few features and builds to user wishes as time goes on.

In conversations with eWEEK, Google’s enterprise group has repeatedly criticised Microsoft Office for having too many features that people don’t need or use.

“Supporting more users means supporting more requirements,” Kisslo wrote. “That leads to complexity of features which the company appears to openly dismiss. They almost revel in uniformity and simplicity, almost to a fault.”

Too Many Features?

That is, Google, whose Google Apps suite is little more than three years old, tries to apply the same simplicity aesthetics it applies to its search engine to its collaboration software.

Kisslo’s point is that the company ultimately sacrifices user choice by telling people what Google thinks they should want in products, and then bows to users wishes by providing functionality users have become accustomed to from legacy products such as Office.

He added that this approach – reluctantly copying Microsoft features years after people ask for them –  is not good for gaining lots of users and is likely why Gartner’s estimate for Gmail market share is at only 1 percent.

Kisslo also said that perhaps Google should just hit the like button on the Office Facebook page and be on its way.

As a final dagger, Kisslo noted that Outlook 2010/Outlook Web Access offers conversation view as one of 12 different views for users.