Google has stated its Inbox app has been put on a life support at the moment, with March 2019 as the tentative window when the app will finally be pushed into oblivion. However, no fixed date has been announced as yet though the time given should still be enough for current users of the app to move to greener pastures.
The demise of the Inbox app, however, should not come as a surprise. Rather, it can well be considered a planned move given that many of the features that Gmail has recently been provided with happen to be sourced from Inbox. That includes the snooze feature, smart reply, follow-ups and so on that used to be available only on Inbox.
In fact, given the way Gmail has benefitted from a host of features that originally started at Inbox, the move to shut out the latter can be considered to be a well thought out strategy wherein Inbox served as a testbed of sorts. That way, Inbox so far was used for testing new features before the same is brought to Gmail.
If that indeed is the case, there might soon be another overhaul of Gmail so that the other desirable features of Inbox are added to the former. That includes the facility to bundle existing emails to ensure better organization of the existing emails. Otherwise, users will also have the option to create labels that would filter the incoming emails right into the specific categories.
The demise of Inbox will also mark an end of a journey that started in 2014. Back then, Gmail used to be quite spartan in its layout, offering a very limited set of features and options. That naturally encouraged users to look for other email apps such as Inbox. However, with Inbox on the way out, users will have no other option but to look for alternatives. And Gmail seems the most plausible given that most of the features of Inbox have made it to Gmail.
