I’ve had the new Gmail tabs for a few days now and I’ve tried very hard to like it but I just couldn’t get how it was helping me.  I can’t figure out how this was going to make my life better, now instead of looking at my Inbox and seeing my email, I have to click on tabs to see all my email.  I have everything labeled and color coded with filters so all I have to do is look for green and I know it’s important, or yellow and I know it’s personal, and so on and so on, this tab thing is just stupid.

Don’t even get me started on the mobile app, at the very top I see the two tabs, I click on one of them it takes me to the messages in that tab, once I’m finished I hit “back” and if I wanted to get back to that tab I have to wait until another email comes into that tab, because I can not for the life of me figure out how to get back to a tab once I’ve backed out of it!  Maybe I’m just stupid, I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a genius, but I can figure this kind of thing out most of the time but this one has got me stumped.  Also I haven’t had a lot of time to sit down and dig into the mobile app, most of the time I spend emailing via mobile is when I’m working so I don’t have time to play with the app and figure out how to use it.

So what am I doing about all this?  Well I went into my Gmail settings and turned it off, and all I can do is hope that Google won’t make this mandatory.  Actually I hope they give it the old “Wave, Buzz, and Reader” off with it’s head that it so rightfully deserves.

I’ll be honest I have not been happy with any of the Gmail updates that have come out this year, but I really hate the mobile updates.  When I wake up I like to start my day by checking my email on my phone, it’s a routine I had gotten into.  Now I don’t even bother, now that I have to tap those letter boxes next to each message to be able to select multiple messages to mass delete I’m always frustrated because if I don’t tap the damn thing just right it will open the message instead of selecting it.  I want simple and easy to use check boxes, not this picture or letter boxes next to each message.  I love you Google but you’re really starting to piss me the fuck off.

Larry Page’s new Google is turning out to really suck, it’s like they are trying to fix what isn’t broken.  Here is a tip for everyone at Google, your users aren’t engineers, K.I.S.S. = Keep It Simple Stupid.