No. Go ahead and mark this one down as one of those nifty features that Google puts out there without telling many people that sits around until they decide that it failed and they shutter it. In this case, it won’t necessarily ever be shuttered, but it will likely sit there as an obscure menu item like The Flying Dutchman at In ‘n Out. The concept is this. Send money by “attaching” it through Gmail. It connects directly with Google Wallet and allows the receiver to do so without even having a Gmail account. It’s simple, elegant, and very easy to implement. It’s arguably easier to get going than Western…

Today, Microsoft announced that it’s email service at outlook.com has integrated with Google Chat to allow users to communicate directly with their G-friends from the Outlook interface. While it’s not uncommon for competing services to integrate with each other for certain components, this integration is one that attempts to use one Google service to pull people from another. Many GMail users like the ability to chat with other Gmail users while in their email. Google’s network is growing quickly and Microsoft was seeing it as a roadblock to getting people over to Outlook. If you can’t beat…

Things were looking good for Google Plus when it first launched almost two years ago. Even while it was still in its testing phase, millions of people were clamoring to sign up for Google’s social networking service. Invites had to be suspended for the invite-only field test because of the insane demand for new accounts. It only took two weeks for ten million people to create accounts on the new service. Hopes were high and it looked like a real competitor had finally arisen to take on Facebook. But even as the number of users increased, users and journalists began criticizing the service. More…

Wednesday morning, Twitter users flocked to the social media site to complain that Google Apps weren’t working. The problems started with Gmail and Google Drive before spreading to Google Documents, Google Spreadsheets, and Google Presentations. Google quickly addressed the situation and users were advised to check the Apps Status Dashboard for updates as they investigated the case. We are often inconvenienced by crashing servers or website maintenance, but Google? We take it for granted that giants like Google will be able to run their services smoothly, constantly. When they can’t,…

It’s hard to believe that it’s already been over 9 years since Gmail was opened up in beta. When it was first launched, many thought it was an April Fool’s Day joke because it was launched April 1, 2004. Some joke, eh? The funny part is that it stayed in beta for over five years, so if that qualifies as a joke, then good on Google. Here’s an infographic that shows the timeline. Are you on Gmail? …

There’s something particularly creepy about Google Now that not only makes it superior to Siri and other voice- and location-based digital personal assistants, it makes it worrisome to those who take their privacy seriously. For the first time, we get to see the full breadth of how much Google really knows about us as individuals. It knows us from our Gmail accounts. It tracks our activities online. It knows where we are at any given moment. It’s aware of our real-world activities. In essence, it knows more about us than many of our significant others. That should be a little disconcerting. Strangely,…

Iran continues its push to keep foreign interests out of its internet by barring banks, insurance companies, and telecom providers from communicating with clients using foreign email providers like Gmail and Yahoo. They plan for the “Iranian Internet”, marked to be implemented this month, is intended to keep foreign internet providers from coming in and more importantly to keep their people from reaching out to the rest of the world. “The telecommunications minister has ordered the use of domain names ending with .ir” belonging to Iran, Asr Ertebatat reported. Iranians wanting to receive…

In one of the most aggressive attempts Google has made to promote one of its products, the “Email Intervention” campaign has launched to get users to push their friends and family over to Gmail. Combining humor and mentions of features, Google has put out a video and an accompanying “toolkit” to help their users get people off of their antiquated email clients. The idea is that this is a helpful way for people to improve the lives of their friends and family, giving them features such as free calls and video chat that other services do not offer. It’s clever and unique, but it does bring into question…

When it comes to funny competitive attack commercials, many have tried and failed to capture the magic of “I’m a Mac”. Microsoft was finally able to put out a cute (not hilarious, but point made) video taking a jab at Google services that will be competing against Microsoft Office 365. Introducing Gmail Man. The video does make some good points that many people know but that most try to ignore. Google has and probably always will algorithmically comb our emails in an effort to serve more relevant ads on their email service. It’s a controversial practice that Google has been able to sidestep for years….

If you don’t already believe in the poofy white safety of the cloud… keep disbelieving. A Gmail bug has deleted the inboxes, contact lists, folders, tags, and the like of over 150 000 users. At time of writing, Google has confirmed that it’s been able to fix the problem for some users: “A very small number users are having difficulty accessing their Gmail accounts, and in some cases once they’re in, trouble viewing e-mails. This is affecting less than .08% of our Gmail user base, and we’ve already fixed the problem for some users. Our engineers are working as quickly as possible and we hope to have…