This week Google has announced the release of the ‘Priority Inbox’ Beta version.

One of the toughest things to accomplish as a successful company is the ability to remain at the top of your game. To do this you need to constantly update and release new products with as much enthusiasm and vigor as you did with your first release. This continuous innovation and development appears to have been neglected by some companies, who allow past products to be overtaken by rivals, but not Google.

Google seems to be committed to updating its online software which includes Gmail and other applications including Google Calendar.

The new software enables users to not only filter spam but prioritise what emails they feel are less important than others.

It does this by dividing your inbox into three parts; “Important and unread,” “Starred” and “Everything else”:



As you receive email, Gmail flags some as important automatically. It does this by looking at a variety of criteria to predict what email is most important to you. This includes email address, if you email a person a lot, their mail is probably important to you as well as which messages you open and reply to which are likely to be more important than ones you delete or left unread. The more you use it, the more accurate it becomes at filtering your messages for you. It also allows you to modify how important an email is to you with simple + and - buttons.

Google seems to have learned the lesson - if you do not innovate continuously, someone else will do so instead.