Gmail Labs goes global, now available in Filipino

MANILA, Philippines - Google Inc. announced that Gmail Labs will now be available internationally in 49 languages.

Gmail Labs is an experimental feature playground within Google’s free e-mail service, Gmail. It offers users useful and quirky tools to enhance and personalize their e-mail inboxes.

Initially launched in English in June 2008, Gmail Labs offered 43 features in 43 weeks and most of these features will now be available around the globe in local languages, including Filipino. 

Users can enable and disable Gmail Labs features individually with just a few clicks of the mouse.

Some of the Gmail Labs features include:

• Offline Gmail. Access your e-mail and compose messages even when you don’t have an Internet connection. Changes are synchronized when you reconnect to the Internet.

• Undo Send. Retract an e-mail for up to five seconds after it has been sent.

• Mail Goggles. Within a chosen time window, this tool allows you to send mail only if you can solve a set of simple math problems. Otherwise, get a good night’s sleep and try again in the morning.

• Forgotten Attachment Reminder. This prevents you from accidentally sending messages without the relevant attachments by prompting you if you have mentioned an attachment without adding one.

• Tasks. This adds a to-do list to your inbox. You can create tasks manually, or directly from an e-mail, and edit your list from your phone while on-the-go.

The announcement coincided with the fifth anniversary of the launch of Gmail on April 1, 2004.

“We’re excited to launch Gmail Labs internationally around Gmail’s fifth birthday,” said Eric Tholomé, Google director for product management. “The rapid innovation in Gmail Labs makes it a perfect example of how Gmail has grown over the last five years: creating a more intuitive, powerful and innovative e-mail program for users.”

“Back in the days when e-mail was tied to the desktop, it was limited in storage and usability,” said Derek Callow, marketing head of Google Southeast Asia. “Because Gmail lives on the Internet, in what we call the ‘cloud,’ we’re able to innovate quickly and offer users creative, new and useful features on a regular basis.”

“I use Gmail as my primary e-mail because of its user-friendly interface and helpful features, including spam filtering, message grouping, and live chat,” said Azrael Coladilla, one of the many Filipino Gmail users who have been enthusiastic about the e-mail service since it was launched five years ago.

Coladilla is a freelance writer, photographer, event organizer, and blogger. “Now, with Gmail Labs, there are more options available for me to personalize and tailor-fit my e-mail according to my lifestyle. For instance, I’m always on the go and offline Gmail gives me access to my e-mail even when I’m not connected to the Internet.”

“Gmail has become a central part of living my life online and the experience has been great,” said Jayvee Fernandez, a 28-year-old professor at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) and co-founder of local blog and online viral campaign advertising platform BlogBank.

“Apart from e-mail, I use Gmail to store archives of my chat conversations with friends and business contacts for future reference. I am excited about Gmail’s rapid pace of innovation, and the way Gmail Labs personalizes my e-mail experience. There’s Mail Goggles — now I don’t have to worry about sending e-mails late at night that I’ll regret in the morning,” Fernandez added.

Gmail Labs’ new languages are Bengali, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (traditional, simplified), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Malayalam, Marathi, Norwegian, Oriya, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil, Portugal), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese.

To enable Gmail Labs, visit the Labs tab from within the Settings page (linked to from the top right of the inbox). To set up a Gmail account, visit http://mail.google.com.