Google is introducing one of its most major new features in Gmail for a long time -- a new "priority inbox" which will sort the wheat from the chaff for you.
Google has announced a major new feature for Gmail: "priority inbox", which will weed out all the guff in your daily email stream and put important stuff at the top.
Yahoo has had a the option to prioritise email from people in your contacts for some time, and Windows Live Hotmail has had the option to easily "sweep" a person from your inbox -- deleting all previous emails from them and preventing and future emails, in just a couple of clicks.
Until now, Google has concentrated on getting the basic features of its mail right -- fast and powerful search, free push sync with all sorts of mobile devices and desktop mail apps, and various small enhancements through its "labs" beta features.
However, the new Priority Inbox is one of the most major upgrades to Gmail for a while -- it uses heuristics to watch who you reply to the most frequently, whose emails you open the most often and promptly, and uses those stats to figure out who is actually "important" in your email life.
The top of your inbox then shows a special inbox dedicated to just these people -- and if Google gets it wrong occasionally, you can promote a person up or down in importance.
The feature is rolling out right now to Gmail inboxes -- some of APC's Gmail accounts are showing Priority Inbox, while others aren't. Google says the feature is coming to Google Apps users in the same timeframe too -- as long as their domain administrator enables the feature in the domain control panel.