Google rolls out new way to search Gmail inbox with Gemini: How it will benefit users?

Gmail gets Gemini: Google has been slowly weaving its AI model, Gemini, in all its products and services. In the past couple of months, the company has added Gemini to its products such as Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Drive. Now, it's Gmail's turn to get a Gemini update.

The company today announced that it is bringing Gemini's power to Gmail by introducing a feature called 'Gmail Q&A'.

What is Gmail Q&A and how will it benefit Gmail users?

Gmail Q&A is a Gemini-powered feature that lets users search Gmail simply by asking their queries to the chatbot. As Google explained in a blog post, users can not only ask Gemini questions about their inboxes but they can also ask it to do things such as finding specific details in their emails, showing all unread messages, and viewing messages from a specific sender.

The list doesn't end there. Gemini in Gmail can also summarise an email thread, suggest responses to an email thread, and help in drafting an email.

Interestingly, Google had first announced this feature at the time of annual developers' conference, that is, Google I/O 2024, back in May this year. Shortly after, the company brought the Gmail Q&A feature to Gmail's web-based platform. Now, it is bringing the same feature to the Gmail app.

So, what happens to search bar in Gmail?

While Google has introduced a new way to search Gmail inbox with Gemini, it is not removing the time tested search bar that all Gmail users are accustomed to. Instead, users will be able to use both the features based on their needs.

Who will get the Gmail Q&A feature?

As mentioned before, Google is bringing Gemini-powered Gmail Q&A feature to Gmail's mobile apps. At the moment, it has started rolling out this feature to Gmail's Android app. It plans to bring this feature to Gmail's iOS app soon.

There's another caveat. Google is rolling out the Gmail Q&A feature only to Google Workspace customers. Regular Gmail account holders will not get access to this feature. This means that interested users will have to shell out at least Rs 136.90 per month to get Gemini-powered Gmail.