Back in the day when emails were novel — and the predominant form of internet communication — people used them for both work and exchanging memes with their friends, just like today’sTikTokgeneration. But email’s purpose has changed considerably since that bygone era.Personal chats have movedalmost entirely to one ofseveral instant messaging apps, which are far more convenient and accessible. Meanwhile, emails have taken on a more serious role by often being the first requirement for setting up accounts for other services, handling your important personal and work communications, and keeping track of your orders and tickets — making them indispensable.
Emails have a real-world, practical use, but that also makes them dull. Email communication has remained text-first despite industry efforts to introduce rich, interactive content. Gmail wants to change that by bringing a little bit of character to these plain emails andmaking them more expressive with the help of emoji reactions. While emoji reactions are an integral part of messaging apps (both personal and work apps, like Slack and Microsoft Teams), they still haven’t found a space in emails, which tend to be more restrained and professional. Google clearly intends to break that paradigm with emoji reactions. But that’s not the biggest problem — it’s Google’s need to turn an open system like email into a walled garden with features that work only on its platform, and emoji could be a start.
A walled garden in tech jargon is often associated with Apple,with iMessage at the center of it. If Google were to make its own iMessage alternative (for the nth time), you’d imagine the app of choice would beGoogle Messages. However, Google has been thoughtfully usingan open standard like RCSfor its cross-platform secure messaging app to replace SMS communications. It is evenpushing Apple to adopt RCSto eliminate feature disparity no matter which platform people choose to use. But for Gmail, Google decided to go for a proprietary feature that keeps non-Gmail users out of its garden.
Emoji reactions will work without a hitch when both parties are on Gmail — the sender will see your reactions just as Google intends to, and you’ll also get a fun little animation on the mobile app. However, it’s not so simple if the sender is using any email client other than Gmail astheir experience would severely deteriorate. Google points out that in such a case, they will receive these emoji reactions as separate emails, and a long thread of emoji isn’t going to be fun at all for the sender. Since emoji reactions aren’t a standard email feature, the functionality will break as soon as you step out of Gmail’s world — something Apple often does to keep its users hooked to its services, like iMessage.
Despite the rise of instant messaging services, there is no sign of email use going down anytime soon. In fact, email has already gotten far more interactive than before andcan even deliver dynamic content to users, which is impressive, even though it’s often used by marketers to spam your inbox. Emoji reactions look like the next logical upgrade to make emails even more interactive, especially in a personal setting. But it would make more sense if all email service providers and client apps came together to support emoji for more universal acceptance and unbroken experience for the users, instead of locking them into a particular service.
There have been attempts to bring exclusive features to email services in the past, too. Microsoft Outlook’sRich Text Format (RTF)is one such example — RTF formatted emails don’t appear correctly for those not using Microsoft services; hence the company converts these emails into the standard HTML format for external delivery.
Having said that,when Gmail introduced client-side encryptionfor its enterprise customers to maintain data integrity and keep even Google servers from accessing the email content, it went for anindustry-standard encryption protocol S/MIME. That allows enterprise customers to interact with anyone with the same data security even if the other person is not using Gmail. On the contrary, emoji reactions are only available for Gmail users, forcing you to give up your email client of choice if you want to use the emoji feature or don’t fancy a broken experience where you receive a long email thread full of emoji.
Gmail’s monopoly cannot be the reason for Google to appropriate an open standard like email.
One could argue that even if Google introduces more exclusive features, it won’t be an inconvenience for most people since there are way more than a billion Gmail users already. While there is a sizeable userbase of non-Gmail email account holders as well, Gmail’s monopoly cannot be the reason for Google to appropriate an open standard like email and challenge the core principle of this widely used communication method without interoperability.
A feature like emoji reactions incentivizes people into switching to Gmail (both the service and the client), just like Apple does with its various services by offering features that work well only if you stay within the ecosystem. While emoji reactions themselves aren’t a big deal, this could very well be the start of iMessage-ification of Gmail, especially if Google decides to stick to this trajectory and add more such exclusive features to its uber-popular email service. If that happens, the open internet communication standard called email won’t feel open anymore.
