When Gmail was launched on April 1, 2004, many thought it was an April Fool’s Day prank. A free email service with 1 GB of storage sounded absurd in an era when competitors offered barely 30 MB. But Gmail wasn’t a joke—it was a disruptor, redefining how we thought about email and forcing the industry to catch up.
Two decades later, Gmail is doing it again. With Gemini AI woven into its core, Google is turning the inbox from a passive message dumping ground into an active assistant—summarising threads, drafting replies, and surfacing priorities. Gemini within Gmail promises saving hours with AI-powered writing for everyday communication. A subscription-driven model positions Google head-to-head with Microsoft’s Copilot in Outlook.
“Google does not need to out-innovate the competition to win, it just needs to out-distribute it. No one comes close to Google in terms of distribution and users, they virtually own the Internet; we just live in it,” says Jaspreet Bindra, co-founder of AI&Beyond.
Also Read: Google’s Gemini 3 Launch: Why it matters
At the core of the rollout are AI Overviews, which can synthesise key points from long threads and, for paying subscribers, answer natural language questions regarding the inbox. Offering free summaries alongside paid query-answering signals the way Google plans to balance ubiquity with monetisation.
There is a ‘Help me write’ feature, and Suggested Replies (the evolution of Smart Replies) that aim to make writing and proofreading easier. The most ambitious piece is an AI Inbox view (currently being tested) designed to display priority messages on top of the inbox, actionable to-dos, and VIP contacts.
Google’s prompts encourage cross-app usage. For instance, users can reference a Drive file with “@filename”, and Gemini can retrieve details into a draft or search result, blurring the line between emails and document workflows. The upside is speed and coherence; the risk is over reliance on summaries that may miss nuance, especially in complex contexts.
Google’s freemium playbook—mass market features at no cost and computationally intensive capabilities for AI Pro/Ultra subscribers—mirrors Microsoft’s Copilot strategy in Outlook. The objective is to convert habitual use into paid upgrades, and to leverage Gmail’s scale to normalise AI assistance as the default email experience.
“With Gemini 3 proving to be a massive hit, they will now infuse all their products—Gmail, Chrome, YouTube, Android OS—with Gemini AI. Email is just the first one, others will follow. The recent free pass by the DOJ Antitrust Division has also emboldened Google to infuse AI in every product of theirs and embrace and extend their way to world domination,” adds Bindra.
Google claims users can disable Gemini features and that email content isn’t used to train Gemini, a message intended to calm users who are increasingly wary of AI data practices. The company also stresses that there is secure processing and user control, particularly around the AI Inbox analysis. Still, the fact that some of these features are enabled by default and users need to consciously opt out, invites scrutiny, especially for inboxes with sensitive information.
Bindra explains: “This has raised concerns. Even though users can opt-out, the process is complex.” There’s also the accuracy wildcard. AI Overviews in Search have faced backlash for erroneous or misleading answers; transplanting Overviews into Gmail raises the stakes because the summaries touch private communications where context matters.
While email data is cleaner than the open web, the risk of hallucinated or incomplete summaries persists. This suggests a ‘human in the loop’ best practice: Treat Gemini’s output as a first draft for reading and writing, not a source of record. In the near term, it will be key to see how enterprises with strict compliance regimes respond to default-on AI.
First Published: Jan 13, 2026, 16:33
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