Google has received a patent granting the rights to a conversational email management system that is based on search.
When launched in 2004, Google’s Gmail made headlines, because of the large storage capacity of 1 GB, but it transformed the way people were using email by using threaded conversations that were not only sorted by date, but as a result of a conversation. Gmail was launched into beta on April 1, 2004. One day before the launch, on March 31, 2004, Google filed for a patent covering the idea. The patent was confirmed earlier today.
The patent titled Email conversation management system” describes
“a system and method […] for producing a list of conversation as the result of a search query. Messages are received and associated with a conversation. Each of the conversations has a respective conversation identifier and includes one or more messages. Messages, and related message information, are indexed for text searching and information about the message is stored in a memory to associate the message to its respective conversation identifier. The index can be searched to identify one or more messages relevant a search query. At least some of the conversations to which the one or messages belong are identified and produced as the search result.”
The patent highlights the importance of search in Gmail and the capability group search results in conversations: “A method of searching messages includes receiving a search query and identifying a first message relevant to the search query. The first message belongs to a conversation that includes at least a second message. The conversation is returned as a search result to the search query.”
As background of the Gmail idea, Google pointed to the need “of organizing and displaying a plurality of messages, including messages received by and messages sent by a user, according to their respective topics.” However, not all users particularly liked the Google-way and the forced threaded view of emails. In late September, Google began offering an option to disable the threaded display of email.
