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As most of our visitors would know by now, Google has introduced Gmail Labs, their testing ground for new Gmail features. Since, Gmail has been in beta every since it was launched, it’s no surprise that they’re still testing features (although I hope it graduates from beta soon!).

Gmail has shown the way to almost all major web mail providers in terms of AJAX functionality in web applications, chat add on, quick searching of mails and not to forget a HUGE amount of storage ( I’ve only used 22 MB of my 6802 MB at the moment, even though I have “google� amount of mails! ).

Anyhow coming back to Gmail Labs, their about page says this:

Gmail Labs allows you to try out experimental new features in Gmail and send feedback to us so we can improve them. If you’re going to brave the Labs world, it’s important to keep the following things in mind about these features:

• They may break at any time
• Similarly, they may disappear temporarily or permanently
• They may work so well that they graduate and become regular features

The initial 13 features introduced aren’t much to say about, as they only provide extra functionality instead of basic functionality. They include:

• Quick Links
• Superstars
• Pictures in Chat
• Fixed Width Font
• Custom Keyboard Shortcuts
• Mouse gestures
• Signature Tweaks
• Random Signatures
• Custom Date Formats
• Muzzle
• Old Snakey
• Email Addict
• Hide Unread Counts

Pictures in chat is a good one, although I think it should already be an integral part of Gmail Chat. Signature tweaks also provides some useful options, although I have no idea why anyone would want to use Email Addict and Hide Unread Counts! Email Addict lets you take a break from email and chat by blocking the screen for fifteen minutes and making you invisible in chat where as Hide Unread Counts hides the unread counts for inbox, labels, etc. I’d suggest you close your browser window or not fire up Gmail at all if you really want to get away from your email.

Kristen Nicole from Mashable has made a list of the best and worst features of Gmail Labs, and weirdly she put Snakey in both lists. I, for one, wouldn’t want to spend my productivity time in playing a game in my email client.

An explanation from the Official Gmail Blog says:

Gmail Labs is a way for us to take lots of the ideas we wouldn’t normally pick and let you all (who use Gmail) decide whether they’re good or not. When you sign in, you’ll see a new page in Settings called Labs. It has a list of experimental new features, and you can enable or disable each one. Some of the popular ones will become core parts of the product, and we’ll eventually retire the ones that don’t get much use. We’ve put feedback links in there, too, so you can discuss a feature with other users and the engineer(s) who wrote it.
One of the things that we like about working at Google is that it lets us have a big, positive influence and at the same time experiment rapidly, getting ideas to users very quickly. That combo of size and speed is something we care about a lot, and we’ve designed a culture and company that makes it possible.
The idea behind Labs is that any engineer can go to lunch, come up with a cool idea, code it up, and ship it as a Labs feature. To tens of millions of users. No design reviews, no product analysis, and to be honest, not that much testing. Some of the Labs features will occasionally break. (There’s an escape hatch.)
The result of this loosely-directed chaos is 13 Labs features, with more on the way. Some of them we’ve found really useful, like Quick Links, which lets you save searches and any other views in Gmail. Kai and Julie wrote Superstars, which gives you different types of stars. Dave wrote Old Snakey, which lets you play an old school style computer game when you press "&". I’m just going to go out and say it: Old Snakey is probably a bad idea. But Dave wanted to do it, so Dave did it and anyone who uses Gmail can use it. And now you can help decide whether it’s a good idea. That’s the kind of thing that makes a project fun to work on.

One possible outcome of this Gmail Labs experiments could be opening up Gmail API for applications. This could be a very interesting concept and would surely bring a lot to the table for Gmail with the amount of developers that back them. If my prediction is true, Gmail would be the first web mail service to open up their API’s amongst the big competitors such as Windows Live Mail, Yahoo Mail, and AOL Mail. Only time will tell whether this is going to happen or not. Till then, keep giving feedback and we all might get our desired features as graduates of the Gmail Labs.