Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET
Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google.
ZDNET's key takeaways
Gmail is being rethought as a proactive assistant system.
Google is cautious about changing workflows used by billions.
This vision is exploratory, ambitious, and far from finished.
What is the first thing you do in the morning? For me, before I gaze lovingly at my wife and pup, and before I get coffee, I glance at my Gmail and my Slack feed. It lets me quickly ascertain whether something happened overnight that's going to demand my attention immediately during the day.
Also: 10 ways AI can inflict unprecedented damage in 2026
If there's something hot, that changes my pacing. As soon as I do the most minimal of morning prep, I'll sit myself down at the computer to deal with whatever is breaking. If there's nothing on fire, I know I can have a leisurely wake-up and morning prep, gently easing into my workday.
Not everyone has my morning threat-assessment ritual. But there are roughly three billion (yes, billion) people who use Gmail. There are billions of people who, like me, spend hours each day in the app, managing their lives. There are billions of people for whom Gmail is, quite literally, the central dashboard of their lives.
... continue reading