Google Steals Microsoft's Hotmail Thunder With Gmail Contextual Gadgets

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Call it perfect timing. The same day Microsoft unveils a sweeping refresh to its Hotmail email offering, Google Apps hits the market with new gadgets to tweak and customize Gmail.

Microsoft on Tuesday added a host of new functions to Hotmail, now dubbed Windows Live Hotmail, its oft-maligned free Web-based email offering. The additions, which now enable photo previewing, social networking, video viewing and a host of new inbox functions like conversation view and one-click filtering, make Hotmail a little more like Gmail, which recently has become the free Web-mail of choice for many.

Quick Clicks: Hotmail's New Features

But Google was quick to counter and rain on Microsoft's Hotmail parade with the revealing of Gmail contextual gadgets.

Much like the new Windows Live Hotmail's biggest focus is enabling the use of other applications and functions without leaving the inbox, Google's contextual gadgets represents a new Gmail API that lets Google Apps Marketplace applications present relevant information to users in their Gmail, when they're reading a message, Chandrashekar Raghavan, Google apps extensions product manager, wrote in a blog post Tuesday.

"Contextual gadgets in Gmail – like YouTube, Google Docs and Picasa previews – intelligently display relevant information from other systems as you read your email, so you can be more efficient without leaving your inbox," Raghavan wrote.

Third-party developers can immediately start building Gmail contextual gadgets and distributing them in the Google Apps Marketplace. The gadgets, Google said, can display information from social networks, business services, Web applications and other systems. Users can interact with that data right within Gmail.

And, according to Google, a host of contextual gadgets for Gmail are already available in the Apps Marketplace.

New gadgets include AwayFind, which lets users mark certain contacts or messages as "urgent" so the user is alerted via phone, SMS or IM when relevant messages arrive; Kwaga, which displays social network profiles and lists recent email exchanges with people users correspond with; and Gist, which aggregates information from around the Web about people users are communicating with, providing person and company profiles, news and updates.

Other gadgets include Pixetell, which detects e-mail links to video messages created with Pixetell video software and lets users preview, comment on and share video without leaving their inbox; and Smartsheet, which lets users access and update entries in Smartsheet's sales pipeline and project management tool. Google said other companies like Xobni, Rapportive, Manymoon, Newmind Group and BillFLO have also launched contextual gadget integrations.

Next: The Google Vs. Microsoft Plot Thickens

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