Google has finally decided to allow users to turn off the controversial ‘conversation view’ threading functionality in Gmail.
Conversation view has been a characteristic of Gmail ever since it launched, but Google software engineer Dong Chen admitted in a blog post yesterday that it is the webmail service’s “most hotly debated feature “.
“Threading enthusiasts say they spend less mental energy drawing connections between related messages, and that their inboxes are much less cluttered,” he wrote.
“On the other hand, email traditionalists, like many former Outlook users, think conversation view just complicates something that has worked for years.”
Users who prefer traditionally displayed emails will soon be able to toggle off conversation view and see their emails in chronological order, according to Chen.
“We really hoped everyone would learn to love conversation view, but we came to realize that it’s just not right for some people,” he said.
“Over the next few days, we’ll be rolling out conversation view settings to users in organizations with the ‘Enable pre-release features’ option selected in the Google Apps control panel, and to individuals using Gmail.”