From what I’ve heard, working at Google as a programmer is all about exploring exploring your unrequited love for web applications and new ideas. It’s no surprise, then, that the Gmail team is rolling out a javascript applet that allows customers to try out these new features.

It’s the new beta test model, where the actual testing and bug reporting is essential crowd sourced, allowing those diehard, bleeding edge, early-adopter users to feel more nerdy while helping Google work out the kinks. They’ve also opened up channels for sending feed back directly to engineers. Here’s somewhat of a GLabs manifesto from Product Manager Kieth Coleman.

People often ask how we decide what to build next. It’s usually a mix of factors, like how many users are asking for it (think delete button, vacation responder, and IMAP, among others), how useful we think it will be (think chat, conversation view, etc.) or how much fun it will be to work on (this is actually really important). We have all sorts of debates about each option, we weigh the pros and cons, and then some of the time we probably make the wrong decision.

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.

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