When Google launched Gmail Labs over a year and a half ago as a playground where engineers could develop and test new features and let user help decide which are good ideas and which don’t quite work out.
As it was, remedy Labs started out with 13 features which rapidly grew to 60, and still more are coming. Google received thousand comments and kept an eye on the stats: some of these experimental features were adopted by millions and others trickled along with little usage. Today, true to the original intent of Gmail Labs, they are graduating six more features and retiring five.