Different email services and their clients handle the content being sent back and forth in different ways. Some have what is called “Conversation View,” which groups replies together in an attempt to make them easier to skim through and follow. Then there are some email services which treat things more like an instant messenger as their way of bringing something unique to the table. Gmail for Android has always used the Conversation View structure, but today they have announced that it can be disabled right in the settings menu.
This feature was introduced to the web version of Gmail first and it seems as if Google has witnessed an uptick of accounts that have flocked to disabling Conversation View. Both methods have their strengths and weaknesses, and this is especially true if your email chains are short or very long. For example, responses to emails with Conversation View shows new responses at the bottom. This can be a hassle for those tremendously long email chains. Google tried to help alleviate this by breaking conversations off when they got to more than 100 emails.
This change was nothing more than a band-aid approach to an overall problem, but the Conversation View feature has been used for so long that people using email for any length of time just expect it to be that way. Last year, Google added a new feature to Gmail on the web that let you completely disable the Conversation View on your account. Once the user turns off this feature in Gmail for the web, the service then uses a method of grouping emails, with each message displaying separately and in chronological order.
In a society of today where people are used to SMS messages, chat messages like Allo WhatsApp, and similar services, a system like this might make more sense. Google is rolling out this Conversation View toggle to both Android and iOS over a gradual rollout of up to 15 days. Will you disable the Conversation View?