• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, November 2, 2011

You know it’s a slow news day when Web watchers are buzzing about Google’s latest Gmail redesign. In their defense, however, the changes have real implications for Google’s far-reaching social strategy.

“Gmail joins Google Search, Maps, Docs, and Calendar as a handful of core Google search and messaging and collaboration products to be cleaned up,” reports eWeek.

“The redesign will help the programs hew more closely to the new Google+ social network, which [is] being threaded in varying degrees throughout Gmail, Maps, YouTube, Search and other Web services,” eWeek adds. 

Some analysts even suggest that the changes signal a realization by Google that the email era is coming to a close.

"I think email usage has peaked, and people will use social media more -- Twitter, Facebook messages, Google+," Zeus Kerravala, an analyst at ZK Research, recently told Computerworld. "So for Google, if they can customize [Gmail] and make it more modular, it makes taking portions of Gmail and moving [them] to Google+ easier."

Perhaps tellingly, “Google also decided to make email conversation threads look more like an instant message and/or Facebook conversation,” writes VentureBeat. “Each message in the thread now displays the person’s profile picture to the left.”

Also of note, “Google doesn't mention this in its blog post, but the overview video for Gmail's new look shows ads in a couple new places,” PCWorld notes. “While viewing the main inbox, a text-based ad appears on top, and when viewing individual e-mails, the ad moves down below.” 

Adds PCWorld: "The new Gmail ads look a bit like the optional Web Clips' that users can add to Gmail, but these are different, because you can't scroll through them for editorial content.”