In an interview with The Verge, however, product manager for Gmail Jacob Bank made the following statement:
Inbox is the next-gen, early adopter version, whereas Gmail is the flagship that will eventually get the best new features.
We don’t want to make changes frivolously, or with a lot of risk, with Gmail.
Other companies are taking this approach as well. Opera has released multiple experimental browsers to test new tab management ideas or a mobile browser that can be used with one hand.
Telegram made Telegram X to behave as a competitor to bring more innovation to the main app.
This approach makes perfect sense to me. Testing radical UI changes in a service that is used by millions or billions of people is dangerous (I’m looking at you, Snapchat). Besides this, it’s much easier to rethink the core concept of an e-mail service, web browser or instant messaging app when you completely start from scratch and behave like a startup.
So my prediction for Inbox is that it will soon get new features that may or may not eventually end up in Gmail. But since this is Google we’re talking about, one can never be 100% sure.