Companies running Gmail for their email needs are 80 times more efficient than those running their own in-house email servers, Google announced today in anew blog post, “It’s Cooler in the Cloud.” A recent report by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and Verdantix estimates that cloud computing has the potential to reduce global carbon emissions by millions of metric tons. And Jonathan Koomey, a consulting professor at Stanford who has led several studies on data center energy use, has written that for many enterprises, the cloud “is significantly more energy efficient than using in-house data centers....

Update at foot of post. Google claims to have traced a series of “spear phishing” attacks to hackers from Jinan, China, who have allegedly stolen the login details of Gmail users, escalating tensions over the issue of cyber-attacks. The coordinated attacks, which seems to have attacked individuals rather than Google’s systems, involved tailored emails being sent to hundreds of individuals, which led to a fake Gmail log in page where users were tricked into entering their passwords....

If you’re a Chrome user, and especially if you’ve used the latest version of ChromeDeck, then you’re already familiar with the fact that you can have Chrome do desktop notifications. This latest trick from Gmail, however, proves to be infinitely more useful (at least in our books). Logging in to my Gmail account, I just noticed a bar across the top asking me if I’d like to enable desktop notifications for Gmail....

If you live and die by your Gmail inbox you may well find labels especially useful. While some people much prefer traditional email folders, labels are much more flexible when it comes to organizing large amounts of mail. Now Google hasannouncedthat a couple of useful tools for working with labels that were previously hidden away in Gmail Labs have been promoted to fully fledged official features. Hide Read Labels is a handy feature for stopping your Gmail interface filling up with unneeded information....

If you’ve ever been typing an email and after sending it you’ve realized that you’ve forgotten someone, you know that sinking feeling. Worse yet, what if you meant to email Bobbi but emailed Bobby instead? Awkward… Today we’ve spotted two new features that have graduated from Gmail Labs and will now be permanent residents in your Gmail. In fact, theGmail Blogconfirms the find: We’ve received quite a bit of positive feedback from people who avoided some embarrassing situations thanks to these features....