While size may not be as important for tech companies as it is for many other sectors and startups can become wildly successful multi-billion dollar businesses, there are certain situations where size definitely does matter. Google may be nimble for a company its size and may try to maintain a very open and laid-back corporate attitude but it doesn't mean that it won't use its size as leverage even if it is for the “greater good.” Gmail is a very popular web mail client and Google is focusing a lot of development effort on improving it. However, the search giant is also doing something that most other companies can't or won't, it's working on making email as a whole better and especially safer, even if it does have a commercial motivation as well.

Google has been rolling out some interesting features lately, which could only be done by a company that controls a significant piece of the market. Most recently the search giant has unveiled a new feature that will enhance email from certain partners with new functionality benefiting the user and the companies using it. The feature is called "sponsored mail with enhanced content," which pretty much describes it.

“If you're subscribed to receive email from certain senders, the messages you receive from them will be enhanced with an interactive gadget that has up-to-date content from their website (you'll also see an icon in your inbox identifying these messages),” Google describes the feature. “For example, if you receive a Pregnancy Bulletin newsletter from Babycenter, you'll be able to view up-to-date content, including the baby name of the day, and browse though the current top 100 baby names within the message.”

These “enhanced” emails will sport an icon presumably in the form of the company logo of the sender or something along those lines. This will make it more easily identifiable and recognizable in the emails list. But the interesting part is the new functionality inside the emails themselves. Google is currently testing the feature with a handful of partners in a limited trial, as per usual at the company, and one of the names involved is Netflix.

With Netflix below the usual email there is a panel showing movie recommendations, which can be added directly to the user's queue for the movie rental service. Other partners will be able to customize the features and functionality they will add. While the feature does have a clear commercial focus Google has managed to make it less invasive than it may seem while also allowing users complete control over it including the possibility to disable it altogether.

First of all, the emails come from newsletters that the users have previously subscribed to so it could be presumed that they are interested in the content itself. As such, adding some functionality to the emails could prove useful to them. But also because all partners will have to be vetted and verified by Google, it’s easier to trust the emails as being legitimate. However, if the users don't want the customized emails they can choose to disable the feature by selecting the “Do not customize mail from [sender]” option.

While it may not seem like it, the new feature integrates with a larger move at Google to make email more trustworthy and more useful. While newsletters can be useful and many users do rely on them, in real life things aren't always so clear cut and users end up “subscribing” to a big number of junk newsletters filling up their inbox. Google though is working on this end as well trying to spearhead a new standard and streamlined method to unsubscribe to the unwanted newsletters. This though has to be supported by the sender itself so, by adding a commercial value to a partnership with Google, the company could have an easier time getting other companies to cooperate. There is no indication that there will be a correlation between the two features but Google could certainly go this way.