Dear Google…

We love Google over here, in fact, our site relies heavily on it.  But there are some things we think could make it even better.  So without further ado, behold our Google Wish-list for 2009!

Gmail

Add contacts from group mail to address book (not just sender). Gmail allows you to add the sender of an email to your contacts.  But in the case of a group email, what if you want to add all the other people the sender wrote to as well?

Additional fields for contacts. We would love to see birthdays in contacts which optionally integrate into your calendar.

Option to Reply to or Forward email without attachments.

Analytics for Gmail. We aren’t going to hold our breath on this one but an inbuilt analytics function similar to Xobni would be fantastic.

HTML Signatures. This is simply a must for business users.

Google Reader integrated into Gmail. Perhaps as an expandable folder?

Google Email Client. Now don’t get us wrong, we think the Gmail interface is second to none and with  Gmail Offline you are almost there, but lets face it, many people prefer a good old desktop email client.  Rather than letting people go through the misery of trying to properly sync their IMAP folders, contacts and calendar seperately, why not just make a desktop app that does all three automatically from the outset? This might also help out with Google Apps administrators who wish to limit access to employees (See Google Apps below.)

Import Google documents into Gmail email body. Gmail has a great compose editor, but nowhere near the capabilities of Google Documents.  Wouldn’t it be nice to write a flashy newsletter, flier or invitation and then export it straight into the email body of your Gmail?

Gmail Tasks

Keep Tasks integrated with Gmail but also make it accessible as a seperate feature.

Option to integrate with calendar plus receive alerts about deadlines.

Option for a scheduled email summary. Perhaps done vs outstanding with a graph to show productivity over time?

Google Docs

Proper document uploader. From Google.  Drag and drop, perhaps one that automatically syncs too.

Publish to blog functionality. There’s definitely a gap in the market here for non-Windows users who can’t use Live Writer.

Import Google documents into Gmail email body. See above.

Google Maps

Integrate Google Earth with Google Maps accounts. That way saved places, photos, etc on Google Earth appears in Google Maps and vice versa.

A “view your contacts” button which allows you see the location of all of your Gmail contacts that have a valid post address.

Google Latitude track progress. The new Latitude feature on mobile phones is a great idea, but why not allow people to chart your progress over a period of time too?

Picasa

Export to FTP account function. Useful for blogging and web publishing, as well as those who wish to backup their pictures on their own server.

Shared web albums. Where more than one person can add or edit pictures in a single album

Themes for web albums. To add a bit of spice to the neat but increasingly boring look and feel of the page.

Add analytics to web albums.

Reader

Integrate into Gmail. As above

Integrate into Google Apps. As below

Google Apps

Option for Google Apps Administrators to limit user access.  Regardless of the size of the company, one of its most important considerations is the level of access it is prepared to give its employees outside of the office space.  Gmail’s versatility and accessibility in this sense will not sit well with companies who don’t want people working from home.  Ironically, to address this issue, Google would have to give administrators the option to disable web access, the very foundations upon which Google and Gmail is built.  Perhaps administrators could specify which IP addresses were allowed to access Google Apps or access features could be built into a Google Email Client (see above)

Ability to disable forwarding to email addresses outside of your domain. Related to the above and vital if security is a priority for your company.

Assign an automatic footer to all company emails. They might not necessarily be legally binding, but they certainly contribute to an overall professional look and feel. In large firms this would make life much easier for admins if they can implement them company-wide at the touch of a button.

Integrate Picasa into Google Apps and not just Google Accounts.  Businesses have the need to share or send their photos too. Perhaps provide for a hosted address (like albums.yourdomain.com) so that they can show off that launch party in style.

Integrate Google Reader into Google Apps and not just Google Accounts.

Make a Google Apps specific toolbar.

Google Talk

Receive incoming and make outgoing calls to normal phones. Yes, we don’t mind paying for our calls to external telephone networks and receiving calls would certainly be very handy too.  With the latest voice and video chat plugin, users will be able to take their calls with them.  Voicemails and text messages to arrive in the inbox.

Google Talk client for the Mac. Skype can do it – so can Google.

Google Talk clients for Mobile phones. As above.

Google Contacts

Automatic details update for specified contacts.  While the world is gripped in a social networking frenzy, we would ask for a far more simple feature.  The ability to connect to a worldwide directory and specify who can see our “live” contact details.  That way, when one changes contact details those changes will automatically update in those respiective address books – no more need for that tedious group email.

Additional fields for contacts. We would love to see birthdays in contacts which optionally integrate into your calendar.

Well Google, that might not be everything but its certainly a lot to be getting on with, and we’d be pretty happy if you could make it all happen.  Have we missed anything?  Help us out in the comments.