Gmail Labs' 5 Best and 5 Worst Features

Google's announced a new addition to its list of Gmail Labs offerings: a built-in Google Search feature. The option, once activated, adds a Web search box onto the left side of your inbox, letting you get results without having to do the extra work.

Gmail Labs: Integrated Google Search

The integrated Google Search option could prove to be pretty handy for regular Gmail users: Click on a result, and it opens in a new window. Go back to your inbox, and you can easily click to insert the link into an e-mail or chat session.

The built-in Google Search is just the latest in a growing menu of experimental Gmail Labs features. As is often the case with Google's array of services, some are killer additions worthy of the word "awesome," while others are ill-fated flops that seem to have death sentences from day one. With today's strong addition, we thought we'd take a look back at five of the best and five of the worst other Gmail Labs options introduced over the past months.

The Best of Gmail Labs

1. Gmail Offline

Unveiled in January, Gmail Offline lets you access your account without being online. As its name suggests, the option lets you do almost everything you can normally do on Gmail.com. You can even compose and send messages and Gmail will automatically deliver them once you reconnect. It's speedy, too, with the typical server delays no longer in the equation. For anyone using a notebook or other system with an intermittent connection, this Labs feature can become invaluable.

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