Gmail tries to cut email clutter

Google can sift through more than a trillion web links in a matter of seconds, but can the internet search giant help people wade through their overflowing email inboxes?

That's the challenge Google will try to tackle with the introduction of a tool called "Priority Inbox" in its Gmail service.

The feature relies on formulas devised by Google engineers to automatically figure out and highlight which incoming messages are likely to be the most important to each Gmail user.

Users who opt to turn on the Priority Inbox will see their messages separated into three categories.

"Important and unread" e-mails will be at the top followed, by messages that have been previously stamped with a star by an accountholder. Everything else appears at the bottom.

Switching back to the standard view of the inbox can be done with a click on a link along the left side of the web page.

Google's email analysis is based on a variety of factors, including a person's most frequent contacts and how many other people are getting the same message. The content of the email also is factored into the equation.

Although it might unnerve some people, the notion of Google's computers scanning through the content of individual emails isn't new.

Google has been doing it for years to determine what kinds of ads to show to the right of emails and to block junk email, commonly known as "spam."

With more than 100 daily emails pouring into some inboxes now, people need help to identify "the bacon and baloney" along with the spam, Gmail product director Keith Colman says.

Google helped create the information clutter six years ago when it introduced its free Gmail service with a then-unheard of 1 gigabyte of storage per account.

Other email services quickly expanded their capacity limits to remain competitive, and now most inboxes can store several gigabytes of information.