Google has the expected auto-complete for email recipients, but it has several small, nice refinements. One is the cursor control for the auto-complete list. There are effectively two cursors, one which stays in the TO: box, the other which lets you select from the drop-down list. It is extremely subtle, and the keystroke savings is minimal, but it somehow seems much cleaner. A more significant benefit is that it treats the entries as discrete, so the drop-down appears as you make each new entry, not for the collection of entries. For example, if you previously sent an mail to both sjohnson and mjones, and now you want to send only to mjones, when you *will* get a drop-down for mjones. A final, subtle touch--they automatically add a comma separator after each entry; but of course the final, trailing comma doesn't cause a problem.
Oh my, in testing while writing the above, I noticed yet another refinement--they seem to present all entries involving the letter you type, not just those beginning with it. For instance, if I previously replied to email from Jones, Mike , and I type "j", I get a listing for them. Of course, the listings are sorted in a very logical order (last names, first names, email address).
Once again, it appears that Google is applying the continuous-improvement philosophy to an area well-established competitors (Yahoo, Hotmail) had allowed to stagnate. Last time it was search engines, this time it is web-based email. Of course there are differences this time, namely a much more determined, aggressive, competitor--Microsoft. Still, if Google hadn't taken this initiative, these improvements NEVER would have appeared.
10:33:03 AM 
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