Over the summer, Google debuted a new "feature" for Gmail that integrated Meet into a dedicated tab in the app, rolling out with wide availability earlier this month. The change takes up around 10-20% of the vertical space in the Gmail app to give you what amounts to a dedicated shortcut to the company's videoconferencing service. It's part of an overall plan to foist Meet on us whether we want it or not, and I'm curious to hear if you actually appreciate the change or not.

It's a polarizing feature which, to us, feels like a rushed attempt to compete with Zoom's growing videoconferencing dominance. So far, none of us at Android Police really likes having it around, and almost all of us actively disable it. Those of us using Meet have the app installed already and prefer to fire it up that way. And either way, you'll be hard-pressed to find a fan of the wasted vertical space the new nav bar adds. It's not like the Gmail developers could have spent that time working on something better.

The Meet integration enabled (left) and disabled (right).

While it's simple to turn off, unlike most of the other settings it lives alongside (and unlike its nested location in per-account settings would clearly imply), that doesn't seem to sync to your Google account — or, at least, it doesn't sync for us — so if you don't like it, you'll have to separately, individually disable it on every single device you've got. The least Google could do in the future is make the setting carry over more easily.

Hopefully, our discussion here didn't impart too much bias onto your own thoughts — it's hard not to be critical in the face of so many deficiencies. But what do you think? Do you like having Meet integrated into the Gmail app or not?