The project started with an insight - that lots of people use Gmail to help them manage their 'to-do' lists. We thought it would be really useful to offer another way for people to keep track of things from right within Gmail, in a very simple way - you just click in an empty part of the list, start typing, and it saves automatically.
Tasks launched in Gmail Labs in November last year, and it was awesome for us to see how popular it became, and so quickly. And we kept improving it too - we believe simple and fast is best, so we've been working to make Tasks more responsive and get basic interactions working better: we've added mobile and gadget views, made improvements to task editing and management, launched in more languages, and integrated with Google Calendar. We've also added a printable view for those people compelled to do things away from their computers or mobile devices.
Why did it launch in Labs first? Well, we launched Gmail Labs as a forum for delivering features that might not be quite ready for prime time. The idea was always that the most popular and viable Labs features would graduate and be made more readily available to all users... and that some of the less used, less viable ones would disappear forever.
We're really pleased that Tasks is in that first bucket - it's been one of the most popular experimental Gmail features and it's now the first graduate from Labs. To access Tasks, starting today you can just click "Tasks" under the "Contacts" link above your chat list (see above - no need to turn it on from the Labs tab anymore). Check out the video below for some more tips on how Tasks can help you organise your time online.
