I have nothing against Google’s Meet videoconferencing platform — in fact, I’ve used it a few times — but I can’t help being annoyed when the feature is pushed at me via other apps. Specifically, Gmail. Meet first appeared on the desktop Gmail app in the spring of 2020, but it did not take up much space and was reasonably easy to ignore (or remove from your screen, if you so wished).
A few months later, however, Meet made its way onto the mobile Gmail app via two tabs at the bottom of the screen: one labeled “Mail” and one labeled “Meet.” The problem here isn’t only that you’re being pushed to use a particular videoconferencing app while all you want to do is check your email, but it also takes up space, expanding the bottom margin of…
