(cnet)
Google announced today that it's bringing "a better Google+ notification experience in e-mail" -- one that, among other things, will drop various commenting features directly into your in-box.

The "notification experience" entails a bunch of changes that makes Gmail "completely interactive" with the social network. The updates include being able to view, comment on, and +1 posts from inside Gmail's in-box, seeing comments appear in the Google+ stream in real time in a sidebar, and seeing responses from others "instantly appear" in Gmail as part of the notification message.

"Notification e-mails are a great way to keep up with what's happening in the Google+ stream: whether someone mentions you, comments on your post, or shares with you directly," Google Software Engineer Zohair Hyder wrote in a blog post. "It's not always enough to just read these updates, however; sometimes you want to respond right away, right from your in-box."

Google had already started integrating Google+ into Gmail before today; recent new features include being able to add people to circles directly from the desktop and viewing recent Google+ content in the people widget.

While some may appreciate these new features, others may well bemoan a perceived impossibility of escaping Google+. Just last week, the Web giant announced that Google+ comments will be posted alongside Google News articles, and earlier in the week, actor and writer Wil Wheaton ranted about having to sign into Google+ to like a video on YouTube...
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