As you might know Rapportive add-on is one of the must-have Gmail widgets that integrate natively and nicely with the mail dashboard, it shows you more contact details in the inbox for individual email along with its social ties such as Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc. in a nice sidebar.

Last week Google unveiled The People Widget, which is being gradually rolled out to users over the next few weeks, it looks and functions remarkably similar to Rapportive’s sidebar, yet gives users more features like job titles, calendar availability, recent conversations, shared Google Docs and Buzz updates related to your email contacts in the sidebar with apparent deeper Google integration.

Now Rapportive, in turn has responded to what many perceived as a direct attack from Google by integrating the People widget. Rapportive CEO and co-founder Rahul Vohra had to say:

“We’re very flattered by how similar the widget is to Rapportive, In fact, some of the design details have been copied directly, from the new position of the ‘print’ and ‘new window’ icons, through to how the widget remains onscreen as you scroll.”

“I knew it would happen sometime this year. Google has made acquisitions in this space, and social is their new mantra, I emailed our investors as soon as the news broke — I detailed how we felt, that we planned to integrate, and reminded everybody of our roadmap for the next year or so. Everybody was very positive.”

Rapportive contact profiles will include the usual features along with the Gmail enhancements and users can get their access to the new Rapportive features as soon as they get the Gmail widget,

[via mashable]

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