It seems that Google is well aware of the issues some users have been having with the speed of its web-based mail service, and is working to make the service a little more nimble.

Some of us will never let the 'Beta' tag go

TechCrunch is carrying word that the question of Gmail’s general sluggishness for heavy users of the service was raised at Google’s Behind the Scenes of Gmail panel at the SXSW festival in Texas. When the question was asked, Gmail’s own Jonathan Perlow turned it back on the crowd, asking people to raise their hands if they felt that Gmail was too slow, a question that saw a significant number of hands raised. He then went on to explain that the issue only really effects “power users.”

This he defines as users with hundreds of thousands or even millions of messages, something that might well seem to be a little excessive for many, but in the grand scheme of things isn’t really quite so very difficult as it might first seem. The fact is that many users see their Gmail account as something of an aggregate account, multiple other email accounts, be they work or personal, feed into one apparently secure and reliable space… with the downside being that the speed of the whole service overall is adversely effected.

Still, it seems that the folks at Gmail don’t think that the fact that an issue only effects power users is any reason not to work on an issue, so for those of us running a Gmail account as one big central account receiving messages from multiple other accounts, it’s good news to hear from Perlow that, “We are fixing it.”