San Francisco, Apr 14 (IANS): In a bid to enhance security for Gmail users, Google is reportedly working on a redesign that would ensure only the recipient can view an e-mail and that too for a specific period of time.

"You'll soon be able to send expiring emails. Working on an email service is hard as you have to be compatible with all sorts of email providers and email clients. But it doesn't seem to be stopping Google as the company is now evolving beyond the simple POP3/IMAP/SMTP protocols," TechCrunch reported late on Friday.

The yet-to-be introduced feature works quite much like expiring emails in "ProtonMail" in which the email becomes unreadable after some time.

The search engine giant has another feature up its sleeve called "confidential mode" that will allow users to limit what recipients can do with the emails you send, preventing them from being forwarded, downloaded or printed, according to another report in The Verge.

"Google will also let Gmail users require a passcode to open emails, which will be generated via SMS, or set an expiration date on sent emails," The Verge reported.

"The features are very similar to some found in Microsoft's full Outlook application and Microsoft is also adding the ability to restrict emails on its Outlook.com service," the report added.