Google's version of folders in the context of email organization. They are essentially tags that can be assigned to an email message. A message can have one or more labels.
Labels help you organize your messages into categories. The advantage of labels over "folders" is that more than one label can be assigned to a message. Labels can also be created with sub-labels, in order to create a hierarchy.
Labels are only visible to you. The sender will never know what you've labeled their message (unless you tell them).
Labels can automatically be added to a conversation via filters. (See: gmail-filters)
Gmail supports a maximum of 5,000 labels.
