Google’s Gmail email service turns twenty years old this Monday, since two decades ago it managed to revolutionize the market by offering a free service that had almost 1 gigabyte of storage per account so that users could “keep their emails forever.” .
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“Gmail is a free search-based webmail service with a storage capacity of up to 8 billion bits of information, the equivalent of 500,000 email pages. Per user,” the company noted in a statement.
At the time, Yahoo and Microsoft email users could only store thirty to sixty emails for free, and Gmail promised to store around 13,500 emails before running out of space. Now, each Google account includes 15 GB of shared storage between Gmail, Google Drive and Google Photos and users who need more space can purchase it.
Other novel aspects of Gmail were its message filter and its anti-advertising or ‘spam’ filtering.
“It turns annoying spam emails into the equivalent of canned meat,” the 2004 release humorously noted.
(Read more: The tricks that will help you get the most out of your Gmail account)
Gmail
(Read more: Google makes massive layoffs in its hardware and engineering areas)
A prank for April Fools’ Day
The launch of this revolutionary platform that was developed by Paul Buchheit’s team coincided with the celebration of April Fool’s Day, which in the United States is celebrated on April 1, so when reading the company’s announcement many believed that it was of a joke
The distrust of the announcement also came from the reputation of Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin as pranksters, who in previous years had used that day to advertise various fake products.
The email service now has approximately 1.2 billion users worldwide, according to The Verge, and email addresses, for many, have become a key to enter other applications.
Over time, Gmail has added services, such as chats, video calls or even the possibility of having help from Google’s artificial intelligence to write emails. Despite the app’s popularity, Google now competes with other online messaging services such as Slack and WhatsApp.
(See: Microsoft will have a button to use artificial intelligence on its keyboards)
EFE