Google’s popular email service Gmail was launched on April 1, 2004 for free. No, its not an April fool trivia. It is the truth. Don’t believe us? You can google it yourself.
Gmail completes 18 years of service this year. Since its inception, it has captured most of the world’s email network and monopolised the industry.
Also Read: Confidential Mode: Gmail’s little-known feature to send sensitive emails securely
Paul Buchheit was the Lead Developer behind Gmail. He also happens to be the 23rd employee at Google (now Alphabet). When Buchheit started working on Gmail, many claimed that the idea would fail because Gmail had nothing to do with the search business, and Microsoft’s Hotmail was already an established player in the arena. But with the support of Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google founders), the project was launched. It eventually became one of the most used email services in the world.
Let’s look at 10 interesting facts about the Gmail:
- Gmail was originally code-named Caribou. The project was first used in 2004 by Google employees to assess emails internally. The testing phase continued till July 7, 2009 when it was made commercially available to all users.
- Gmail was a result of Google’s ’20-percent Time’ concept where employees were asked to get involved in personal projects to build a better and friendlier communicative platform.
- Gmail’s early version offered only 1GB to free cloud storage? On its first anniversary, Google announced doubling the free cloud storage limited to 2GB.
- Dots don’t matter in Gmail addresses. Whether abc.xyz@gmail.com or abcxyz@gmail.com, the mail will reach the same person.
- Gmail introduced the web development technique named Ajax. This is the secret behind its user-friendly interface.
- Up until the night before the launch, Gmail didn’t have a logo. Google’s famous logo designer spent the day before Gmail’s release coming up with ideas.
- Your Gmail has 2 addresses – Gmail and Google mail. E.g. Vivekanand@gmail.com and Vivekanand@googlemail.com both are same email addresses.
- You can read, respond to, and search your Gmail messages even when you aren’t connected to the Internet by visiting mail.google.com
- Gmail became the first mobile app on Google Play store to hit 1 billion installations on Android devices
- In 2007 Google filed legal action against the owners of gmail.pl, a poet group known in full as Grupa Młodych Artystów i Literatów abbreviated GMAiL.
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