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It Happened Today – April 1, 2004: Google launches Gmail, the email service that has conquered the world

20 years of Gmail. The story of an innovation that changed email. Today, Gmail is the most popular client in the world, with over 1.8 billion active users globally. Here is his story

It Happened Today – April 1, 2004: Google launches Gmail, the email service that has conquered the world

Gmail turns 20. It was, in fact, April 1, 2004 when Google launched its service of email even though after five years of Beta phase it was only officially made definitive on 7 July 2009. Although the launch date coincides with April Fool's Day, Gmail was not a simple joke, but a real innovation in the email field. At that time, the service actually had cutting-edge features such as the allocation of 1 GB of space, a revolutionary offer for the time. Today, Gmail offers users 15 GB of free space shared across all Google services, with the possibility of expansion via paid options. The main version of webmail uses AJAX technology, but there is also an HTML version that works without JavaScript. L'access to the service it can take place via the web or via applications using the POP3, IMAP or Google API protocols.

Gmail is the most popular email client in the world, with over 1.8 billion active users globally.

The birth of Gmail

The history of Gmail began in 2001 when Paul buchheit, a Google engineer, begins work on an email service with greater storage capacity than competitors of the time such as Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail. The goal was to provide users with the ability to keep all their mail online without having to download it. The project, called Caribou, is initially managed by Buchheit alone, who introduces the use of AJAX to improve the efficiency of the process. Over the years, the team was joined by Sanjeev Singh in 2002, Brian Rakowski in 2003, and Kevin Fox in 2004. When Gmail launched in 2004, the team still numbered only a dozen people.

Il name “Gmail” it was chosen because it was shorter and easier to type than “Google Mail”. Initially, registration for the service was only possible via invitation from an existing user. Many sites and forums were born offering invitations "donated" by users. In 2005, the service expanded the number of invitations to 100 per address and continually renewed them, always guaranteeing 50 usable invitations.

The features of Gmail

Distinctive features of Gmail compared to competitors include a advanced anti-spam system and the offering of one free storage space. Initially, it was planned to offer 100 megabytes of space, already much more than what Yahoo offered. However, Google decides to generously offer 1 gigabyte of space, over 100 times more than competing services. This space was free but accompanied by targeted advertisements based on users' browsing behavior. If users were bothered by the presence of the ads (including for privacy reasons), Google would have considered a paid option, although it was not completely ruled out initially.

On April 1, 2005, on the occasion of the first anniversary, the storage space was increased to 2 GB and gradually increasing until reaching the current 15 GB of free space.

In addition to the storage space, its success is due to theclean and user-friendly interface, along with its advanced features such as quick search, the anti-spam filter and automatic email classification. Services that have made Gmail extremely popular.

Another key feature was its built-in email organization system “conversations”, which automatically grouped related messages into a single view. This made email management more efficient and helped reduce the confusion associated with viewing individual messages.

The evolution of Gmail

In the years since, Gmail has continued to evolve, introducing new features such as Labels, Google Chat integrated and the possibility of access Gmail from mobile devices or integration with Google Drive with which users can attach files directly from Google Drive to their emails and receive notifications when recipients access shared files.

Even today the Spam filter continues to be one of the strong points: Google has also enhanced it with a new mechanism called TensorFlow, allowing it to block over 100 million more spam messages every day, equivalent to “more than 99,9%” of malicious emails.

In terms of problems, on 24 February 2009, however, the first major global disruption of Google services, caused by an error in calculating system resources.

Gmail remains one of the most used email services in the world, with hundreds of millions of active users. Its continuous innovation and reliability make it one of the most important tools for email communication on both a personal and professional level.

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