Gmail, the email service that started almost as a joke but grew into a dominant player in this field, will be celebrating its 20th anniversary on April 1.
For most of us, it’s as difficult to imagine a world without Gmail as it is to search without Google. But Gmail was a latecomer to the email game, arriving decades after we started using computers to deliver electronic messages to third-party providers who, like the old-fashioned post office, sorted them and sent them to their appropriate digital destination. It was long after MMSail and ccMail, but early enough that we still required a hyphen between “e” and “mail.”
Once a brazen upstart (despite being the most used search engine at the time), Google launched Gmail on April 1, causing widespread confusion. Bee PCMag, where I worked at the time, we admitted that “Google’s release contained language that sounded like a ruse” and no one was sure if the search giant was serious about entering the crowded email space. Part of that had to do with the fairly limited availability of the platform.
Google was one of the first internet companies to offer invitation-only access to a new service. It was a brilliant piece of marketing, but also had a more practical purpose. Google struggled to launch Gmail and was still learning when it entered public beta. Open access would have overwhelmed the system, causing countless crashes and possibly undelivered mail, and likely made it nearly impossible to find out what people wanted, needed, and most frequently used on the IMAP mail platform (there was no POP3 support on the IMAP platform). launch).
Welcome to the party, friend
On April 22, 2004, almost four weeks after launch, I was granted access. I still have the welcome message that said I was “one of the very first people to use Gmail” and thanked me for “agreeing to test Gmail.” The email detailed some of the key differences, such as “searching instead of archiving.” Gmail ditched folders, a time-honored way to organize email, and instead focused on labels and conversations. To this day, the concept of folders in Gmail is strange and I’m not sure I ever liked the more amorphous “labels”.
It had some advanced features such as filters and address autocomplete. And of course it came with 1GB of storage, an amount that was unheard of at the time for a free email service, but now seems woefully inadequate. Google’s pitch at the time was that we could stop wasting time deleting emails and save everything. I think I’m too committed to this concept.
While Gmail didn’t have pop-up or banner ads (thank goodness), it did have text ads in a column on the right (Gmail ads are now usually under the ‘Promotions’ tab). This turned out to be Gmail’s most controversial “innovation.” To serve contextual ads, Google would have to ‘read’ the content of your email. That sounded like an insane invasion of privacy, and I wrote about the concerns just before I got admission. I reminded readers that, at least then, computers didn’t really “read” anything. They had neither the eyes nor the consciousness to understand the context. Of course, Google was already anonymizing the data and delivering contextual ads without providing your private data to third parties. I also noted that without those ads we might not get all that free storage at the time. It’s worth noting that these early concerns have done nothing to hinder Gmail’s growth.
In addition to access to Gmail, there were also some invitations that I could hand out. They arrived in small groups and I gave them to colleagues, colleagues and friends. Some people who knew I had a Gmail account sent me emails and AOL messages begging for access. Every time I gave someone access, Gmail would notify me when they had signed in and created their new Gmail address “so we could stay in touch with Gmail!” Although not a social network, Google was aware of the inherently social nature of email. By keeping newcomers connected, it built that network and generated just enough FOMO to keep the service growing.
All information
Google took a risk when it launched Gmail, and it knew it. In the original FAQGoogle had to explain why a search company would launch an email service:
“Why does Google offer email? I thought you were a search company.
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally useful and accessible. For many people, email contains valuable information that can be difficult to retrieve. We believe we can help with that.”
It was further proof that Google’s strategic purpose was never just about search results, but about information, yours, mine, and everyone else’s. Google wanted to organize the world’s information in some form, from search results to email, to video, images and location. That search never stops and not everyone is happy with it.
Still, it’s worth celebrating Gmail, an online service that entered an entrenched market and ultimately remade it in its image. It was and probably never will be a joke.
