As you may know by now, Gmail turned 10 years old on April Fools day this year. Yea, who is the fool – right? One of the easiest, most versatile, large storage and FREE email clients is 10 this year.
Gmail was a project started by Google developer Paul Buchheit, who had already explored the idea of web-based email in the 1990s, before the launch of Hotmail, while working on a personal email software project as a college student.
“Created the first version of Gmail within one day”
At Google, Buchheit first worked on Google Groups and when asked “to build some type of email or personalization product”, he created the first version of Gmail within one day, reusing code from Google Groups. According to Google, the software had already been developed and used internally for “a number of years” when it was released to the public in 2004.
Gmail’s creator, Paul Buchheit, at his desk at Google in 1999
Tweetable Gmail Facts
- Gmail was in beta version for 5 years
- Gmail is available today in 57 languages, and is used by roughly 500 million people.
- The proposed 1GB of storage seemed crazy a decade ago.
- Time reports that the “alleged storage capacity of 1GB was 500 times what Microsoft’s Hotmail offered
- Standard Gmail boxes are up to 15GBs each today
- Gmail was code-named Caribou
- Googlers raised eyebrows at the project
- It was the work of a tiny team. When Gmail launched, there were only about a dozen Google employees working on it
- 44.3% of US mobile owners use the Gmail app on their devices – comscore 2013
So I leave you with a little Gmail Fun video – Gmail Blue
