Tech Trends Series: Gmail

History of Gmail

20 Years Ago

Gmail, on March 31, 2004, the day before it launched. Image: Time

Twenty years ago, on April 1, 2004, Google released Gmail to limited beta testing for only 1,000 users outside Google.

Here’s the original press release.

A few months later, I got an invitation to the beta, which was not opened to the general public until 2007. What follows is the story of the evolution of this remarkable free email tool, which is now used by almost two billion users worldwide.

April Fools’ Hoax?

As I’ve written elsewhere, tech companies like Google are well-known for their April Fools’ Day pranks. Was this one of them?

Gmail was announced as:

• Free
• With Google Search
• Labels
• Threaded conversations
• Wicked fast speed
• With 1 gigabyte of storage

… or summarized in the initial announcement as the Three S’s: storage, search, and speed.

This was too much to believe. The storage space alone was 200–500 times that of other free email services!

History of the Creation of Gmail