A quick look back at the launch of Google’s Gmail that happened 20 years ago today (no joke)

In the past two decades, email served as the primary mode of communication on the internet. During that period, many individuals utilized Microsoft’s Hotmail and Yahoo Mail as their preferred choices for a no-cost online email account. Nevertheless, these two providers had their constraints, such as a limited storage capacity of only a few megabytes, requiring users to frequently delete emails to make room.

On this day, 20 years ago on April 1, 2004, Google made the launch of its free web-based service, Gmail. In the original press release by Google, it was written in a way that seemed like an April Fool’s Day prank. For instance, here’s an excerpt:

The inspiration for Gmail came from a Google user complaining about the poor quality of existing email services, recalled Larry Page, Google co-founder and president, Products. “She kvetched about spending all her time filing messages or trying to find them,”Page said. “And when she’s not doing that, she has to delete email like crazy to stay under the obligatory four megabyte limit. So she asked, ‘Can’t you people fix this?’”

Despite the humorous writing style of the Gmail press release, Gmail proved to be a serious and reliable email service.

Time featured the origins of Gmail on its 10th anniversary in an article published on its website. The Gmail team at Google had been working on the project for three years before it was officially launched on April Fool’s Day. According to Paul Buchheit, the team leader, this project was not part of the company’s “20 percent time”experimental projects, but rather one that he was specifically assigned to by higher-ups.

Buchheit revealed that his project originated with his utilization of Google Groups, a service provided by the company that indexed Usenet online discussion groups. Instead of using the existing search function to gather information on Google Groups, he modified it to search through his email. This enhancement proved to be a major feature of Gmail, providing significantly more advanced search capabilities than those found on Hotmail or Yahoo Mail.

One major aspect that was highly touted was the significant amount of free storage available. Google deliberated over the capacity for email storage, even contemplating providing 100 MB, which was significantly more than what other companies were providing. Ultimately, when the service was introduced, the first few public users were granted an impressive 1GB of free storage.

The implementation of Javascript code was a significant enhancement for Gmail, as it enabled the team to incorporate features that were not possible with the HTML code used by Hotmail and Yahoo Mail.

The ambitious use of JavaScript “was another thing most people thought was a pretty bad idea,” Buchheit says. “One of the problems we had was that the web browsers weren’t very good back then…We were afraid we’d crash browsers and nobody would want to use it.”

JavaScript enabled Gmail to transform email messages into conversations, a feature that was not feasible on previous web-based email platforms.

Despite ongoing controversy, Google has maintained its business model of scanning emails for the purpose of generating ads to fund the service. The company deemed this to be a matter of perception rather than a true violation of privacy and proceeded with the ad-based approach.

Despite publicly launching Gmail 20 years ago today, Google only sent out 1,000 invites to sign up for the service. Each invitee was given the opportunity to invite two additional people. This was mainly because Google did not have sufficient servers to accommodate a large number of users. In fact, the article mentioned that Gmail was initially operated on 300 Pentium III PCs.

The rest, as they say, is history. Google did not officially make Gmail available to the general public until 2007, nearly 20 years after its initial launch. It wasn’t until 2009 that the company removed the “beta”label from the service. Since then, Google has continuously added new features and developed versions of the app for iOS and Android devices.

Despite being the dominant email service, Google has chosen not to disclose the current number of Gmail users recently. However, according to a CNBC report in 2019, Gmail boasted 1.5 billion users worldwide, and it is expected to maintain its position as the top email service for the foreseeable future.