Gmail
Gmail is a free email service developed by Google, Inc., known for its user-friendly features that enhance email management. Launched in 2004 by Paul Buchheit, Gmail distinguished itself with a large storage capacity—initially offering 1 GB, significantly more than competitors like Yahoo! and Hotmail. Over the years, it evolved to provide 15 GB of storage, allowing users to retain all their emails without the need for frequent deletions. Gmail features automated email organization, searchable inboxes, and customizable tabs that help users manage different types of emails, such as personal messages or promotional content.
By 2024, Gmail boasted over 1.8 billion users worldwide, making it one of the most popular email services globally. The platform supports integration with other Google services, such as Google Drive and Google Chat, enhancing its functionality. While free to users, Gmail is ad-supported, leveraging information from emails to display relevant ads. Despite facing criticism over privacy concerns, Google has made efforts to address user concerns, including ceasing the scanning of emails for personalized ads in 2017.
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Gmail
Gmail is a free email service that is managed by Google, Inc. The service offers many features that make using email fast, easy, and efficient. These features include a large storage capacity, a search feature, and an inbox with customizable tabs. Over a billion people throughout the world use Gmail.
History
Paul Buchheit, a Google employee, created Gmail. He began working on the email service in 2001, two years after joining Google. Over the next several years, he and other Google employees developed the service before it was launched in 2004.
A common misconception surrounding Gmail is that Buchheit developed it as part of Google's 20 percent time, a policy that allows Google engineers to spend up to 20 percent of their work hours working on personal projects. It was revealed, however, that the email service was an official project given to Buchheit and not a personal project. Buchheit had begun creating an email program on his own several years before he started working at Google, but he never completed that program. The early Gmail program was called Caribou after a top-secret project referenced in the comic strip Dilbert.
Gmail was officially launched on April 1, 2004. That day, Google issued a press release announcing the launch and stating that the company was testing a preview version of the service. Although rumors about the email service circulated the day before, many people thought the press release was a hoax since it was released on April Fools' Day—but the press release and new email service were real. Gmail marked the first significant service Google launched since 1998, when the company debuted its search engine.
At first, Google gave Gmail accounts to about one thousand people and asked them to invite friends to make accounts. Desire for Gmail invitations grew quickly. In fact, people began selling their invites on eBay, and websites such as Gmail Swap were launched, allowing people to swap goods and services for Gmail invites. Finally, in 2007, Google made Gmail available to everyone. By 2012—just five years later—Gmail had about 425 million users around the world. Its usage continued to grow every year since this time.
Features
When Gmail was first launched, it had several features that set it apart from other free email services such as Yahoo! and Hotmail, the latter of which became Outlook in 2013. Gmail introduced a much larger storage capacity than the other services, a feature that automatically organizes emails, and a feature that searches emails. At its inception, Gmail offered one gigabyte (1 GB), or one thousand megabytes (1000 MB), of storage—about one hundred times more storage than that of most other services.
By 2024, the storage capacity of a user's entire Google Account, which includes Gmail, Google Drive, Google+, and Google Photos, among other applications, was 15 GB. This large storage capacity eliminates the need to delete emails, allowing users to keep every email. A feature automatically organizes emails by grouping emails and their replies into "conversations." One benefit of this feature is that a user does not need to place emails into folders. Gmail's search feature is based on Google search technology. It allows a user to search each and every email that was both sent and received. The feature uses keywords, as well as advanced search features, to search the content of all the user's emails.
Some other features of Gmail are an inbox with customizable tabs, custom themes, and integration with Google Drive (a storage drive) and Google Chat (an application for messaging and video calls). The tabs—Primary, Social, and Promotions—group emails of the same type into one of the tabs, allowing a user to decide which emails he or she would like to read. The user also can move emails by dragging and dropping them into a chosen tab. Additionally, the user has the option of customizing specific tabs for specific senders, for example, so emails from friends always get placed in the Primary tab. The custom themes feature enables a user to select a personal image or a photo from a collection as his or her theme. Users can snooze conversations and schedule emails. Google Chat allows text or video conversations with multiple people simultaneously. The feature that allows integration with Google Drive enables a user to easily email files as large as 10 GB.
While Gmail is free, it is supported by advertising. When people use the email service, they are shown ads that are relevant to their emails and searches. The company makes money by scanning messages for information about users and then uses this information to tailor ads to users. It does not provide any of its users' personal information to advertisers. The company has faced criticism and lawsuits for this practice, and in 2017, Google announced that Gmail would no longer scan users' emails for personalized ads. In 2024, Gmail changed the rules regarding bulk emails so that they were only sent from users with verified emails. Google hoped that this would reduce the amount of spam emails sent through Gmail accounts.
Popularity
Gmail is one of the most widely used free email services in the world and in the United States for both desktop computers and mobile devices. The number of Gmail users more than doubled from 2012 to 2015. According to Gmail Statistics, in 2024, Gmail had more than 1.8 billion users, or about 22.2 percent of the global population.
Bibliography
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