Gmail started in 2004 as a free email service supported by ads. It’s made by Google and has become a key part of many other Google services over time. You can link it with your Google Account and use it with other Google products like Google+, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Google Hangouts, Google Meet, YouTube and the now-discontinued Google Buzz. Gmail was also included in G Suite a collection of Google’s business tools.
The development and updates of Gmail have been documented on the Official Gmail Blog since July 2007.
From 1GB to beyond, Gmail’s journey of redefining email storage.
Internal Development
At Google, there was a huge demand for effective email search because of the large amount of internal email traffic. This need led to the introduction of powerful search features within Gmail and a lot more storage space than was typical at the time.
While other services offered just a few megabytes of storage, Gmail started with 1 GB, allowing users to save their emails indefinitely instead of deleting them to free up space.
Paul Buchheit was working alone on Gmail for about a month before Sanjeev Singh joined him. Together, they later started a social networking company called FriendFeed after leaving Google in 2006.
Gmail’s first product manager Brian Rakowski, found out about the project on his first day at Google in 2002. By 2003, more team members like Kevin Fox who was responsible for designing Gmail’s interface, joined the project. When Gmail launched publicly in April 2004, about a dozen people were working on it.
Initially, Gmail was used only internally by Google employees. It had been in use for several years within Google before it was released to the public in 2004.
Public Release
Gmail was a highly secretive project at Google known only to a few within the company. Kevin Fox who designed the Gmail interface mentioned that Gmail had to meet certain standards before they could even consider releasing it. By early 2004, however, it had become the main email platform for Google employees.
Google officially announced Gmail on April 1, 2004, a date that initially made people skeptical because it was April Fool’s Day—a day when Google was known for its playful hoaxes. In fact, on the same day they joked about setting up a “Google Copernicus Center” on the Moon. Despite these jokes Google confirmed that Gmail was a serious project not just another April Fool’s prank.
At the time of its public announcement, Google’s infrastructure wasn’t fully ready to support millions of users each with a gigabyte of storage. To manage this Gmail initially ran on 300 outdated Pentium III computers that were no longer in use at Google. This setup was enough to start a small beta test where Google invited about 1,000 influential people to try Gmail first. These early testers could then invite others, starting a controlled rollout on March 21, 2004.
Extended Beta Phase
When Gmail first launched, it was initially unclear if it was an April Fools’ joke due to its release date. Once people realized Gmail was real invites to the service became very popular. This limited release though necessary due to technical constraints, inadvertently made Gmail seem exclusive boosting its public appeal.
Georges Harik who was involved in Google’s new products at the time remarked that this turned out to be a brilliant marketing move although it wasn’t fully intentional.
In the beginning, invitations to join Gmail were highly sought after. Blogger users got early access to the beta test on April 20 and gradually, Gmail users received invitations to send to others. This demand led to a brief period where invitations were even sold online for high prices.
However, as more invitations were released prices dropped significantly. Websites popped up for users to give away extra invitations to those who wanted them.
In January 2005, a significant security flaw in Gmail was discovered which allowed hackers to access users’ emails. This issue was promptly fixed by Gmail developers. Despite being in beta, Gmail continued to add features and increase storage capacity moving from 1 GB to 2 GB in April 2005, on the first anniversary of its public release.
By February 2007, Gmail was open to everyone without the need for an invitation. In the following years, Gmail continued to evolve adding new features like a mobile app version, integration with Google Docs, support for IMAP and the introduction of Gmail Labs for experimental features. Tasks and in-browser PDF viewing were also added.
Gmail faced some outages in 2009, which impacted millions of users but it officially shed its beta label in July 2009 to encourage more businesses to use the service.
This move marked Gmail’s transition from a test project to a fully developed product widely used across the globe.
Trademark Disputes
Germany
In Germany, Google faced a trademark issue with the name “Gmail.” On July 4, 2005, Google had to change the name of Gmail in Germany to Google Mail because a German company owned by Daniel Giersch already used the name “G-mail” for a service that printed emails and mailed them to recipients. Because of this, the domain gmail.com was not accessible in Germany and users had to use googlemail.com instead.
Anyone accessing the service from a German IP address was automatically redirected to googlemail.com.
Despite the different domain emails sent to addresses ending in either gmail.com or googlemail.com would still reach the intended recipients.
The dispute was officially resolved on January 30, 2007, when the EU’s Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market ruled in favor of Giersch.
However, Google humorously referenced the situation in an April Fool’s joke in 2007, offering a fictitious “Gmail Paper” service.
Finally on April 13, 2012, Google secured the rights to the Gmail trademark in Germany. From that day the gmail.de domain and the Gmail trademark were owned by Google.
Poland
In February 2007, Google took legal action against the owners of the domain gmail.pl in Poland. The domain was used by a group of poets called Grupa Młodych Artystów i Literatów, abbreviated as GMAiL, which translates to “Group of Young Artists and Writers.”
Google ended up losing the lawsuit, but the website gmail.pl no longer exists.
Russia
In Russia, the “Gmail” trademark is owned by a paid mail redirect service that operates under the domain gmail.ru. This domain was first registered on January 27, 2003. Later, the gmail.ru domain name was put up for auction.
United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, Google changed the name of Gmail to Google Mail on October 19, 2005, due to a trademark dispute with a UK company called Independent International Investment Research. Despite the change users who had registered with Gmail before the dispute were allowed to keep their Gmail addresses though the Gmail logo was swapped for a Google Mail logo.
New users after the change received a googlemail.com address but emails addressed to either domain would still reach the recipient.
By September 2009, Google resolved the trademark dispute and began switching UK accounts back to the Gmail brand.
On May 3, 2010, Google announced plans to phase out the googlemail.com domain in the UK. Existing users were given the option to switch to a gmail.com address and new users would automatically receive a gmail.com address.
This change required Android phone users to perform a factory reset which necessitated backing up their data to avoid losing it.
A simple idea that changed the web, Gmail’s history is a testament to innovation in communication.
