Gmail will be officially five years old on April 01 2009. Five years before in 2004, announcement of Gmail from Google was nicely timed for April fools day. It looked like an April Fool’s Day joke, which proclaimed ” Search is Number Two Online Activity – Email is Number One; ‘Heck, Yeah,’ Say Google Founders “
Here is what actual press release read
Google Gets the Message, Launches Gmail
User Complaint About Existing Services Leads Google to Create Search-Based Webmail
Search is Number Two Online Activity – Email is Number One; “Heck, Yeah,” Say Google Founders
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – April 1, 2004 UTC – Amidst rampant media speculation, Google Inc. today announced it is testing a preview release of Gmail – a free search-based webmail service with a storage capacity of up to eight billion bits of information, the equivalent of 500,000 pages of email. Per user.
[full press release]
If you didn’t know, Gmail was launched on April 1, 2004 as a private beta which was available with only invitation and later on February 7,2007 Google decided to make it free for everyone. Initially Gmail provided 1GB of storage space, the largest mailbox capacity ever provided by a webmail at that time.
About five years after its debut, now Gmail offers more than 7GB of storage.
