We all know Google, including all its different apps and services, but what do we know about Gmail and how it was developed? In this article, we’ll go back to early 2004, when there were three webmail services on the market today. these were hotmail, aol and yahoo.
Source: Pixabay
Gmail was a project started by Google developer Paul Buchheit, who had already explored the idea of web-based email in the 1990s, before the release of Hotmail, while working on a personal email software project like college student. Buchheit began his work at Gmail in August 2001.
Source: en.wikipedia.org
A long time ago, when google was growing as a search engine and was still far from becoming the intricate web of applications and services that it is today.
On April 1, 2004, Google decided to join the email provider race and launched Gmail. However, due to that exact date, people initially thought it was an “April Fools” prank, and gmail was met with a bit of disbelief and suspicion. however, today, people believe that April 1, 2004 will forever be marked as the beginning of the modern age of the web.
the idea of google, one of the biggest search engines at the time, to create an email service was quite surprising, and the supposed storage capacity of 1 gb, which was 500 times more than what it offered microsoft hotmail, seemed absolutely impossible. .
but gmail was a real idea, a very real idea that we all now know, love and depend on a lot. in fact, today gmail is one of the largest email services in the world and now provides 15 gigabytes of storage.
Users can receive emails up to 50 megabytes in size, including attachments, but can only send emails up to 25 megabytes. To send larger files, users can insert files from Google Drive into the message. In addition, Gmail has a search-oriented interface and a “chat view” similar to an internet forum.
What is gmail?
Gmail is a free email service developed by google. Users can access Gmail on the web and use programs that sync email content via POP or IMAP protocols. Gmail started as a limited beta on April 1, 2004 and ended its testing phase on July 7, 2009. That’s right, it took Google over 5 years to release the final version of Gmail.
At launch, gmail offered an initial storage capacity of one gigabyte per user. this sounds low now, but at the time it was a significantly higher amount than what competitors were offering at the time.
Why do we need gmail?
gmail has benefited from google innovations and is now one of the most popular email services, differentiating itself from its competitors through a host of features and benefits, such as:
- an increasing amount of storage space instead of a fixed amount like hotmail, yahoo and aol;
- an interface that works more naturally than the package system used by the other services;
- gmail accounts can be used to access other google services as well as unrelated services via social login api;
- gmail adds many features that not often found in an average email account like calendar integration, google notes integration, contacts, tasks and more;
- other services like google docs, googe calendar and google chat work perfectly with gmail, which can be used as an efficient way to collaborate with others;
- is an authoritative, secure, and reliable tool;
- is suitable for both business and personal accounts,
- and, gmail comes with a great mobile version, where users can connect or sync all their gmail accounts for quicker access to their emails and better control and overview.
How much does gmail cost?
gmail is completely free for personal accounts, but there are some premium features you have to pay for, like extra inbox storage. however, businesses can get a paid version of gmail as part of the google my business suit, where they can choose to use their corporate domain as an email domain instead of the “traditional” @gmail.com.
for example, if your website domain is example.com, your business email address will look like [email protected]
if you choose the paid version of gmail you will have unlimited group email addresses, guaranteed uptime, much more storage on your personal gmail (30gb), no ads, 24/7 support, microsoft support exchange and much more. more.
so if you want to use gmail with your business in mind, you’ll probably need the paid version. The starting price of the paid version of Gmail will be $5 per month, per user.
What language is gmail available in?
gmail uses languages from all over the world.
In 2015, the gmail interface used 72 different languages, including Arabic, Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (UK), English (US), Estonian, Finnish, French and German. , Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Malayalam, Marathi, Norwegian (Bokmål), Odia, Polish, Punjabi, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog (Filipino), Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese, Welsh, and Zulu.
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In October 2012, Google added over 100 virtual keyboards, translations, and input method editors to Gmail, allowing users to use different types of input. they did this to help users type in languages that are not limited by their keyboard language.
Source: Pixabay
then in 2013 google added handwriting input to gmail and in 2014 gmail became the first major email provider to allow users to send and receive email from addresses with accents and letters outside of the Latin alphabet.
How to access gmail
You don’t need a google account to set up gmail. In fact, all you need is a valid existing email address and acceptance of Google’s terms and conditions. Plus, having a Gmail account makes it easy to use other Google services like Adsense, Adwords or Google Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools), Blogger, YouTube, Google+ and all other Google properties.
One question that a lot of people seem to have is regarding the difference between a google account and a gmail account. they are not necessarily the same thing. the problem is that you can create a google account using your existing email account.
that is not a gmail account, but an account that allows you to access some of the google services. On the other hand, if you create a gmail account, it automatically becomes your google account with access to all google services using that id and password.
basically gmail accounts are always google accounts but google accounts are not gmail accounts if you are using a different email than [email protected]
How do you get access to a gmail account?
- go to https://www.gmail.com
- click the button that says “create an account” in the bottom right box.
- fill out carefully complete all the fields of the form
- click on “I accept. create my account”. you will be taken to an introduction page. click “show my account”.
Source: Pixabay
With a Gmail username and password, you will be able to access a lot of different Google services, such as:
- google analytics – to track your website visitors
- blogger – blogging site
- google calendar – a calendar integrated directly with gmail
- google docs: an online document editor directly integrated with gmail; an online replacement for microsoft office.
- youtube – online video streaming
- google sites – for creating websites and wikis
- dashboard google – your portal to all the google services that can be accessed with your gmail or google account, from one interface.
How was gmail developed? the story behind
Initially, only a limited group of thought leaders were invited to the gmail beta test, and they in turn were allowed to invite their friends and family. then blogger.com users were sent invites as well, and before long, these invites turned into precious commodities.
some were selling on ebay for up to $150 and invitation trading websites began to appear all over the web. Soon, Gmail started allowing its users to invite up to 50 people, and it started to grow exponentially until almost anyone who wanted to join could easily get an invite from someone they knew.
by 2005, gmail had increased its mailbox storage size to 2gb, a large amount of storage by 2005 standards, and was available in many languages besides english. but also, google has continually added new features and finally, in 2009, dropped the “beta” status from its name.
google co-founder larry page says the company was inspired to create gmail because other users were complaining about problems with existing email services at the time, such as needing to delete messages all the time due to storage limits and lack of searchability.
At the time, the two largest email services, Yahoo and Microsoft, allowed users only four megabytes and two megabytes respectively for email storage.
Google’s system also automatically scans emails for various purposes; to filter spam and add context ads next to emails; however, privacy advocates have been highly critical of the ad portion due to many data privacy concerns.
Some of these concerns were unlimited data retention, ease of monitoring, users from other providers who have not accepted the policy of sending emails to gmail addresses, and that google needs to change their policies to decrease the privacy so that they do not combine information with the use of other data from google.
In fact, Google has been the subject of many lawsuits related to these issues. Over the years, Google has stated that email users must agree that their emails will be subject to processing and has stated that the service refrains from showing ads next to sensitive emails, such as mentions of race, religion, or statements of gender. health.
However, in 2017, Google announced that it would no longer use contextual content from Gmail for advertising. they prefer to trust the data collected in their use in other services. In 2018, there were 1.5 billion active users worldwide on Gmail.
Important moments in the development of gmails
November 2011
Google changed its interface to a more minimalist design, so it could offer a more consistent look and feel across all of its products and services. the change affected different elements, including a conversation view, information concentration, new quality topics, a resizable navigation bar with labels and contacts, and a more advanced search.
Users were introduced to the new interface design a few months before the actual release, and in March 2012, Google officially transitioned to the new design.
New content management tabs
In 2013, Google made some updates to the Gmail Inbox by adding tabs that allowed the app to categorize all user emails. the tabs are main, social, promotions, updates and forums. users were also allowed to disable updates and return to the traditional inbox structure.
A better user interface
In 2018, Google introduced a web user interface for Gmail. the new design resembled google material design. In addition, there was a new change in the user interface, which is the use of the product without a google font. other updates such as confidential mode, which allows users to set an expiration date for a confidential message or cancel it altogether, and integrated rights management.
introducing a nightly version
In 2019, gmail was scheduled to get a black theme for its ios and android apps, but they said it was limited to android 10 and ios 11 users only.
Source: Pixabay
Interface and design
Nowadays, we use different email services to communicate all the time, but when it comes to user interface and interfaces, gmail might have the most unique. Also, probably the most unique thing about Gmail is that it allows you to manage emails in a conversation view, which is simpler and faster for users.
Also, almost all of Gmail’s features are search-oriented, and overall, it made email easier to use through this simple interface.
However, it turns out that a smart user interface was not such an easy task, even for Kevin Fox, Google’s UX expert from 2003 to 2008. Fox is the designer behind many of Google’s services, such as google calendar and google reader. . but gmail was challenging and had the most basic interface at first.
fox knew they wanted gmail to look like google, but other than that, it wasn’t so clear what google really meant. back then, google didn’t have a huge collection of services. The company had its search engine, and it needed Fox to take inspiration from Google News, which had just started in September 2002.
but the search engine and the news were websites, while gmail was going to be a web application. so fox decided to take key elements from both websites and desktop applications but not copy them. After three great attempts to design the gmail interface, he completed the look, which is very similar to the current version of gmail.
the creator of gmail, poul buchheit, worked on the limits of html by using interactive javascript code. this gave it more of a software feel, and after a while this method was called ajax, which stands for “asynchronous javascript and xml”. nowadays, all web applications are built like this.
The more I used gmail javascript, the more unique and hi-tech it became. In order to make it easier to follow a discussion in Gmail, all the messages were put together in a group called a conversation, with a hidden text automatically. From a design perspective, they were trying to make conversations obvious to the user, which was one of the biggest challenges.
Also, there was the gmail business model. buchheit wanted gmail to reach as many people as possible, and that was the argument for gmail being free and ad-supported. Not surprisingly, the plan worked, and today ads are a huge part of Google’s entire revenue stream.
Gmail features
Smart wording will finish your sentences
gmail’s smart compose feature will finish the sentences for you. When you write an email, the unique artificial intelligence algorithm in Gmail will guess what you are about to write, then with just one click, the suggestion will be included in your text. you and gmail are like best friends, and gmail will always try to finish your sentences!
If you don’t have smart compose turned on, go to settings → general and then click “smart compose”. googles ai will simultaneously turn on “personalization” settings so it can learn from your speech and gmail will make specially tailored suggestions just for your preferences and behavior.
You’ll also be able to give feedback on Smart Compose, so the feature will know your style even better. if you want to do this; go to “more options” and at the bottom of the email toolbar next to the trash can icon, you’ll select “smart compose comments”.
Time plan for sending emails
what do you do if you plan to announce a big development next week but go on vacation, where there is no wifi? With gmail’s scheduling feature, you can decide when you want to send an email with the exact time and date.
simply click the little up arrow next to ‘send’ when you’re done typing your email, then click ‘schedule send’. choose a date and time, click schedule, and voila! And if you change your mind, you can always go back and change the time.
Many keyboard shortcuts
gmail is packed with keyboard shortcuts, which will make managing your inbox a lot easier. press the letter “c” on your keyboard and your email compose screen will appear. also, you can automatically go to your drafts if you click b+d. there are multiple custom shortcuts that can make it much easier for you to navigate your gmail.
go to → settings → advanced, and enable keyboard shortcuts. A tab for keyboard shortcuts should appear in the settings window. check your customization options and make sure keyboard shortcuts are enabled in settings → general → keyboard shortcuts.
Unsend an email
no more emails sent to the wrong person or under the wrong name! gmail has a new option where you can retrieve a sent message within 30 seconds of sending it. if you need this option in your gmail, click settings → general, then click “undo send”. you can choose up to 30 seconds before the option to call back your email disappears.
Take a nap
Have you ever received a stressful email at night and then destroyed the rest of your quality time with your family? gmail has a “snooze” feature that will make that problem go away. use “snooze” when you need a break from the inbox.
if you want to snooze an email, go to your gmail home screen and click the clock icon on the right. you’ll be able to snooze your email for a day or a week, a month if that’s what you need. when you’re ready to reply to the email, it will reappear.
need a reminder to reply to the email and then you can drag the email from your inbox to the tasks in the right side panel? the reminder will appear with a link below it, which will take you directly to the email. In general, it’s a good idea to put emails on your to-do list, as you’ll never forget to reply.
Collect it all
Have you ever gone through all your emails only to find your plane tickets, a reservation reservation, or where to meet a colleague for lunch? the payment and subscription function in gmail will make sure that you always have an overview of all your tickets, reservations, etc.
It’s almost like a personal assistant. gmail searches your inbox for any flights, events, or restaurants and neatly collects them in one place until you need them.
Do you want this feature? then go to the circle at the top right of the gmail screen, with a starting or personal photo. click google accounts → payment and subscriptions, then you can select the option you want to have. choose between subscriptions, reservations or purchases, so you can have the great overview you want.
Put it on your file
The tabs feature is like a personal organizer. you can divide your inbox into several different tabs, this includes everything from updates, finances, social media email, etc. The nice thing about this feature is that you don’t have to switch between multiple tasks, from new to work to your mom’s. facebook message.
Instead, you can choose which inbox you want to check and read the necessary unread messages. your inbox will still have all the relevant emails that you need to reply to, while the others are in the background. Go to settings icon → configure inbox and choose which tabs you want to put your filter messages in your gmail. you can select five different filters.
Other features and benefits
- 15gb of free mail storage
- email access via mobile devices
- built-in chat capabilities
- custom tabs for help you organize your email inbox
- themes to change the appearance of gmail
- video calls
- ability to view attachments within email (in instead of downloading)
- ability to send money
- effective spam filtering and virus protection
Gmail and security
google has kept its https secure since the day it started. From the beginning, users could easily switch to secure https mode after logging into the inbox. In 2008, Google made it easy to manually enable safe mode. they did it with a new button inside the configuration.
- 2007: Google secured a cross-site scripting issue so that no attacker could harvest information or contact lists from gmail.
- 2010: Google began development on https as the default for the users.
- 2012: Google introduced a new security feature in Gmail, which would protect users from state-sponsored attacks. At the top, a banner would appear warning the user of an unofficial account agreement.
- 2014: Google announced that an encrypted https connection would be used to send or receive all emails from gmail, for meaning every message you send or receive will be encrypted as it moves through the company’s systems.
Source: Pixabay
gmail always uses transport layer security (tls) to encrypt emails that have been sent and received. On both web and android devices, all users can check if messages are encrypted simply by checking if emails have a closed or open red padlock.
gmail scans all incoming and outgoing emails automatically, due to viruses in all email attachments. some file types will not be able to be emailed for security reasons.
Third-party encryption in transit
a transparency report of the glasses around a secure email; The section provides information about encrypted emails in transfer between gmail and third party email providers.
Two-step verification
gmail provides two-step verification, which is one possible way for users to protect their accounts when they log in.
When users sign in on a new device they must verify their identity using another way to sign in to gmail, after signing in with their username and password. usually the way is to enter a code sent to the user’s phone in a text message. that is an additional security key in the usb port of the computer. using a security key for two-step verification became available as an option in 2014.
24 hour lockdowns
if an algorithm that google calls: “abnormal usage which may indicate your account has been compromised”, the user account will be automatically locked for 24 hours
reasons to block a user profile:
- receive, delete or download large amounts of mail via pop or imap in a short period of time. if this happens, you will be able to access your gmail account after waiting 24 hours.
- when sending a large number of undeliverable messages
- if you are using sharing or the storage of files software, browser extensions or third-party software that will automatically log you into your account
- leaving multiple instances of gmail open
- if there are problems with your browser and it continually reloads when entering gmail inbox you may need to close tabs, cookies etc. in your browser.
In 2017, Google introduced a new machine learning technology, which would identify phishing and spam emails with an accuracy scale of 99.9%. In addition, Google announced that Gmail would delay some selected messages for more detailed analysis, which would improve the algorithms.
Conclusion
so how was gmail developed? one thing about gmail that’s pretty obvious at this point is that the creators of gmail build it last. Google surprised everyone on April 1st with 500 times more storage capacity than Microsoft’s Hotmail, which was the biggest competitor in the market in 2004.
gmail has created innovative features, it has combined many fun, true google-esque aspects, as well as productivity features, for both a full-featured and dynamic email service. one of the best things about gmail is the ability to be flexible for all kinds of people, with different needs and wants, and do what it’s supposed to do as a leading email service.