When was gmail released

You may have already used Smart Compose , an AI-powered feature that helps you write emails quicker. Smart Compose is also getting, well, smarter. Lastly, you can now take action without leaving your inbox.

You can respond to a comment thread in Google Docs, browse hotel recommendations and more, directly within emails. Over the past decade, Gmail, Google Drive and Google Photos have helped billions of people securely store and manage their emails, docume Get the latest news from Google in your inbox.

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The Keyword. Gmail Hitting send on the next 15 years of Gmail. Apr 01, min read. But when Google launched the service on April 1, , many people thought it was a hoax. Its original press release for Gmail was loaded with silly language that had many believing it was yet another elaborate bit of fakery. A few choice samples from the release:. At the time, web publications were dutifully skeptical, as were their readers.

Readers at techy nerd hangout Slashdot were similarly incredulous. Obviously, Gmail was a good idea, and thankfully turned out to be a real product. Otherwise, we might have all been stuck with Hotmail or something. It does, however, speak to the difficulty of navigating real news on April 1st. Right from the start, Google took every opportunity to set itself apart from the competition. All users received a gigabyte of storage for their email, a massive figure that shamed what Microsoft's Hotmail and Yahoo Mail offered at the time.

That meant most people would never need to worry about permanently deleting messages again. In some ways, it also ushered in the era of seemingly limitless cloud storage.

Gmail's interface as it appeared in Most importantly, Google leveraged its search expertise to help users dig through their inboxes at lightning speed. But the wise early decisions didn't end there: email threads were presented neatly in a threaded conversation view, and Gmail users could send out attachments up to 25MB in size.

Through the years, Gmail has evolved and seen numerous design changes — it finally dropped the "beta" label in Google's track record isn't perfect; last year's redesign brought on harsh feedback from some users. Still, at its core Gmail still feels very much like the Gmail that launched in That remarkable consistency has undoubtedly been a huge factor in its continued success. But if things had gone differently, Google's big email bet might never have happened.

To mark Gmail's 10th anniversary, Time put together a retrospective on its beginnings and earliest challenges. Subscribe to get the best Verge-approved tech deals of the week.