Google is one of the many companies participating in April Fools' Day celebrations each year. However, the best prank was not a prank. It was called Gmail.
Google announced Gmail on April 1, 2004.
Οι web εφαρμογές ηλεκτρονικού ταχυδρομείου δεν ήταν φυσικά μια νέα ιδέα το 2004. Οι υπηρεσίες Hotmail και Yahoo Mail ήταν εξαιρετικά δημοφιλείς. Ο Paul Buchheit τότε ήταν προγραμματιστής στην Google που εργαζόταν στο "Google Teams" project. Του ζητήθηκε λοιπόν να δημιουργήσει μια υπηρεσία - ένα νέο προϊόν ηλεκτρονικού ταχυδρομείου.
Buchheit's first version of Gmail was built in a day based on code from the Google Teams project. The goal was to create a web e-mail service that would not be written in plain HTML, like competing services Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. Each energy required the server to reload the page, which was quite slow. Buchheit bypassed the use of HTML by using JavaScript.
Gmail has been around Google for a while and in early 2004 it was used by most people within the company. Gmail was finally released to the public on April 1, 2004. Google then stated that Gmail was in beta. In fact, the logo was the word beta.
Of course, some thought the announcement was an April Fool's joke. At that time Google was only known for web searches and of course they were advertisements her. An email service was too far out of the company's scope. But they soon realized that it was a real product.
When Google announced Gmail did not allow anyone to sign up. It did not have the infrastructure to run Gmail with a large number of users. Gmail was then running on three hundred old Pentium III computers.
But to get started, Google invited 1.000 members of the media and other tech celebrities to try it out and invite their friends or family. These invitations became popular as Gmail spread around giving 1 GB of free storage, which was unthinkable at the time.
Στα τέλη Απριλίου 2004, η Google επέκτεινε προσκλήσεις σε ενεργούς χρήστες στην πλατφόρμα του Blogger her. The invitations were so sought after that some even sold them online. The invitations were circulated until February 2007.
Ωστόσο, η ετικέτα "beta" παρέμενε εκεί. Η κατάσταση beta του Gmail έγινε ανέκδοτο. Ήταν σε beta από την αρχή το 2004 και παρέμεινε beta για πέντε χρόνια, μέχρι τον Ιούλιο του 2009. Φυσικά τότε το Gmail ήταν ήδη πολύ δημοφιλές και δεν έμοιαζε καθόλου με προϊόν "beta".
The 1GB of free storage was a no-brainer feature when you consider that Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and other web email services then offered anywhere from 2 to 4MB.
Google increased free storage to 2 GB on April Fool's Day 2005. The free space storage has continued to grow since then, reaching the 15 GB of free storage we have today. Competitors were forced to keep up.
What started as an April Fool's joke has become one of the most successful products of all time. As of 2019, there are 1,5 billion active Gmail users worldwide.
You can see the incredible rise of Gmail in the video below.
