SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin loved pranks so much that shortly after founding the company more than a quarter-century ago, they started rolling out wild ideas every April Fool's Day. . One year, Google posted a job opening for a Copernicus research center on the moon. The company has announced plans to introduce a “scratch and sniff” feature to its search engine for another year.
The jokes were so consistently over the top that people learned to laugh at it as yet another example of Google's pranks. That's why Page and Brin decided to do something on April Fool's Day that no one would have been able to do 20 years ago.
That's Gmail, a free service that boasts 1 gigabyte of storage per account, an amount that sounds almost mundane in the age of 1 terabyte iPhones. However, the capacity of email at the time was sufficient to store approximately 13,500 emails before running out of space, compared to only 30 to 300 for the major webmail services of the time operated by Yahoo and Microsoft. It seemed like I could only save 60 emails. This means a 250-500x increase in email storage space.
In addition to the storage breakthrough, Gmail also features Google's search technology, allowing users to quickly retrieve tidbits from old emails, photos, and other personal information stored on the service. . Also, series of communications on the same topic are automatically threaded, so they all flow together as if they were one conversation.
“The original proposal we put together was about the three S’s: storage, search, and speed,” said Marissa Mayer, a former Google executive. Marissa Mayer later worked on designing Gmail and other company products until she became her CEO of Yahoo.
It was such a shocking concept that shortly after the Associated Press published an article about Gmail late on the afternoon of April Fool's Day in 2004, readers called and emailed the news agency to tell them they had been fooled by Google pranksters. We have started to inform you.
“That's part of the appeal is that we create a product that people don't believe is real. This has in some ways changed people's perception of the kinds of applications that are possible within a web browser.” and former Google engineer Paul Buchheit recalled their efforts to build Gmail in a recent interview with the Associated Press.
The piece took three years to complete as part of a project called “Caribou,” which references a gag from the Dilbert cartoons. “There's something ridiculous about the name Caribou that made me laugh,” said Buchheit, the 23rd person hired by the company, which now employs more than 180,000 people.
The Associated Press knew Google wasn't kidding about Gmail. That's because an Associated Press reporter was suddenly asked to come from San Francisco to the company's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., to see something worth the trip.
After arriving at the developing corporate campus that would soon become known as the “Googleplex,” an Associated Press reporter was ushered into a small office where Mr. Page sat in front of a laptop computer with a mischievous grin on his face. was on his face.
Page, then only 31, showed off Gmail's sleek inbox design and demonstrated how fast Gmail ran inside Microsoft's now-defunct Explorer web browser. And he pointed out that there is no delete button because Gmail has so much storage space and is easily searchable that there is no need for one in the main his control window. “I think people are going to really like this,” Page predicted.
As with so many things, Page was right. Gmail currently has an estimated 1.8 billion active accounts, each offering 15 gigabytes of free storage bundled with Google Photos and Google Drive. That's 15 times the storage that Gmail originally offered, but as Google hopes, it's still not enough for many users who rarely feel the need to delete their accounts.
As emails, photos, and other content are stored digitally, Google, Apple, and other companies now make money by selling additional storage capacity in their data centers. (Google charges from $30 per year for 200 gigabytes of storage to $250 per year for 5 terabytes of storage). Gmail's existence is also the reason why other free email services and the internal email accounts that employees use for work offer far more storage than he expected 20 years ago.
“We were trying to change the way people think, because for so long people have been working in this model of storage starvation, where deletion has become the default action,” Buchheit said.
While Gmail was the first building block to expand Google's Internet empire beyond its still-dominant search engine, it was a game-changer in several other ways.
After Gmail came Google Maps and Google Docs, with their word processing and spreadsheet applications. Later, the video site YouTube was acquired, followed by the introduction of the Chrome browser and the Android operating system that powers most smartphones around the world. With Gmail's clearly stated intention to scan the content of emails to better understand users' interests, Google also plans to expand its digital surveillance ambitions to sell more advertising. There was little doubt that it was part of the.
Although Gmail quickly gained traction, it had a limited start because Google only had enough computing power to support a small number of users.
“When we started, we only had 300 machines. They were really old machines and no one wanted them,” Buchheit said with a laugh. “We only had enough capacity to accommodate 10,000 users, which is a little absurd.”
But that scarcity created an atmosphere of exclusivity around Gmail, sparking a frenzy of demand for that elusive invitation to sign up. At one point, invitations to open a Gmail account were being sold on eBay for $250 each. “It's become a bit of a social currency, where people say, 'Hey, I got a Gmail invite, do you want it?'” Buchheit said.
Signing up for Gmail became easier and easier as Google's massive network of data centers came online, but it wasn't until the company opened the floodgates to the world as a Valentine's Day gift in 2007 that all Failed to start accepting user's email service.
A few weeks later, on April Fool's Day 2007, Google announced a new feature called “Gmail Paper,” allowing users to print and send email archives about “94% post-consumer organic soy tantan” to Google. became. Google was really kidding back then.
