Wednesday, March 31, 2004 new york times We reported that Google plans to launch a new email service the next morning, April Fool's Day.
By then, the California-based company had already emerged as the largest Internet search engine and wanted to complement this by offering email, which was dominated at the time by the likes of MSN Hotmail and Yahoo Mail. Ta.
Sure enough, as April 1 approached, Google did indeed officially announce Gmail via a press release, but it was worded in a playful and questionable manner.
Twenty years later, Gmail has become the most popular email service provider with an estimated 1.8 billion users. – That's about 22 percent of the world in 2023, according to data from industry tracker DemandSage. The Alphabet-owned company has used a combination of cool marketing, user-centricity, and, of course, reach in cyberspace.
And as the way you use Gmail has changed over the years, so too has the way Gmail uses you and your personal information. Powered by the advent of generative AI, Gmail analyzes data from the content of your emails to deliver more targeted marketing campaigns, taking into account what you've previously shared, and in more conversational and relatable language. It will be delivered to your inbox.
Wayne Kurtzman, associate research resident at International Data Corporation, said Google has long relied on increasing adoption through its free tier of products.
The tech giant “early designed products with intuitive, clean and effective interfaces,” Kurtzman said. The National.
“Google delivered a product that worked at a time when using computers was complicated for many people. Their advantage was that they were able to add features just before they became mainstream requirements.”
“Pranks” are effective
In 1997, a year before Google was founded and seven years before Gmail was launched, Hotmail was acquired by Microsoft and became the leading email service with approximately 16.4 million users, according to industry data estimates. did.
America Online Mail came in second place with approximately 11.6 million emails, followed by Yahoo Mail, which was introduced in October of the same year, with 3.47 million emails.
Their rankings remained the same until 2001, when Hotmail only extended its lead. Tencent's QQ Mail is a company that seems to be just ringing a bell in modern times, but it already existed in 1999.
Launched in 2002, Yahoo Mail quickly gained around 390 million users, a mile ahead of Hotmail, which had stagnated at 134 million.
Then, on April Fool's Day in 2004, Gmail debuted. Gmail was already widely used within Google before its debut, first released to beta testers and then released to other users under an invite-only scheme (I was invited to He was in May 2005).
Gmail ended 2004 as the eighth most popular email service, with a modest user base of over 5.1 million people. Then, Google decided to spread the love for email on his Valentine's Day 2007 and made Gmail available to the public. I didn't need any more invitations to sign up.
It remained largely unnoticed until 2010, when it rose to number four, but its user base soared to more than 207.5 million.
Google finally took over the email throne in 2012 with over 502 million users. Over the years, Yahoo Mail and Hotmail (later integrated into Microsoft Outlook) both declined.
Fast forward to today, nearly one-third of all emails sent daily around the world are on Gmail, which equates to approximately 121 billion emails, and three-quarters access the service on their smartphones. DemandSage adds:
Only mobile access “helps facilitate large-scale communications thanks to this cheapest, most convenient, simplest and most flexible means of communication.” Columbia University researchers write:.
Gmail was also the first to organize email conversationally and add labels to messages. This feature will later be adopted by other services.
“Google was hardly ever the first innovator,” Kurtzman said, but it managed to “gain tremendous market share.”
storage war
Email existed in its first form as electronic mail in the 1970s. In 1976, the late Queen Elizabeth II was the first head of state to send email using her Arpanet, a network developed by the US Department of Defense that became the basis of the Internet.
From then until the 1980s, email remained a privileged thing, used primarily by governments, businesses, the military, universities, or as a luxury or novelty if they had the means to access it.
It didn't become mainstream until the mid-1990s, when Microsoft released Internet Mail (later Outlook) and Hotmail and Yahoo Mail appeared.
Hotmail and Yahoo Mail, in particular, became popular due to two important features. One was one of the first free web-based email services, independent of Internet service providers, accessible from anywhere, and offering free storage. 2MB and 4MB respectively.
4MB seemed huge at the time, but compared to today, and apparently even for Google in 2004, it was laughable.
That's because when Google announced Gmail, it said it would come with 1GB of storage. This was an unprecedented, unprecedented service, right in the mold of a Google prank (again, it wasn't). Just to be clear, that's 250x more storage than Yahoo Mail and 500x more storage than Hotmail.
Then, when it became clear that Gmail was real, a storage war broke out. Yahoo increased his storage to his 100MB in May and upgraded to 250MB by November, while Hotmail increased his storage to 250MB in June, but still significantly more than Gmail. It was low.
It was in March 2005 that both Yahoo and Hotmail decided to offer 1 GB of storage to Gmail.
Currently, Yahoo Mail offers the most free storage at 1TB, while Google offers 15GB across Gmail and other platforms. Google offers a paid 2TB tier for $9.99, but the cost doubles if you choose the plan with Gemini AI.
Najeeb Jarrar, director of marketing for the Middle East and North Africa at Google, said users can now “use generative AI technology to respond faster, prioritize important emails, and create customized messages. “I did it,” he says. The National.
You can't spell emails without AI.
Google's revenue comes primarily from advertising, and Gmail is no exception, especially since it's part of Google's vast ecosystem of services.
On the Gmail page in the Apple App Store, a so-called privacy nutrition label lists data that may be collected from you, such as your purchases, search history, and usage data. This information is information that is used and used to track your preferences. To send you “personalized” ads, or ads that you might be interested in (which, let's be honest, you aren't always or most of the time).
Google says it doesn't sell your personal information or share it with advertisers. However, this does not apply unless you have given your consent. As Google says, “You asked us to do it.”.
This is where the familiar drill comes into play. When you sign up for a particular app or service, you will most likely be asked to consent to some information being collected.
Granting certain permissions to websites in the Gmail iOS app means that Google can collect some or all of the data you list and share it with advertisers.
Google's privacy and terms of service page says that while advertising is Google's main source of revenue, Google and “many of the websites and services you use will remain free.”
Advertisers, on the other hand, can bid on search terms (keywords or key phrases) to have their ads displayed in users' Gmail accounts if their data matches their criteria.
Keyword bidding is a common method in Internet advertising. According to US marketing platform Semrush, “Think of it as a fleeting auction for digital ad space, running every time a user searches for a keyword.”
'We should be optimistic about AI' Google tells The National at Davos 2024
“These ads are shown to you based on your online activity while you’re signed in to Google,” the tech giant said, adding, “We don’t scan or read your Gmail messages to show you ads. ” with an additional warranty. In 2017, Google stopped scanning emails to sell targeted ads.
Indeed, email is moving beyond its original mission as a communication medium to become a powerful, if undesirable, marketing tool, especially now that Google has its own generative AI platform, Gemini. We support that purpose.
“AI can also be used to segment email marketing campaigns based on customer behavior and preferences,” said San Francisco-based CEO and co-founder Jimit Mehta. Marketing startup Abmatic AI.
“By analyzing customer data, AI-powered algorithms can identify groups of customers with similar interests and behaviors and use this information to create more targeted and personalized campaigns.”
AI is expected to play a key role in the evolution of email in the coming years, especially in marketing. Marilyn Gil, a Florida-based email marketing expert, asked ChatGPT and found some high-tech predictions.
She discovered that in five years, natural language processing will make email more conversational. Within 10 years, AI will be able to detect and respond to the emotional state of email recipients. And in 20 years, email marketing will be experienced through a brain-computer interface, allowing direct neural interaction with content.
“These are speculative visions, and the actual development of AI in email marketing will depend on technological advances and ethical considerations,” she writes.
But it's clear that AI will continue to play a key role in shaping the future of email marketing, making it more personalized, efficient, and engaging. ”
In fact, Gmail has come a long way since its humble beginnings and influenced the evolution of electronic communication. Gmail revolutionized the email search bar and extended it to files, calendar events, and sites on Google. “An expanding world of research and information,” the Columbia University researchers wrote.
Google doesn't regularly comment on Gmail's future plans, even though the company certainly has a lot of storage space.
“We continue to update Gmail with features that help people communicate faster, easier, and in their own way,” said Google's Jalal.
Updated: April 1, 2024, 6:11 a.m.
