That’s right, it was in April 2004 when Gmail started to roll out as an invite-only service. I can clearly remember asking my friends to send me an invite so that I can try it out. Gmail easily made most of the e-mail users migrate due to its increasing storage capacity. It started with free 1G.
In case you don’t know, here’s an interesting infographic about its evolution.
When I moved to Gmail in 2004, I have completely forgotten my previous email accounts. But its good to remember that before the service was introduced, there was lots of options like Yahoo!Mail, Hotmail, and there was even Yehey that time. Today, when you ask somebody’s email, most probably they’ll give you their Gmail. 🙂
The public history of Gmail dates back to 2004. Gmail, a free, advertising-supported webmail service with support for Email clients, is a product from Google. Over its history, the Gmail interface has become integrated with various other products and services from the company, with basic integration as part of Google Account and specific integration points with services such as Google Calendar, Google Talk, and Google Buzz. It has also been made available as part of Google Apps.
Gmail was a project started by Google developer Paul Buchheit a few years before it was announced to the public. Initially the software was available only internally as an email client for Google employees.
The gmail.com domain name was acquired by Google from Garfield.com, online home of the comic strip Garfield, where it had been used as a free e-mail service. [source]
Officially, Gmail is now 9 years and 9 months and I now have 10G of free storage!
