Gmail turns 20. Congratulations!

Possibly, Gmail will be the most popular email service in the world. On April 1, 2004, Google launched what is now the support service for much of what we call the Internet. It seems like a lie, but it’s already been 20 years!!!

So very quickly we can say that...

A Gmail idea was developed by Paul Buchheit several years before being announced to the public. The project was known by the code name Caribou. During initial development, the project was kept secret from most of Google's engineers. This situation changed when the project improved and, at the beginning of 2004, most employees were already using it to access the company's internal email system.

In 2019, it had 1.5 billion active users worldwide, making it the largest email service in the world. It also provides a webmail interface, accessible through a web browser, as well as being accessible through the official mobile application.

At its launch in 2004, Gmail offered a storage capacity of one gigabyte per user, significantly higher than that offered by its competitors at the time. At the moment, the service includes 15 gigabytes of free storage for individual users, which is divided between other Google services, like Google Drive and Google Photos.

Congratulations on Gmail: 20 years serving the world

You Google's email servers automatically analyze emails for various purposes, including spam and malware filtering and, before June 2017, to add context-sensitive ads alongside emails. This advertising practice has been significantly criticized by privacy advocates, concerned about unlimited data retention, ease of monitoring by third parties.

The company has been the subject of legal proceedings relating to these issues. Google has stated that email users should "necessarily expect" that their emails will be subject to automatic processing and says that the service refrains from displaying advertisements alongside potentially sensitive messages, such as those mentioning race, religion, orientation sexual, health or financial statements.

In June 2017, Google announced the end of using contextual content from Gmail for advertising purposes, instead relying on data collected from the use of its other services.

6 facts about storage:

1. On April 1, 2004, Gmail launched with one gigabyte (GB) of storage space, an amount significantly greater than that offered by competitors at the time.
2. On April 1, 2005, Gmail's first birthday, the limit was doubled to two gigabytes of storage. Georges Harik, Gmail's director of product management, stated that Google would "continue to give people more space forever.
3. In October 2007, Gmail increased storage to 4 gigabytes, following recent changes by competitors Yahoo and Microsoft.
4. On April 24, 2012, Google announced it was increasing the storage included in Gmail from 7.5 gigabytes to 10 gigabytes ("and counting") as part of the launch of Google Drive.
5. On May 13, 2013, Google announced the global merger of storage across Gmail, Google Drive and Google+ Photos, allowing users 15 gigabytes of storage included across the three services.
6. On August 15, 2018, Google launched Google One, a service where users can pay for additional storage, shared between Gmail, Google Drive and Google Photos, through a monthly subscription plan. As of 2021, up to 15 gigabytes of storage is included and paid plans of up to 2 terabytes are available for personal use.