"Not 100 Mega but 1 Giga?"... Gmail Started as an April Fools' Joke

Gmail Launched on April 1, 2004
Revolutionary Storage Capacity, Thought to Be an 'April Fools' Joke'

The Google 'Gmail' service has become essential not only for corporate work but also in daily life. Its origin, however, was actually an 'April Fools' idea' released annually by Google's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin on April 1st.

On the 1st (local time), 'AP News' highlighted the 'birth story of Gmail' in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Gmail service. Gmail is Google's email service that began its beta service on April 1, 2004. At the time, Google was a prominent portal search site, and Gmail caused quite a stir, especially since most people dismissed it as an 'April Fools' joke' because Google offered an email storage capacity of 1 gigabyte (GB).

Back then, mailbox sizes were only around 100 megabytes (MB). More importantly, since Google launched Gmail on April Fools' Day, people treated the Gmail service as part of the April Fools' prank.

But surprisingly, Google actually started the Gmail beta service the next day. The mailbox storage capacity was indeed the announced 1GB. Furthermore, Google made all the advanced features, which were only available in paid email services at the time, free of charge. With Google's groundbreaking service spirit, Gmail revolutionized the email industry and is now widely used in many countries around the world.

AP News revealed that Google's founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who were a startup at the time, "loved to joke around." Google has a tradition of introducing quirky ideas every April Fools' Day, all created by the founders. For example, on April Fools' Day in 2008, they posted a fake job advertisement claiming they would implement a 'smell search engine.'

Google co-founders Larry Page (left) and Sergey Brin [Image source=Google]

Meanwhile, Gmail, which started with a 1GB service, has since grown exponentially with advancements in storage technology. Today, Gmail offers 200GB of storage for the free version and up to 5 terabytes (TB) for the paid version.

Additionally, Gmail is equipped with Google's excellent search technology, allowing users to quickly find the oldest emails, photos, and other personal information. It connects the isolated text information of emails as if it were an infinite conversation window.

The engineers who developed Gmail say that debuting it as an 'April Fools' event' was the key to Gmail's success.

Paul Buchheit, a former Google engineer and early Gmail developer, told the media, "The charm of Gmail is that we created a product so amazing that people didn't believe it was real," emphasizing, "Thanks to Gmail, Google changed consumers' perceptions of 'browser applications.'"

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.