Since yesterday, the surprising news has been spreading on Twitter that Google is going to shut down Gmail. Yes, you read that right, one of the most used email services in the world, an undisputed success story, one of the jewels in the crown of search engine technology. And when his twentieth birthday is just over a month away, on April 1, 2004, the service began to be offered (of course by invitation and with a capacity of one gigabyte).

As I say, News has been spreading for more than 24 hours., and at the time of publication it is still possible to find publications that reflect it. Some are totally surprised, others are outraged, they are also quite concerned, and if less so, it is not difficult to find someone who is happy about it for all sorts of reasons. In any case, there are many users expressing their opinion on the news that should already be making headlines around the world.

But when Google is about to shut down one of its most used and successful services, how come the media isn’t reporting it? Well, it’s very simple, I’m sure you know the answer to this question: because it’s fake news. Fake news, and extremely hard to believe at that, but nevertheless managed to reach a critical mass for the chain reaction that led to its spread. And has it spread much? You might be wondering, especially if you don’t usually go on Twitter. Well yes, so much so that Google had to use the official Gmail Twitter account to post message deny it:

In some reports that have been posted with fake news, Attached are screenshots of the alleged message sent by Google a message to users of the service informing them of the shutdown, which will happen this very year in 2024. However, many of them are actually modified versions of the message that was sent last year to inform about the removal of the basic HTML mode, which took place last month .

It is true that if you decide that you must Google doesn’t shake when closing/cancelling anything you don’t want in your catalog anymore, as is well documented in your graveyard, and it’s also true that there was quite a bit of noise last year over Google’s announcement that it would start closing down inactive accounts by deleting their content. It is probably this close precedent that may have acted as an element that gave the hoax a little more credibility.

But despite that, despite what was mentioned in the previous paragraph, It is very hard for me to understand that there are people who could believe that Google is going to shut down Gmailand even more so that they decided to spread them without at least looking for an official confirmation or a really credible source. And that’s what bothers me the most about this whole issue, because it once again points to the key role people play in spreading misinformation. With the advent of the Internet, some of us have deludedly said that we are entering the information age. Now, some three decades later, the corollary “and misinformation” should be added.