Gmail, Google’s email service, celebrated its twentieth anniversary this week. It hasn’t stopped growing and gaining users since its launch, but there’s one factor that undoubtedly gave it the push it needed to finally surpass Outlook, which was called Hotmail at the time. In this article, I will look at some of the most important events and facts about Gmail, which has written many pages in the history of computing between its experience and notoriety.

Gmail was launched in April 2004 in beta with limited access. At the time, it made a name for itself because it offered a storage capacity of 1 GB, which was an amount that was clearly higher than what most email services were offering at the time. Just one year later, in 2005, this capacity was doubled to 2 GB. Following some policy changes regarding storage capacity, free users currently get 15GB by default, which can be expanded with a Google One subscription.

Gmail’s interface has always been completely search-oriented, perhaps a legacy of Google’s search engine. On the other hand, since 2011, it has tended towards minimalism to be cleaner, to make the service easier to use with its web interface, and to offer a more homogeneous experience through the various products and services that the company provides, especially with some such as Google Drive and Google Photos.

Another feature of Gmail that was highly valued in its time is POP and IMAP support, which made it easier to use this service in third-party email clients. It is true that the use of email clients has been on the decline for many years, but at that time their use was quite common. The POP protocol, which greatly simplifies it, allows you to download correspondence for offline consultation, while IMAP is limited to acting as an interface with the server.

Gmail was quite well received in its day, not only because of certain features in which it was better than its competitors (or at least most of them), but also because Google’s image was very different in the first decade of the 21st century. from what he currently has. Does anyone remember the password? don’t be mean? This was mainly about treating users right and was seen by many as a contrast to Microsoft, which had a clear villain image.

Google’s privacy policy has become increasingly unclear (or found to be unclear, in fact). This caused the company to acknowledge things over the years, sometimes not very explicitly, until formally abandoning the password. don’t be mean in 2018. In fact, it was even caught collecting data it shouldn’t have by browsing in incognito mode in Chrome, but discrediting Google for its privacy policies hasn’t dampened Gmail’s rise.

Android, the support that brought Gmail to the top

Although Gmail left most of the users who used it happy, Hotmail remained the most used because it came earlier, in 1996 to be precise. Hotmail was actually born as an independent service in the aforementioned year, but in 1997 it was bought by Microsoft in an operation that cost 400 million dollars. Although it is no longer number one in user share, if we count the entire history of the service, it cannot be denied that the operation was a good move by the Redmond giant, which began to transform it into Outlook.com from 2012.

This is obvious when looking at the events The main foundation that allowed Gmail to become the most used email service in the world is Androidor rather implementations of this system supplied by Google OEMs, which include pre-installed applications and services of those manufacturers. As a result, most smartphones and tablets require a Gmail account for normal use.

Along with the search engine, the Chrome web browser and YouTube, Android is a major part of the ecosystem that Google makes available to end users, all of which are usually managed through a Gmail account (in the case of Chrome, through sync). It doesn’t take a genius to guess that the Google ecosystem feeds off each other to increase the “need” to have a Gmail account.

When Google dropped its mask on privacy

The good image that Google once had began to crack during the first decade of the 21st century. Now in its second decade, the Mountain View giant has faced strong accusations of violating user privacy, a situation that eventually led to a campaign against it and a class-action lawsuit for alleged privacy failures. reasonable when users use Gmail.

Concerns about Gmail’s alleged lack of privacy lies in the fact that the service scanned email content to display targeted advertising to users. As for Google, and what we’ve learned about the company, the fact that advertising is one of its main sources of revenue, if not its biggest, means that it has tweaked its mechanisms to show as much as possible. which involves creating profiles.

People shouldn’t believe that not having a Gmail account prevents tracking and profiling because there are other ways, such as using HTML5 canvases to create digital fingerprints (fingerprints), which end up being pretty accurate for creating profiles that are virtually unique to each user.

Because of the uproar surrounding Gmail email content scanning Google decided to stop doing this in 2017 (or so he told the gallery). Legal battles and the push for legal reforms that improved the protection of user data, such as the European Union’s GDPR, may have played a role here. In other words, it would not be a matter of benevolence, but rather of convenience to protect the reputation of the service and the company that develops and maintains it.

Just because Gmail isn’t an oasis of privacy doesn’t make the alternatives mainstream like Outlook are better in that sense. If you want better privacy, you should turn to services like ProtonMail, Mailfence and Tuta.

Germany and the brand problem

On a more friendly note, it is interesting to recall the problems Google had with the use of the Gmail brand in Germany, since Daniel Giersch, a venture capital investor based in the aforementioned country, registered the G-Mail brand in 2000. search giant to use the domain @googlemail.com instead of familiar @gmail.com.

The Gmail branding problem started in Germany in 2005, at the beginning of the email service. Worst of all, the G-Mail trademark was registered for an electronic mail delivery business known as “Giersch mail,” which didn’t exactly work in Google’s favor.

after a dispute Google announced in 2012 that it could use the Gmail brand in Germany and that it would provide all users with an address. @googlemail.com equivalent in @gmail.com, also maintaining backwards compatibility (we assume it was to control the creation of new accounts by comparing usernames across two domains). Of course, the company did not specify at the time what kind of agreement it reached, but it is logical to assume that it paid Daniel Giersch a lot of money.

Gmail is no longer (just) an email service

Gmail is and will continue to be an email service, but there is no denying that it has been much more for many years because It is the cornerstone around which the entire Google ecosystem revolves.

I’m not just talking about Gmail and the search engine here, but also YouTube, Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Photos, Chrome data sync and much more. As a result, many users do not create accounts with the goal of using email, but other services and products provided by the Mountain View giant. In other words, one can get a lot of use out of a Gmail account without having to use email, or at least keep it a marginal role.

Of course, there are services like the search engine and YouTube that can be used without having to sign in with a Google account, and it is also possible to sign in to at least some of their services without having to use a Gmail account. it is clear that sometimes a company is interested in users using what is theirs.

When we see the weight that Gmail has in the Google ecosystem, which has even managed to displace the search engine as the part that centralizes everything, It makes no sense for a company to shut down an email service, something about which there were some hoaxes last February. In short, the damage that shutting down Gmail would do to Google would be very difficult to undo.

Conclusion

It is undeniable that Gmail, with its lights and shadows, has written important pages in the history of computer technology, not only domestically, but also in companies that can operate both with a domain @gmail.com like your own if you hire Google services.

Despite the privacy concerns it raised and still raises, there’s no denying that Gmail is an email service that works very well. This applies to many products and services provided by Google It is not uncommon for users to use their ecosystem for their personal organization. In addition, the search giant has made available an API and documentation that makes it easier to integrate some of its services, such as email, calendar and contact management, through third-party applications.

It is undeniable that Google has done its homework very well when it comes to providing quality services and products, which in some cases are easily integrated into third-party solutions, all centralized in the Gmail account. Of course, his “freedom” has a price that everyone or almost everyone already knows.

Cover image created by artificial intelligence.