20 years ago, email was the main way people communicated on the internet. At the time, Microsoft's Hotmail and Yahoo Mail were the most popular options for a free web-based email account. However, both services had their limitations, including, but not limited to, only having a few megabytes of storage space. Users had to constantly delete emails to free up space.
Then, on April 1, 2004, 20 years ago today, Google launched its own free web-based service, Gmail. The writing style
of Google's original press release made it sound like Google was making an April Fool's Day joke. Here's an example:
The inspiration for Gmail came from a Google user complaining about the poor quality of existing email services, recalled Larry Page, Google co-founder and president, Products. "She kvetched about spending all her time filing messages or trying to find them," Page said. "And when she’s not doing that, she has to delete email like crazy to stay under the obligatory four megabyte limit. So she asked, ‘Can’t you people fix this?’"
While the writing style of the Gmail press release was certainly humorous, Gmail itself turned out to be no joke at all.
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