Google Gmail History
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The History of Gmail
Gmail has a very interesting history. A number of years before it was released, Google developer Paul Buchheit began using Gmail for Google employees. This is, in a way, how it got its main testing phase and how all of the kinks were worked out of the programming. In 2004, Google selected 1,000 employees and their family members and friends to become beta testers. They also went to people in the Blogger community and asked them to start testing, albeit a month or so later.
When it began, you were only able to get a Gmail address by having someone invite you. Once you were invited, you received a select number of invites that you could send to other people, making it more of an exclusive club than just another free web based email site.
In April of 2005, Google increased the mailbox size from what it was, to an unheard of 2 GB of space. This was a huge deal in the web based email world, as no one had ever been able to offer that much space before. They also expanded and became available in a dozen languages, making Gmail slowly become known around the world.
In December of 2005, they made history again, this time by providing phone interfaces to make it easy to read your email by mobile phone. They also added the chat window, a few months later, making it easy to connect with someone else who had a Gmail address. It was not until 2007 that Gmail's registration was open to the public, and it was no longer necessary to get an invitation in order to gain access to what began as an exclusive club. Anyone can now log onto the site and create a Gmail account for their personal or business use.
Features of Gmail- Storage. Gmail has the biggest available amount of storage of any web based email.
- Chatting. Connect with all of your contacts via GoogleTalk. It's easily combined with your Gmail account.
- Email archiving. Save more data than you ever thought possible.
- Search Functions. Look for a specific message with one easy-to-use interface.
- Mobile Compatible. You can check your mail as easily from your smart phone as you can from your home computer.
- Applications. Gmail offers many different applications, from Google Docs, Google Labs, Google Calendar, and more.