Gmail celebrates its 20th anniversary： completely changing email.

According to the Associated Press, on April 2nd, April Fool’s Day, Google’s email Gmail celebrated its 20th anniversary.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin, co-founders of Google, are so fond of pranks that they began to put forward strange ideas on April Fool’s Day every year shortly after they founded the company more than a quarter of a century ago. One year, Google posted a vacancy in the Copernicus Research Center on the Moon. Another year, the company said it planned to launch crawling and sniffing functions on its search engine.

These jokes are always so exaggerated that people learn to laugh them off as another example of Google pranks. That’s why Page and Brin decided to reveal something that no one believed on April Fool’s Day 20 years ago.

This is Gmail, which is a free service, and each account has 1 GB of storage space. In the era of 1 TB iPhone, this number sounds almost insignificant. But it sounded like an absurd e-mail capacity at the time, enough to store about 13,500 e-mails before running out of space, while the leading e-mail services operated by Yahoo and Microsoft at that time could only store 30 to 60 e-mails. This means that the e-mail storage space has increased by 250 to 500 times.

In addition to the storage leap, Gmail is also equipped with Google’s search technology, so users can quickly retrieve tidbits from old emails, photos or other personal information stored on the service. It also automatically strings together a series of communications about the same topic, so everything flows together as if it were a conversation.

"Our initial publicity was all about the three S’s-storage, search and speed. Marissa Mayer, a former Google executive, said that she helped design Gmail and other company products before becoming CEO of Yahoo.

This is such a puzzling concept that shortly after the Associated Press published a report about Gmail in the afternoon of April Fool’s Day in 2004, readers began to call and email the news agency to tell them that they had been cheated by Google pranksters.

"That’s part of the charm, making products that people can’t believe. To some extent, it has changed people’s views on the types of applications that may appear in web browsers. Paul Buchheit, a former Google engineer, recalled his efforts to build Gmail in a recent interview with the Associated Press.

As part of a project called Caribou, it took three years to complete-Caribou refers to a recurring joke in Dilbert comics. "Caribou is a ridiculous name, it just makes me laugh. Buchheit said that he is the 23rd employee employed by a company with more than 180,000 employees.

The Associated Press knew that Google was not joking with Gmail because an Associated Press reporter was suddenly asked to come to the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, California from San Francisco to see what would make the trip worthwhile.

After arriving at the still-developing enterprise park (which will soon become the later Googleplex), the Associated Press reporter was taken into a small office, and Page sat in front of his laptop with a naughty smile on his face.

Page, then only 31 years old, continued to show off Gmail’s stylish inbox and its running speed in Microsoft’s now retired Explorer web browser. He pointed out that there is no delete button in the main control window, because Gmail has such a large storage space and can be easily searched, so it is unnecessary. "I think people will really like this. Page predicted.

Like many other things, Page is right.

Gmail currently has an estimated 1.8 billion active accounts, and each account now provides 15 GB of free storage space, bundled with Google Photos and Google Drive. Although this is 15 times more storage space than Gmail originally provided, it is still not enough for many users who rarely see the need to clear their accounts, as Google hopes.

The digital accumulation of emails, photos and other content is the reason why Google, Apple and other companies are now making money by selling extra storage capacity in data centers. (As far as Google is concerned, its charges range from $30 per year for 200 GB storage to $250 per year for 5 TB storage).

The existence of Gmail is also the reason why other free email services and internal email accounts used by employees at work provide much more storage space than imagined 20 years ago.

Buchheit said: We are trying to change people’s way of thinking, because people have been working in this storage-scarce mode for so long that deleting has become the default operation.

Gmail has changed the rules of the game in several other aspects, and at the same time it has become the first cornerstone for Google’s Internet empire to expand into its still dominant search engine.

Gmail was followed by Google Maps and Google Docs with word processing and spreadsheet applications. Subsequently, the video website YouTube was acquired, and then the Chrome browser and Android operating system were launched, which was adopted by most smartphones in the world. Since Gmail has made it clear that it intends to scan email content to better understand users’ interests, Google has no doubt that digital monitoring in order to sell more advertisements will become part of its expanding ambition.

Although Gmail caused an immediate sensation, its scope was limited at first, because Google only had enough computing power to support a small number of users at first.

"When we launched, we only had 300 machines, and they were all old machines that others didn’t want. Buchheit said with a smile. "Our capacity is only enough for 10,000 users, which is a bit ridiculous. 」

But this scarcity has created an exclusive atmosphere around Gmail, which has promoted the fanatical demand for elusive registration invitations. Once upon a time, invitations to open Gmail accounts sold for $250 each on eBay. "It becomes a bit like a social currency, and people will say, Hey, I got an invitation from Gmail. Do you want one? Buchheit said.

Although it became easier to register Gmail with more large data center networks of Google, it was not until 2007 that the company opened its doors to the world as a Valentine’s Day gift that it began to accept all users to use the email service.

A few weeks later, on April Fool’s Day in 2007, Google announced a new feature called Gmail Paper, which gave users the opportunity to let Google print out emails and archive them, and then save them. Send it to them by postal service.

Google was really joking at the time.