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Gmail Celebrates 20th Birthday with New Security Rules for Bulk Senders

Published: 01 April 2024 at 13:29

Technology

On its 20th anniversary, Gmail boasts 1.2 billion users, with origins stemming from a user complaint in 2004. Google co-founder Sergey Brin emphasized Gmail's mission to address email issues. The service's success led to the introduction of stringent new security rules for bulk senders starting April 1, 2024, targeting marketing and spam emails.

DEEP DIVE


The Evolution of Gmail through Key Figures at Google


Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin introduced Gmail 20 years ago on April Fools' Day. Marissa Mayer, former Google executive, played a role in designing Gmail before becoming CEO of Yahoo. Paul Buchheit, the engineer behind Gmail, was Google's 23rd employee. The growth of Google is evident as it now employs over 180,000 people.

Gmail (Wikipedia)


Gmail is an email service provided by Google. As of 2019, it had 1.5 billion active users worldwide, making it the largest email service in the world. It also provides a webmail interface, accessible through a web browser, and is also accessible through the official mobile application. Google also supports the use of third-party email clients via the POP and IMAP protocols.At its launch in 2004, Gmail provided a storage capacity of one gigabyte per user, which was significantly higher than its competitors offered at the time. Today, the service comes with 15 gigabytes of storage for free for individual users, which is divided among other Google services, such as Google Drive, and Google Photos. Users in need of more storage can purchase Google One to increase this 15 GB limit. Users can receive emails up to 50 megabytes in size, including attachments, and can send emails up to 25 megabytes. Gmail supports integration with Google Drive, allowing for larger attachments. Gmail has a search-oriented interface and supports a "conversation view" similar to an Internet forum. The service is notable among website developers for its early adoption of Ajax.Google's mail servers automatically scan emails for multiple purposes, including to filter spam and malware and, prior to June 2017, to add context-sensitive advertisements next to emails. This advertising practice has been significantly criticized by privacy advocates with concerns over unlimited data retention, ease of monitoring by third parties, users of other email providers not having agreed to the policy upon sending emails to Gmail addresses, and the potential for Google to change its policies to further decrease privacy by combining information with other Google data usage. The company has been the subject of lawsuits concerning the issues. Google has stated that email users must "necessarily expect" their emails to be subject to automated processing and claims that the service refrains from displaying ads next to potentially sensitive messages, such as those mentioning race, religion, sexual orientation, health, or financial statements. In June 2017, Google announced the end of the use of contextual Gmail content for advertising purposes, relying instead on data gathered from the use of its other services.

History of Gmail (Wikipedia)


The public history of Gmail dates back to 2004. Gmail, a free, advertising-supported webmail service with support for Email clients, is a product from Google. Over its history, the Gmail interface has become integrated with many other products and services from the company, with basic integration as part of Google Account and specific integration points with services such as Google+, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Google Hangouts, Google Meet, YouTube, and Google Buzz. It has also been made available as part of G Suite. The Official Gmail Blog tracks the public history of Gmail from July 2007.

Fake News About Google Sunsetting Gmail Goes Viral on Social Media


A fake screenshot claiming Google will sunset Gmail on August 1, 2024, has gone viral on social media, but Google confirmed it is not true and Gmail is here to stay. The fake news originated from a photoshopped notice about Gmail Basic HTML view discontinuation. The viral hoax highlights the ease of spreading fake claims online and questions the impact if Google were to discontinue Gmail, a service with over 1.8 billion users.

Google is not sunsetting Gmail despite viral hoax, but is discontinuing Gmail's basic HTML view


A fake viral claim suggested that Google is ending Gmail in August 2024, but it is confirmed to be a hoax. However, Google is discontinuing Gmail's basic HTML view starting January 2024, replacing it with the Standard view. The HTML version lacks features like chat, spell checker, and search filters, catering to low-connectivity situations. Google is focusing on AI-powered features in Gmail, introducing Duet AI for email writing and integrating the Bard chatbot for email history inquiries.

Gmail interface (Wikipedia)


The Gmail interface makes Gmail unique amongst webmail systems for several reasons. Most evident to users are its search-oriented features and means of managing e-mail in a "conversation view" that is similar to an Internet forum.An official redesign of the Gmail interface was rolled out on November 1, 2011 that simplified the look and feel of Gmail into a more minimalist design to provide a more consistent look throughout Google products and services as part of an overall design change. Another major redesign took place April 2018 which introduced new information rights management controls designed for business use cases.

GMail Drive (Wikipedia)


GMail Drive was a free third-party Windows Shell namespace extension ("add-on") for Google's Gmail. It allowed a user to access a virtual drive stored in a Gmail account by causing the contents of the Gmail account to appear as a new network share on the user's workstation. GMail Drive was not supported by Google.In order to use GMail Drive, the user needed a Gmail e-mail account. The add-on enabled the user to use the standard Windows desktop file copy and paste commands to transfer files to and from the Gmail account as if it were a drive on the user's computer. Gmail Drive was based upon GmailFS, a file system developed by Richard Jones. GMail Drive was published in 2004 and functional as early as 2005 which predates Google's later implementation of Google Drive released on April 24, 2012. As of 2015, the official extension page declares the project dead.

Google (Wikipedia)


Google LLC ( , GOO-ghəl) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial intelligence (AI). It has been referred to as "the most powerful company in the world" and as one of the world's most valuable brands due to its market dominance, data collection, and technological advantages in the field of AI. Google's parent company Alphabet Inc. is one of the five Big Tech companies, alongside Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft.Google was founded on September 4, 1998, by American computer scientists Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were PhD students at Stanford University in California. Together they own about 14% of its publicly listed shares and control 56% of its stockholder voting power through super-voting stock. The company went public via an initial public offering (IPO) in 2004. In 2015, Google was reorganized as a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. Google is Alphabet's largest subsidiary and is a holding company for Alphabet's internet properties and interests. Sundar Pichai was appointed CEO of Google on October 24, 2015, replacing Larry Page, who became the CEO of Alphabet. On December 3, 2019, Pichai also became the CEO of Alphabet.The company has since rapidly grown to offer a multitude of products and services beyond Google Search, many of which hold dominant market positions. These products address a wide range of use cases, including email (Gmail), navigation (Waze & Maps), cloud computing (Cloud), web browsing (Chrome), video sharing (YouTube), productivity (Workspace), operating systems (Android), cloud storage (Drive), language translation (Translate), photo storage (Photos), video calling (Meet), smart home (Nest), smartphones (Pixel), wearable technology (Pixel Watch & Fitbit), music streaming (YouTube Music), video on demand (YouTube TV), AI (Google Assistant & Gemini), machine learning APIs (TensorFlow), AI chips (TPU), and more. Discontinued Google products include gaming (Stadia), Glass, Google+, Reader, Play Music, Nexus, Hangouts, and Inbox by Gmail.Google's other ventures outside of Internet services and consumer electronics include quantum computing (Sycamore), self-driving cars (Waymo, formerly the Google Self-Driving Car Project), smart cities (Sidewalk Labs), and transformer models (Google Deepmind).Google and YouTube are the two most visited websites worldwide followed by Facebook and X (formerly known as Twitter). Google is also the largest search engine, mapping and navigation application, email provider, office suite, video sharing platform, photo and cloud storage provider, mobile operating system, web browser, ML framework, and AI virtual assistant provider in the world as measured by market share. On the list of most valuable brands, Google is ranked second by Forbes and fourth by Interbrand. It has received significant criticism involving issues such as privacy concerns, tax avoidance, censorship, search neutrality, antitrust and abuse of its monopoly position.

Google Search (Wikipedia)


Google Search (also known simply as Google or Google.com) is a search engine operated by Google. It allows users to search for information on the Internet by entering keywords or phrases. Google Search uses algorithms to analyze and rank websites based on their relevance to the search query. It is the most popular search engine worldwide.As of 2020, Google Search has a 92% share of the global search engine market. By 2012, it handled more than 3.5 billion searches per day.Google Search is the most-visited website in the world. Approximately 26.75% of Google's monthly global traffic comes from the United States, 4.44% from India, 4.4% from Brazil, 3.92% from the United Kingdom and 3.84% from Japan according to data provided by Similarweb.The order of search results returned by Google is based, in part, on a priority rank system called "PageRank". Google Search also provides many different options for customized searches, using symbols to include, exclude, specify or require certain search behavior, and offers specialized interactive experiences, such as flight status and package tracking, weather forecasts, currency, unit, and time conversions, word definitions, and more.The main purpose of Google Search is to search for text in publicly accessible documents offered by web servers, as opposed to other data, such as images or data contained in databases. It was originally developed in 1996 by Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Scott Hassan. In 2011, Google introduced "Google Voice Search" to search for spoken, rather than typed, words. In 2012, Google introduced a semantic search feature named Knowledge Graph.Analysis of the frequency of search terms may indicate economic, social and health trends. Data about the frequency of use of search terms on Google can be openly inquired via Google Trends and have been shown to correlate with flu outbreaks and unemployment levels, and provide the information faster than traditional reporting methods and surveys. As of mid-2016, Google's search engine has begun to rely on deep neural networks.

Google+ (Wikipedia)


Google+ (sometimes: written as Google Plus, stylized as G+ or g+/⁺) was a social network that was owned and operated by Google until it ceased operations in 2019. The network was launched on June 28, 2011, in an attempt to challenge other social networks, linking other Google products like Google Drive, Blogger and YouTube. The service, Google's fourth foray into social networking, experienced strong growth in its initial years, although usage statistics varied, depending on how the service was defined. Three Google executives oversaw the service, which underwent substantial changes that led to a redesign in November 2015.Due to low user engagement and disclosed software design flaws that potentially allowed outside developers access to personal information of its users, the Google+ developer API was discontinued on March 7, 2019, and Google+ was shut down for business and personal use on April 2, 2019.

Google Co-founder Sergey Brin Acknowledges Errors in AI Model Gemini


Google co-founder Sergey Brin admitted to errors in the image generation aspect of the tech giant's AI model, Gemini. The algorithm's unintentional bias led to historically inaccurate images, including racially diverse representations of figures like Adolf Hitler and medieval Viking warriors. Despite setbacks, Brin remains optimistic about AI's future, addressing the issue after backlash over the model's bias against White people. Google pulled the plug on Gemini's image generation feature due to the inaccuracies, with plans to relaunch after improvements.

Google Co-Founder Unfazed by Question About ‘Woke’ AI From Attendee in Naked Woman Shirt


The internet is in an uproar after a question and answer session featuring Google co-founder Sergey Brin over the weekend, where an attendee in a mostly male audience wore a shirt depicting a naked womans body. Brin has been an elusive figure since his retirement in 2019, but the tech pioneer is on the job at Google to aid in the companys AI projects. Over the weekend, Brin made a rare appearance at an AI hackathon in San Francisco, where he spoke and took questions from the audience. During a Q&A session, one attendee spoke up to ask Brin about the recent controversy surrounding Googles Gemini image generator. Last week, there was widespread outrage from conservatives including Elon Musk after users realized the AI was hesitant to produce images of white men , even in situations where that would be the most traditionally accurate response, such as prompts for images of Americas founding fathers.

Sergey Brin (Wikipedia)


Sergey Mikhailovich Brin (Russian: Сергей Михайлович Брин; born August 21, 1973) is an American businessman best known for co-founding Google with Larry Page. Brin was the president of Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc., until stepping down from the role on December 3, 2019. He and Page remain at Alphabet as co-founders, controlling shareholders, and board members. As of March 2024, Brin is the 10th-richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $119 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and Forbes.Brin immigrated to the United States from the Soviet Union at the age of six. He earned his bachelor's degree at the University of Maryland, College Park, following in his father's and grandfather's footsteps by studying mathematics as well as computer science. After graduation, he enrolled in Stanford University to acquire a PhD in computer science. There he met Page, with whom he built a web search engine. The program became popular at Stanford, and they discontinued their PhD studies to start up Google in Susan Wojcicki's garage in Menlo Park.

Gmail Celebrates 20th Birthday with New Security Rules for Bulk Senders Gmail Celebrates 20th Birthday with New Security Rules for Bulk Senders Gmail Celebrates 20th Birthday with New Security Rules for Bulk Senders Gmail Celebrates 20th Birthday with New Security Rules for Bulk Senders

SOURCES

Daily Mail

Gmail turns 20! Nostalgic images reveal what it looked like in 2004

Wiliam Hunter

Tech Radar

People laughed when Google announced Gmail on April 1 2004 — but nobody's laughing now

Tech Radar

Yahoo! News

From its start, Gmail conditioned us to trade privacy for free services

Yahoo! News

NDTV

Gmail Turns 20: All About How The Email Service Was Launched

NDTV

Business Insider

It's Gmail's 20th birthday. Read the 'Heck, Yeah' memo announcing its launch.

Business Insider

Fox News

Gmail revolutionized email 20 years ago — after being initially mistaken as Google's April Fools' Day joke

Fox News

ZDNET

When Gmail arrived 20 years ago, people thought it was an April Fools prank

ZDNET

The Verge

The best April Fools’ “prank” in tech.

The Verge

PANORA

The Evolution of Gmail through Key Figures at Google

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Wikipedia

Gmail

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Wikipedia

History of Gmail

Wikipedia

PANORA

Fake News About Google Sunsetting Gmail Goes Viral on Social Media

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PANORA

Google is not sunsetting Gmail despite viral hoax, but is discontinuing Gmail's basic HTML view

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Wikipedia

Gmail interface

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Wikipedia

GMail Drive

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Wikipedia

Google

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Wikipedia

Google Search

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Wikipedia

Google+

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Google Co-founder Sergey Brin Acknowledges Errors in AI Model Gemini

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Google Co-Founder Unfazed by Question About ‘Woke’ AI From Attendee in Naked Woman Shirt

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Sergey Brin

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