Gmail@20: Two decades of you’ve got mail, spam, and more

Google’s core competence has always been search, which was at the heart of the whole Gmail experience

It’s never a clever thing to launch anything new on Fools’ Day (April 1). But 20 years ago, Google did exactly that with Gmail. With the promise of 1GB (gen Z: don’t you LOL at that) and a better search experience (it was Google, so that was a no-brainer), Gmail was rolled out to the first set of users. The 1,000 megabytes — that’s what Google said in the press release — was more than 100 times what most other free webmail services offer. Others? Hotmail and Yahoo were, and closer home, Rediffmail and a few others were trying to leave a mark on internet users. But, it was Microsoft’s Hotmail that stood out as the email powerhouse. Google’s Gmail changed that.

The early years

Technology, in many ways, makes people feel cool. Napster was cool. Facebook was cool in the early years. The iPod was uber-cool till Apple decided to kill it. Generative AI is super cool right now. With email, it won’t be harsh to say that Gmail was perhaps the first cool concept. Hotmail was good. The company was founded by Sabeer Bhatia, once the poster boy of Indian IT. The email service later became part of Microsoft’s bouquet. The idea of sending emails was around for a while. But cool? Google was clever in the sense that it started offering Gmail through invite codes. You couldn’t just go to www.gmail.com and simply sign up. A friend/colleague or someone had to share a code for you to get access. The biggest selling point? 1GB of storage was genuinely unheard of. Google was giving it for free. That sense of exclusivity made Gmail quite a sought-after service in those days.

Google co-founder Larry Page recounted an incident in which a user contacted an engineer to express frustration about the difficulty of searching emails on the service she used. She also cited the 4MB storage limit as a pain point. “Can’t you people fix this?” she asked Google. Google used to have engineers who had to spend a day a week on projects that were of interest to them — something which wasn’t a part of their job description. One engineer thought email was a “20 percent time” project, as per Google. And “millions of M&Ms later, Gmail was born” is how Google described how its email service came to life.

Beyond the mail experience

The one thing that Gmail — or a Google account — became was the entry point to many things. Most importantly, Android phones. You just have to have a Google account, and by that, a Gmail account reaches more than a billion users. In the age of instant messaging apps and social media, email might be considered an official communication tool, but Gmail still doesn’t fall under that category. Want to sign up for a food delivery app? There’s Gmail. Want to sign up for a travel site? Use your Gmail account. Gmail has gone beyond being just an email service. But that doesn’t mean Gmail has remained stagnant.

Google’s core competence has always been search, which was at the heart of the whole Gmail experience. Separate folders and better search gave Gmail the edge over Hotmail, which later became Outlook. In 2008, Google made inboxes fun-looking by introducing themes and other customisation options. It then expanded the storage capacity to 15GB — a big deal then but not so much now. Some might even call it paltry. It’s surprising to see Gmail still offering ‘only’ 15GB of storage. Google made things worse by including almost every Google service part of that 15GB.

When 15GB was offered, the iPhone was in its infancy, and camera smartphones had started to make an appearance but didn’t rule the lives of people. 15GB in today’s day and age is remarkably less. For email, sure, it is sufficient, but when Gmail became a part of the bouquet, it certainly felt insignificant. Google’s solution is to migrate people to Google One, a paid subscription service. Rs 130 a month gets you 100GB of Google One storage, including Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos. It is a problem that many users complain about, and perhaps it might just be a few more ‘millions of M&Ms’ for Google to solve.

Another big problem with Gmail is spam. The amount of spam that comes in every day for most users is significant. Google claims that it has put in security filters and whatnot, yet spam and scam refuse to go away. Google does have a few measures but you really need to take a look at your inbox daily to see that it is not working out that well.

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When Microsoft announced the “new Bing” in November 2023, Satya Nadella referred to Google as the “800-pound gorilla” and said that he wanted to make Google “dance.” It is something that Google did when it launched Gmail. Microsoft was the 800-pound gorilla in the form of Hotmail. Though the might of search was with Google, email was a whole new ball game. It certainly made Microsoft dance — and then some more.

Google has been embracing AI, and Gmail was one of its first services to get AI features. Help Me Write uses AI to help Gmail users write emails, summarise emails, and more. A lot more AI updates are bound to make their way into Gmail.

Gmail remains the number one mail service in the world with close to 1.8 billion users. The number of users it adds every year might not be like it was in its first decade but is still going strong. According to data by Statista, in the last five years, Google has added around 300 million users.

No one could’ve predicted Gmail would be around for two decades in 2004. Yet current trends indicate that it could last for another two decades. It might not be in the same avatar, but smart investors would do well to bet on Gmail’s maintaining its status as a staple of mainstream technology for the next 20 years.