What assumed to be an April Fools' joke now has over 10 billion downloads, 2.5 billion users

In 2004, email services offered limited space and few features. Google launched its free ad-supported offering, Gmail, which became one of the biggest email services on the modern web with over 2.5 billion active users; its Google Play listing reveals that Gmail's mobile version has been downloaded over 10 billion times, just for Android alone.

It's hard to believe, but many assumed Gmail was an April Fools' Day hoax, as Google picked April 1 as the official date to unveil the service. The tone of the announcement didn't make it believable enough, and the company downplayed its significance by describing Gmail as a search-based email application that offers a natural extension to the company's primary focus on organizing information.

However, it wasn't long before people realized Gmail wasn't a joke but an actual product that Google offered in beta to a select number of users. The email service stayed in beta for over five years from its launch and is now celebrating its 21st birthday.

Back in the day, the email territory was ruled by Yahoo!, AOL, and Hotmail. Google tried to win over users by baking its core offering, a capable search engine, into the service. Also, its 1GB storage limit for emails was over 100 times what free webmail services typically provided at the time.

Gmail tried to be more efficient by organizing emails into conversations that show messages in the context of all replies sent in response to them. The email service addressed issues like lack of storage that forced users to delete emails or file emails in folders to make them easier to find.

"If a Google user has a problem with email, well, so do we. And while developing Gmail was a bit more complicated than we anticipated, we’re pleased to be able to offer it to the user who asked for it," Google co-founder Sergey Brin said in the press release.

Brin recalled how Gmail was inspired after a Google user complained about the poor quality of existing email services. It was also presented as an example of Google's 'engineers must spend 20 percent time on personal projects' culture.

Paul Buchheit, Google's 23rd employee and creator of Gmail, later clarified that he had been working on Gmail for years before its launch. He started working on Gmail in 2001, and the project was an official thing from the start. However, it was initially a part-time project as Paul was wrapping up the original Google Groups project.

Paul recalled during a podcast that someone inside Google leaked the story to the New York Times that the company was preparing to launch an email product on April 1st. Gmail was half-baked then, but Google published a press release at midnight UTC when it wasn't even April 1st in the US to try to beat the NY Times story.

Gmail may not have made it to the market, though. Many people inside Google didn't buy the idea of Gmail and thought the project should be scrapped. "One notable executive predicted that we would never even get to a million users. We can't let those voices drag us down," Paul wrote on his blog.

There was skepticism around using JavaScript to build the email product. It was feared that Microsoft would break it by tweaking its web browser (Internet Explorer) or the stuff would push web browsers too far and take the whole thing down. However, the opposite happened as Microsoft made changes to its browser to make Gmail work better. The engineer added in his blog:

When I decided to write the Gmail interface in Javascript, pretty much everyone who knew anything about Javascript or web browsers told me that it was a bad idea. It had been tried in the past, and always ended in disaster.

 

But times change fast, and fortunately I was in an environment where doing impossible things was not just permitted, but encouraged. After we launched, the impossible quickly became the new normal, completely changing how we think about web apps. That's fun.

When it launched, Gmail had an invite-based onboarding system and a capacity of about 10,000 users, which Paul said was enough for Google employees and their friends. The invite system allowed Google to control the number of users and prevent the entire system from collapsing.

It's interesting to note that no Gmail accounts existed when the service launched in 2004. All of them were created after it. Paul said that the very first account he made was "Hello World at Gmail," followed by his personal account as the second, and then he invited the rest of the team and the company.

The email storage limit was doubled a year after Gmail was unveiled and has been increased multiple times over the years. Fast-forward to 2025, and Google offers 15GB of free space, which is shared across different apps such as Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drive.

Gmail's higher storage limit at launch was subsidized by ads based on keywords scanned from messages and delivered over the service. This quickly raised eyebrows around privacy and caught the attention of lawmakers.

It will take another article to discuss the numerous features Google has added to Gmail in the last two decades. Gmail is the living ancestor to the current suite of web apps the search giant ships under the Google Workspace umbrella.

Google has integrated Gmail with other apps and services like Keep, Calendar, and Contacts by adding quick access controls in its user interface. More recently, a platter of Gemini AI features has been stuffed in a side panel in Gmail.

The AI-powered assistant does many tasks, such as summarizing emails, drafting responses, and finding information quickly. Let's see what Google has in store for Gmail in the future.

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post.

Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years.

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of March): 1,357

RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend