Gmail Launched as April Fool's Joke in 2004, Pioneered Webmail Storage and Features
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Gmail was launched by Google on April 1, 2004 with unbelievable features like 1GB of storage per account. Many thought it was an April Fool's joke.
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Gmail offered groundbreaking search capabilities, automatic threading of messages, and 250-500 times more storage space than competitors.
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The Gmail team focused on the "three S’s" - storage, search, and speed. The aim was to change how people thought about email storage.
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Gmail now has around 1.8 billion active accounts, each with 15GB of storage. It paved the way for other free webmail services to offer more storage.
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Gmail was initially limited to 10,000 users due to Google's small server capacity at the time. Invitations were highly sought after, selling for $250 each on eBay.