Gmail

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Gmail is reported to have over 1 billion users. That statistic was back in 2016. Chances are you own a Gmail account and use it as your primary email. Let's look at some fun facts about the world's most favorite used webmail client.


1990's -  The man responsible for the creation of Gmail is a man named Paul Buchheit. As a college student, he was already working on a prototype for a personalized webmail client.

2001 - Buchheit works for Google and is assigned the task to create a personal web based product. He then officially creates the project that will be known to the world as Gmail.

So at that time, what was the big deal about Gmail anyway? Hotmail and Yahoo were dominating the market. But not for long, thanks to a scripting language called Javascript and a frame work known as AJAX. Google wanted a more profitable, efficient, user friendly email client. By using Javascript they were able to create a more dynamic web product. Gmail is a stark example of the emerging Web2.0

Other than having a much better UX (user experience), Gmail helped increase profit from advertisement. The technology they used allowed their servers to use tracking cookies to find out what a particular person was interested in. Ads tailored to that person would then show up on sidebars of their Google account clients such as Gmail.

Two other things that made Gmail stand out from it's competitors were the amount of initial storage space offered to the user and a much better search algorithm.

2004 - Google makes an announcement to the world claiming the existence of their Gmail project. The official statement was done on April Fool's Day. Of course as we all know, it was no joke and the rest is history.


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