Michael Calore / Wired:
Google loves to unveil a good gag product on April Fool’s Day. Remember 8-bit maps? YouTube DVDs?
But despite arriving on April 1, 2004, its webmail service was no joke. Google’s simple, browser-based inbox helped seed several ideas that have become so commonplace over the intervening decade, they practically define modern computing as we know it.
Gmail debuted as an invitation-only product, forcing us to beg friends with newly minted gmail.com addresses for precious invites. And once we were in, we experienced something miraculous — a spam-free inbox with a killer integrated search tool and a gigabyte of gratis storage.
Google loves to unveil a good gag product on April Fool’s Day. Remember 8-bit maps? YouTube DVDs?
But despite arriving on April 1, 2004, its webmail service was no joke. Google’s simple, browser-based inbox helped seed several ideas that have become so commonplace over the intervening decade, they practically define modern computing as we know it.
Gmail debuted as an invitation-only product, forcing us to beg friends with newly minted gmail.com addresses for precious invites. And once we were in, we experienced something miraculous — a spam-free inbox with a killer integrated search tool and a gigabyte of gratis storage.
