Did you know Gmail started as an April Fool's Joke 20 years ago?
Google Founders
Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google's co-founders, loved pulling pranks. Every April Fool's Day, they would come up with some outlandish idea.
Once, they posted a job opening for a Copernicus research centre on Earth's moon. Another time, they said they'll introduce a "scratch and sniff feature" on the search engine.
People eventually learned to laugh off their over-the-top and consistent pranks as another example of Google mischief. However, 20 years ago, Page and Brin decided to reveal something unbelievable on April Fool's Day.
They introduced Gmail, a free service boasting one gigabyte of storage per account. It had an incomprehensible email capacity back then. It had enough space to store about 13,500 emails before running out of space in the age when Yahoo and Microsoft had space for only 30 to 60 emails.
Furthermore, Gmail came with Google's search technology, where users could retrieve an old email, photo or other personal information saved on the platform. It also automatically compiled a string of conversations around the same topic.
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"The original pitch we put together was all about the three 'S's: storage, search and speed," said former Google executive Marissa Mayer. She helped design Gmail and other company products before becoming Yahoo's CEO.
The Associated Press published a story about Gmail on April Fool's Day 2004. After the release, readers approached the news agency, saying that it was another prank by Google's founders.
"That was part of the charm, making a product that people won't believe is real. It kind of changed people's perceptions about the kinds of applications that were possible within a web browser," former Google engineer Paul Buchheit recalled during a recent AP interview about his efforts to build Gmail.
Gmail was part of a project called "Caribou," a reference to a running gag in the Dilbert comic strip. "There was something sort of absurd about the name Caribou, it just makes me laugh," said Buchheit, the 23rd employee hired at a company that now employs more than 180,000 people.
While people thought Gmail was a joke, AP knew Google was not pulling a prank because an AP reporter had been abruptly asked to come to the company headquarters in California from San Franciso to see Gmail, which would make the trip worthwhile.
(With inputs from agencies)