Paul Buchheit, Gmail Engineer, has traced the history of email and discussed the rationale behind gmail and its future.


Paul Buchheit, Gmail Engineer, has traced the history of email in Google Blog and discussed the rationale behind gmail and its future.

Paul has reported, “It’s difficult to pin down the exact origin of email, but in October 1971, an engineer named Ray Tomlinson chose the ‘@’ symbol for email addresses and wrote software to send Google Blog”.

“On April 1, 2004, we rolled out the first release of Gmail. It immediately became known for giving away 1000 MB of storage, while the others only offered 4 MB, as they had for many years. We didn’t do that just for the attention (although we certainly got our share). It’s just part of our philosophy. We always want to do as much as we can for our users, and so if we can make something free, we will”. [Google Blog]

Paul’s gmail features include:

Increase of the free storage, 2656 MB and counting,

offer the interface in 38 languages, and

features like auto-save drafts, to prevent loss of half-written messages accidentally.

“We know that Gmail isn’t quite right for everyone yet. We’re working on that too – there’s still more we can do for the folder-lovers and devout-deleters out there. But wait, there’s more! 🙂 We also have a new batch of exciting innovations on the way that we hope will shake things up again and make Gmail even better for even more people”. [Google Blog]

For more information on the new features of Gmail October 1971.

 

 

 

 

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