Happy Fifth Birthday, Gmail

When I first got my "invite" for Gmail, I was super hyped about the free gig of space, which seems silly now seeing as how I have about 7.6 gigs of space!

Wayne Harris

I still remember when everybody cried out "April Fool's!" no one can give so much space. Everybody has pumped up their storage since then, and I am sure I am not alone in having ditched my desktop email clien completely...

Arty2

I remember the 2mb of space from Hotmail.
I remember the non-working spam filters in Hotmail.
I remember the slow, clunky UI of Hotmail.

And am grateful for Gmail!

Gmail was the best April Fool's joke ever. It was so good, no one thought it was true!

I am disappointed that no desktop e-mail clients have moved to the conversations-style UI that Gmail uses. That to me is the killer Gmail feature.

chrisgeleven

And here we are 5 years later and Gmail is taking another huge step forward: Gmail Autopilot. I'll never have to write my own email again. Anyone know how to activate the new feature. I can't find the "Enable Autopilot" button in the settings. Thanks!

ahow628

And the new Gmail Autopilot... intrigues me...

I still remember using hotmail, and then a friend of mine was like: "Hey check this new mail thingie" gmail. Got the invite.

I want to thank him with all my heart for that.

what i loved the most was the amount of space they gave for free...also i tough it was kinda cool at the time cause my friends called me G so this was like my mail service lol...i remember inviting as many people as i could when they gave invites out. next step gdrive.

grondinm

@bazzlad: I too am a Hotmail defect! When I made the switch to Gmail, it was like a different world.

Now hotmail is trying to hard to catch up... but I can never go back.

@chiieddy: April fool's

grondinm

I wanted Gmail so bad, but didn't know anyone who had it, so I bought my invite on ebay. Money well spent!

I haven't used a desktop e-mail client for my personal email since signing up for Gmail. I am still forced to use GroupWise for work which is not even in the same universe as Gmail.

scottyjay

@chrisgeleven: A few have tried, but none have gotten the idea that in order for it to work you must place the message set at the time location of the most recent message in the set.

Thunderbird 3 might be getting somewhere with it all however...

Yahoo screwed up for the last time, so I'm so glad I found Gmail.

P.S. Autopilot is a joke. And a good one, it made me laugh out loud! I actually fell for the "Back in time" email gag.

My Gmail account has been really slow for the past two days, but I still love it.

kettlewhistle

I still don't understand why GMail doesn't have 100% market share in web based email application!

Ravi Madabhushi

All praise Gmail! My #1 choice for e-mail for 99.999% of everything!

(that other % is reserved for junk mail to you - you guessed it! Hotmail!)

awh

Hmmm.. life before Gmail - I had suppressed so many of those loathsome memories - using hotmail, mail.com, yahoo, whichever ISP email service at the time, Netzero, and last but not least, AOL. Ughh those where dark times.

Thanks Google for getting it right. Love the new autopilot feature too - what's next? Virtual telekinesis?

hsquared

Does this birthday mean you need to wait until it is 18 years old before it is out of Beta?

TheFu

@chiieddy: I really do sort of wish it were real. For their next April Fool's joke, they should actually have a mock-up that you can tinker with for the day.

summerbee

@Ravi Madabhushi:
a) Privacy concerns.
b) Downtime.
c) Javascript.
d) Google.

Google and privacy can never be connected. I avoid emailing anything to anyone via gmail since google reserves the right to do whatever they wish with any content they get.

When google-anything is down, there's nothing you can do about it. There's nobody to call. Completely unacceptable.

Mutt and pine email clients rock!

TheFu

Gmail was my intro to the cloud. And a whole new paradigm opened before my eyes. I agree, I don't know why Gmail doesn't have the whole market. I'm not a hard-core geek, but I have always had an innate appreciation for things digital or otherwise that are intuitive, efficient and different. Gmail works as close to the way I think as any e-mail system I have used. And it keeps getting better.

DaveyNC

@bazzlad: I finally killed my Windows Live account about three days ago, for good. Of course, I haven't used it in years except for spam.

i only recently got Premier gmail and i think it's great. 25 gb storage, combine as many other email accounts into one, and it is faster than a lot of other email services i have used before.

jslizzle

@TheFu: And some people are not easily persuaded. Even if you present them with an alternative that clearly is superior to their current solution they will hesitate. I guess some people are suspicious by nature. I've experienced this on several occa...

Or...

Hey! Maybe people just find me suspicious. Oh, boy.

onemoreday

@TheFu: The beta thing isn't meant to be taken seriously. They keep it in beta as their way of saying they'll never be done improving it.

@DaveyNC: i think there is one deep hidden factor about gmai/ google that i beleive reading in a magazine once. somewhere deep in google's legal papers/ fine print they have stated that they have the right at any time for any reason to look through your emails. maybe that is why they do not have the whole market? just a thought, personally i like it.

jslizzle

@hsquared:
agree absolutely, after trying _numerous_ free accounts Gmail was and is the best choice.

troyaner

I remember being scared of the ads. Does no one remember the outcry over the idea of a computer "reading" your e-mail and targeting ads in the margin. Now it's old hat.

Personally I didn't care about the storage. Mostly I liked the clean interface and not needing to install all sorts of plugins to access it.

Happy birthday.

i love gmail for so many reasons... but 5 years in "beta"?? i hadn't even realized it was 5 years, and was just thinking about the beta thing last night... am i the only one who thinks that's strange?

NinaKolkata

I hated the swine who were selling invites on ebay et al. I like that Google search soon turned up listings of people giving out invites. Thank you to those people.

To the piggies who were trying to make a buck off this stuff, I hope you somehow get a plutonium rod for a suppository.

paintbox

I had to literally beg a friend in Brooklyn over the phone for an invite, and then had to promise him some kind of meal the next time he was in town.

Totally worth it. And I remember my girlfriend(/now-wife) thinking it was so weird that I had "Google Email."

*sigh* I remember the Invitation hunt ;) when the project was somewhat private, I managed to get one from a russian page... it was march 2005....

actually back in the day, when Opera was confronted by Firefox, I decided for Firefox, because of IMHO better support of Gmail. and Maps. and Calendar

troyaner

It really is too bad that the overall stability of Gmail has gone downhill. I find myself waiting more often then not when using Gmail lately. Clicking on folders results in a Loading... retrying..., rinse and repeat. I can't even get into my Inbox easily anymore.

It's still much better then any other webmail sites out there, but you still can't be a having all your mail stored locally on your machine. Gmail imap here I come.

@TheFu: Well, I'd say you were right on point with privacy, but you're arguing it to the wrong end.

Many people simply use their company e-mail. Companies largely hate gmail because it lacks the admin tools (yes even google apps + gmail for domains). Admins and business owners like to monitor employee e-mail to ensure:
1) their not wasting company time with personal matters
2) They're not rerouting customers elsewhere for personal gain
3) that they maintain professionalism in their correspondence as a representative of the company (i.e. not telling customers and co-workers to go f*** themselves)
4) not sending off resumes to competitors to leave you high and dry when their needed.
5) not doing anything that could lead to the company being sued.

When employees use gmail, it's hard to know what their doing while on the company's dime. The lack of monitoring tools makes it unattractive for businesses to adopt.

Since many people like to use their company e-mail for their otherwise limited personal use, they just stick with what they have.

Now why people use Yahoo Mail and Hot Mail... that's like asking why some people self-mutilate? A Sick masochistic desire? Who are we to speculate on these things?

As for your concern that Google will have access to your mail, it is a valid concern. However, unless you use throw-away encryption keys and encrypt all of your outgoing mail, it won't be secure through any service. Even if you run your own mail server, each message gets relayed through dozens of other servers that can just as easily access that info (though they'd be harder pressed to tie it back to you).

Secure and Insecure are mostly theoretical limits, everything falls somewhere between the two with tenancies between one end or the other, but nothing is ever secure. You can only endeavor to push it towards the secure end of the scale knowing you'll never fully get there.

@Kevin Purdy: Yeah, I remember fighting for invites. I made it into round 2 of their initial public invites (3 days prior to launch). I waited 5 days just to get the invite. People were using it for 2 days and posting all kinds of cool previews before I could even get a peek at it. It drove me crazy.

Patience, like chastity is a virtue I've decided I'm better off without.

Happy 5th birthday, AJAX.

astrosmash

I was pissed off for about 2 weeks until I got an invitation...after I signed up, I invited myself about 95 times. The other 5 went to my closest of friends, in exchange for a red bull of course...

Junno

AutoPilot rules!

[mail.google.com]

@scottyjay: lolz. i paid $2.95 for my invite as well... I still have 91 invites left if anyone wants one... free of charge! :)

I wonder what happens when u give them all away? do u get a prize?

Man, I remember having a dial-up AOL account and 'You've Got Mail' being the rallying call for the industry.

Thank god we've moved past all that. My whole organizational system is based around Gmail (and labels!) and Google Calendar.

@the_Sleepwalker: lol.. /me wants autopilot to handle emails from mom.

They should now remove "Invites". It is now still in Gmail.

@bazzlad: Well, the spam filters on Hotmail still don't work... I use my Yahoo account but still check Hotmail... On an average day I'll get 3 spam emails!!

@NinaKolkata: I am so sick of hearing this complaint. NO you aren't the only one... frankly its getting old. Does that word below the gmail logo bug you that much?

ANOPRAX

@vlatro: Thats the best way I've seen anyone put it!

GMail rawks. I have vague memory of an unpleasant time when my mail database would be full and slow and I'd have to compress it or something. Bah

Filters - man I love these things. Got someone who insists on including you on every political article he reads? I did - but he'd named the mailing list something like "MyFriends". 5 seconds with the filter wizard and I never see another - and the sender need never know.

@vlatro: Is that the official word from Google? I do find the beta label odd because as a software product manager myself, beta has always meant "not stable enough to be put into production use" and/or "free for now, but we'll be charging you for it once it's out of beta."

Regardless, love me some gmail! I was even one of those crazy people that paid $10 or $20 on Ebay for an invite. Seems kinda silly now but, honestly, it was worth it and is kind of fun to think about now.

kmoffat

@chrisgeleven: um - outlook has conversation view? and if you make a search folder that combines your sent and inbox folder, and put it in conversation view, it works just like gmail.

natenovs

One thing I love about Google is that they never forget when it's April 1. It actually took a minute for me to realize that the Gmail Autopilot is an april fool's prank!

SmitaFimbria

I recently (within the last week) switched to gmail and I'm still getting the hang of it. Just wanted to give a nod to what I'd been using, Yahoo. Drag and drop, multiple tabs, context sensitive right click, Yahoo is doing a lot of things that Gmail would do well to adopt. Still though, gmail is pretty cool so far.

KeelyPlancus

i remember i kept trying to get an invite and finally got one from the screen saver show on 08/31/04.

miguelchin36

I remember early on a site was set up to trade something for an invite. I got my first account for a digital photo of a salmon.

@NinaKolkata: Why is the beta tag strange? Is it done? Have they stopped improving it?

phlavor

@NinaKolkata: Either the name is "Gmail Beta" or since you were in the original beta you are a beta tester for all Gmail features

tagno25

I remember thinking Gmail as in garbage mail? Who is going to want to use that?

nka

I, like everyone else, thought it was a joke when announced. Two and a half months later I got an invite.

A lot of people were scared of the whole thing about text ads that targeted you by terms used in your email. I thought it was hilarious that in a conversation with my then girlfriend, now wife about the build quality of my sandwich, salami ads were in the sidebar.

When I realized how great it was, (about a week in)I started securing accounts for family members using their full names. I even secured an email address for my girlfriend but with my last name to hold in reserve just in case. We got married last year.

phlavor

@saxdrummer: What ads? I haven't seen ads since I configured the Firefox Gmail extension to not have Gmail ads.

@tagno25: The name IS Gmail Beta. It says so right on the logo and has for, oh, about 5 years now.

@dchall8:
Of course you didn't. Duh?

@Ravi Madabhushi: Well, it doesn't have 100% marketshare because of all the tweens who think Hotmail makes them cool. You know, "Oh, man, they have like, custom, like, colors, like, pink, man."

My eyes are on fire from just reading that, you should have seen my ears when someone said this to me.

Then there are my parents, the old folks of the world. "Oh, Telus is offering us free webmail, why would we switch?", ... Well, Mother, ... Gmail is free AND you won't get that "Click here for free \/iagra." email every week.

*Le sigh*

Tyler Sebastian

I've had Gmail sense the day it came out.
And by the time I realized people were buying the invite, everyone had them so they were worth nothing.
anyways, I use gmail eveyrday for all my accounts (one manages all...love that feature).
Gonna use gmail, till it shuts down (which hopefully will be never).
Go Google for being innovative!

I like labels rather than folders, but over the years I don't even use them very much. Google's search is so powerful, if I type in a word or two it brings up the email I'm thinking of almost without fail within the first few results. Kinda like why I like using Google web search. Don't know how it knows what I'm thinking, don't care. It works.

ed67

Gmail killed the desktop email client for me. Before it I couldn't understand why anyone would ever use just webmail. I remember how exciting it was when I got my invite. I happily showed all my geek and non-geek friends why Gmail was so much better than Hotmail, as I clicked on the "Conversations" and the messages would expand and hide. The simple UI changed my email life forever, well, at least until something more useful comes around.

I also remember giving people my address and they'd usually say "G what?"

@bazzlad: Anyone with a little IT knowledge would use Gmail with his eyes closed

happy birthday GMAIL!!!!!!! I remember the day my friend sent me the invitation, and you only had 5 more ohh good times

@Tyler Sebastian: "Oh, man, they have like, custom, like, colors, like, pink, man."

you mean, like the gmail themes everybody was going nuts over a couple weeks ago. its email - get over yourself.

natenovs

@NinaKolkata : It's just beta until they start charging for premium business accounts or something.

NaomiPittheus