20 Facts About Gmail

At its launch in 2004, Gmail provided a storage capacity of one gigabyte per user, which was significantly higher than its competitors offered at the time.

Gmail has a search-oriented interface and a "conversation view" similar to an Internet forum.

Gmail has been the subject of lawsuits concerning the issues.

Gmail's interface makes use of 'labels' – that replace the conventional folders and provide a more flexible method of organizing emails; filters for automatically organizing, deleting or forwarding incoming emails to other addresses; and importance markers for automatically marking messages as 'important'.

In May 2012, Gmail improved the search functionality to include auto-complete predictions from the user's emails.

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Gmail has native applications for iOS devices and for Android devices.

Gmail was integrated with Google+ in December 2011, as part of an effort to have all Google information across one Google account, with a centralized Google+ user profile.

Whenever possible, Gmail uses transport layer security to automatically encrypt emails sent and received.

Gmail announced that Gmail would selectively delay some messages, approximately 0.

In November 2020, Gmail started adding click-time link protection by redirecting clicked links to Google for IMAP clients.

Idea for Gmail was developed by Paul Buchheit several years before it was announced to the public.

In October 2007, Google began a process of rewriting parts of the code that Gmail used, which would make the service faster and add new features, such as custom keyboard shortcuts and the ability to bookmark specific messages and email searches.

In May 2014, Gmail became the first app on the Google Play Store to hit one billion installations on Android devices.

Gmail is noted by web developers for its early adoption of Ajax.

Gmail was ranked second in PC World's "100 Best Products of 2005", behind Firefox.

Gmail won 'Honorable Mention' in the Bottom Line Design Awards 2005.

In September 2006, Forbes declared Gmail to be the best webmail application for small businesses.

Gmail stated that this change was meant to clarify its practices and quell concerns among enterprise G Suite customers who felt an ambiguous distinction between the free consumer and paid professional variants, the latter being advertising-free.

February 2010 launch of Google Buzz, a former social network that was linked to Gmail, immediately drew criticism for publicly sharing details of users' contacts unless the default settings were changed.

Gmail suffered at least seven outages in 2009, causing doubts about the reliability of its service.