On April 1, 2004, Google launched Gmail, a service that has since become one of the largest email platforms in the world.
At first, everyone thought it was a joke, another April Fool's Day prank by Google since the company was only known for its search engine.
Since I was one of the first to get a Gmail account in 2004, I remember that the first thing that also made a huge impression was the fact that the company gave away a whole GB of free space. The forums suddenly acquired a very interesting topic of discussion, Google's GB and of course who had invitations for the new service, since it was only available via invitations. Of course, I should add that obtaining a Gmail account was very difficult. Google used to give 5 invitations to the person at the time, then 10 and then they went up to 50. Today, anyone can register without an invitation.
Gmail was officially released for everyone on February 7, 2007.
Unlike many other email clients, Google's Gmail is treated like an application rather than a website. Google built Gmail in a way that didn't require the entire website to reload for the end user to see new messages. This was unthinkable at the time. The company made it a reality using HTML with the addition of some JavaScripts. The idea proved to be a success, even if many weren't so sure at first.
Today, Gmail is one of the most reliable email services, functionally at least. Users of Google's service have 15 GB of free storage to share between Google Drive, Gmail, and Google+.
Since security has always been important to users, Google has provided SSL encryption since the very beginning of its service. It was first optional, until it was finally changed to the default setting for everyone.
Back in November, following the NSA scandal, the company upgraded all of its SSL certificates to 2048-bit RSA, effectively doubling the protection it offers users.
Two weeks ago, Google announced that, for added security, Gmail was encrypting all emails, even those moving to and from Google data centers. The move came in response to news that the NSA had infiltrated the company's data centers.
