Why Everybody Thought Gmail Was Google’s April Fool’s Day Prank

The popular mailing client for mobile, desktop and Web caters to more than a billion users.

Gmail was thought to be an April Fool’s Day prank. Only that it wasn’t. 

(Photo: iStockphoto)

Google's email service Gmail that has nearly 1.5 billion monthly active users turned 15 on Monday and the company plans to customize it for its users in the days to come.

Created by Paul Buchheit on 1 April, 2004, Gmail started with an initial storage capacity of one gigabyte per user. Most people thought it was another classic April Fool’s prank, after all, who gave 1GB data for free, that too in 2004?

But on 2 April, when Gmail continued to work, the world finally realised that Google had indeed launched a mailing client that will one day surpass both Yahoo and Microsoft’s Outlook.

Fast-forward to 2019, Gmail allows 15GB free storage and users can receive emails up to 50MB in size, including attachments, while they can send emails up to 25MB in size.

"Over the years, Google also improved Gmail's spam filtering capabilities and today, using Artificial Intelligence (AI), Gmail blocks nearly 10 million spam emails every minute," the company said in a statement.

On this special occasion, Google has added a slew of new features on Gmail for its users.

It has added more languages including Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese to its "Smart Compose" feature on Android and would reach iOS users soon. To let users take action without having to leave their inboxes, Google would now allow them to respond to comment threads in Google Docs.

"This way you don't have to open a new tab or app to get things done," said Google.

Google also rolled out the feature to let users schedule emails to be sent at more appropriate dates while fluctuating between time zones using Gmail. Google in January released a new interface design for the mobile version of Gmail that includes new visual implementations, as well as feature additions.