The Inside Story of Gmail On Its Tenth Anniversary

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The Inside Story of Gmail On Its Tenth Anniversary

Posted by timothy on Tuesday April 1, 2014 @12:44AM from the waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop dept.

harrymcc (1641347) writes "Google officially — and mischievously — unveiled Gmail on April Fools' Day 2004. That makes this its tenth birthday, which I celebrated by talking to a bunch of the people who created the service for TIME.com. It's an amazing story: The service was in the works for almost three years before the announcement, and faced so much opposition from within Google that it wasn't clear it would ever reach consumers." Update: 04/01 13:37 GMT by T : We've introduced a lot of new features lately; some readers may note that with this story we are slowly rolling out one we hope you enjoy -- an audio version of each Slashdot story. If you are one of the readers in our testing pool, you'll hear the story just by clicking on it from the home page as if to read the comments; if you're driving, we hope you'll use your mobile devices responsibly.

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Sort It. by MrL0G1C · 2014-04-01 00:54 · Score: 4, Insightful

Ten years, perhaps they'll be able to enable name/subject 'sort' soon.
All they've done is make the UI completely unintuitive, I haven't seen any useful changes over the last ten years, just adverts and the continuous nagging and coercion to use Google-plus.

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1. Re:Sort It. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-04-01 01:38 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  I agree. It seems to be the new trend in software and business in general. "Innovation" and "the way forward" seems to be forcing users into the choices made by designers and approved by CxOs and marketers. I see the same issue at the company where I work. I am on the management team and attend various off-site team building brainstorming sessions. I play along to keep my job but believe it is 90% BS. They are essentially teaching the CxOs to ignore reason and go with their gut instincts. To innovate and force change through the organization. I believe that bad change meets resistance, but good change does not. Whenever something new and great comes along people will move to it in droves. When something bad comes along people resist and complain. CxOs are being taught that the resistance to change is hurting their company and goals and they must plow forward and force the change. In the process they are pushing the company over the cliff.
2. Re:Sort It. by Charliemopps · 2014-04-01 02:53 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  What's funny is the nagging only gets worse when you actually use Google+
  It's so bad I don't even log into Google+ if I can help it. I follow some people on there, and I post stuff but the pop-up nagging for me to invite everyone I know constantly is very annoying. Now they have a "Selfie" popup encouraging me to take pictures of myself and post them... wtf?
3. Re:Sort It. by Grishnakh · 2014-04-01 02:55 · Score: 2
  
  This is exactly right. Gmail was pretty innovative when it came out (most mailreaders couldn't handle conversation threading then, and tagging is much more useful than folders), but what have they done since then? Nothing really, other that slap an uglier UI on it.
  The other responder is correct: this seems to be the new trend in software. Nothing really innovative or better is done much any more, instead features are removed and things are dumbed down, and on top of that UIs have gotten much uglier.
4. Re:Sort It. by Grishnakh · 2014-04-01 10:42 · Score: 2
  
  Offline mailreaders are not the same as webmail services. Did any other webmail services offer conversation threading when Gmail started? I don't believe so.
  Same goes for tagging. When Gmail came out, the other webmail services didn't have any of this stuff, and they didn't have any storage space either. Gmail had these features plus 1GB of space, a huge amount for the time when limits of 25MB were common.
Re:NSA mail by Cryacin · 2014-04-01 00:59 · Score: 3, Funny

Enjoy reading my 10 Gb of spam!

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TL;DR by xxxJonBoyxxx · 2014-04-01 01:11 · Score: 3, Informative

Early use by a major company of Javascript consuming XML-based web services. Successfully leveraged Google's search engine. Design conflicted with the all-on-one-page "portal" paradigm of the time. Text ads instead of banner ads, and controversial because they were tied to the content of the messages. Original cluster was 300 servers.
conversational format by trybywrench · 2014-04-01 01:14 · Score: 4, Interesting

Wasn't Gmail the first to introduce the conversational layout? I remember the first time I saw it I was blown away over how simple the idea was yet how much impact it made on UX. Also, IIRC Gmail was the first to get Ajax right in a mail client, I remember being impressed when they embedded a GTalk client right there in mail. Then I think Google Calendar followed then docs with App Engine in there somewhere too. No matter your feelings on Google the company the software that sprang from Gmail is amazing.

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1. Re:conversational format by Bogtha · 2014-04-01 01:43 · Score: 2
  
  If they weren't the first with conversational layout, they were the ones that popularised it.
  They didn't get Ajax right. They just based their user interface around it, which none of the other major webmail providers were doing. This made things a lot faster, which most users appreciated. In fact, their use of Ajax was pretty lousy. You couldn't even open an email in a new window because instead of using proper links and hooking into them with Ajax, they concocted fake links based on spans that could only work with Ajax.
  
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2. Re:conversational format by Tink2000 · 2014-04-01 01:44 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  What? Are you using a potato for RAM or something?
  
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3. Re:conversational format by Wraithlyn · 2014-04-01 04:35 · Score: 2
  
  Gmail was an early pioneer in using the URL hash to track state, so that eg, the Back button worked properly with Ajax. They deserve credit for that.
  And yes, I remember being annoyed about not being able to open links in a new window... for about 10 seconds, before discovering the "Open in new window" function they provided, which rendered that pretty moot.
  
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  "Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
memories by sootman · 2014-04-01 01:24 · Score: 3, Interesting

"Bidding for invites on eBay sent prices shooting up to $150 and beyond"
Things cooled down quickly. My first sent message was to my dad, on June 27, telling him that I bought an invite on eBay for $1.50.
Also fun to read Slashdot's original coverage of the launch.
"It is a joke, it's going to have to go down in history as one of the biggest pranks ever pulled... both the AP and Reuters have put out wire stories which means it's going to be in hundreds of newspapers tomorrow morning."
Good stuff, Google. Though I wish you'd learn that "sort" is as useful as "search".

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Why I never created a Gmail account by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · 2014-04-01 01:25 · Score: 2, Interesting

Back in the days, Google was still seen as a benevolent company that innovated for the sake of innovation - and not to sell your data to the highest biddest and monetize your entire life, as everybody now knows. Yet I didn't want a Gmail account.
Why? Because at the beginning, Gmail was invite-only. And that my friends is a classic sales tactic to generate a false impression of privilege, the desire to be allowed in, and when a vendor has to rely on such tactics to drive up sales, something doesn't smell right.
That was my first hint that Google's interest wasn't the user'.

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"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
1. Re:Why I never created a Gmail account by JackieBrown · 2014-04-01 01:44 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  According to the article, that was because they didn't have the resources to support an unlimited user roll out.
I hate gmail. by scorp1us · 2014-04-01 01:29 · Score: 3, Insightful

I don't actually like to read my gmail. Its a horrid interface. No folders (no, I'm not going to search, TYVM) and the "folder" work around is a kludge doesn't cut it for me. Yahoo up until recently had the most powerful interface. But no SSL after login. Then they started limiting page sizes rather than continuous.
I'm thinking Horde Mail/GroupWare on a reliable cloud provider would be the way to go. But you can't leave google behind because of the drive, docs and all that stuff.

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1. Re:I hate gmail. by jader3rd · 2014-04-01 04:00 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Yes. If I use IMAP, then why use gmail at all?
  Storage and Spam filter.
Re:NSA mail by bobbied · 2014-04-01 01:40 · Score: 5, Funny

Naw, we do it every day now...

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WTF would you think we would enjoy an "audio ver"? by xxxJonBoyxxx · 2014-04-01 01:42 · Score: 5, Insightful

>> some readers may note that with this story we are slowly rolling out one we hope you enjoy -- an audio version of each Slashdot story.
Er...no thanks. There's a reason video tanked on this site too - your readership is too damn busy to wait for the talky-talk. So, we skim (and type) like crazy, and value text-heavy sites like Slashdot and Reddit. (OK, 15 seconds - time up - back to work!)
Auto play audio? by Enry · 2014-04-01 01:48 · Score: 5, Informative

Screw you. If this is an April Fools joke, go back to OMG PWNIES. If you're rolling this out for good, seeya.
1. Re:Auto play audio? by Gravis+Zero · 2014-04-01 02:39 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  just a joke, bro. if you listen to it, you would notice that it's actually a person reading the article as if they were a basic text-to-speech program. they could have made it better by excitedly yelling, "OH MY GOD, PONIES!" in the middle and then "oh uhh, the summary, right..." and finish reading the summary like the text-to-speech program.
  
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Re:WTF would you think we would enjoy an "audio ve by SimonTheSoundMan · 2014-04-01 01:50 · Score: 4, Funny

Woosh!
I guess you are looking for the illiterate crowd. by cfulton · 2014-04-01 02:10 · Score: 4

I DON'T want my computer to read to me every time I open you page. I can read it myself. I want to read it myself. If I wanted it to be read to me I would go to CNN.

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Autoplay audio or my account. Choose one. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · 2014-04-01 02:17 · Score: 5, Informative

Admins, this is the line I have drawn in sand. I have put up with all kinds of crap. I did not complain too much about Beta. But once more time you put up an auto playing audio, you will be banished. All the 2^7 days read continuously or 31 achievements will be discarded and the account abandoned if it is done again.

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sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
1. Re:Autoplay audio or my account. Choose one. by guises · 2014-04-01 03:15 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Okay, this is ridiculous. I know that complaining is just one of the things that we do here, but it's April first and they announce a ridiculous new "feature" about reading stories out loud which turns out to be in morse code. I'd say that you all aren't getting the joke, but that would imply that you aren't hearing it, which would mean that you have no reason to complain in the first place.
  
  What is with you folks? The rule has always been: if you don't like Slashdot on April first, don't come.
Text to speech configuration by Eggplant62 · 2014-04-01 02:27 · Score: 2

Is there a facility to adjust this? I listen to doctors dictating notes all day long so I'm used to very quick speech rates. I find the rate at which the TTS engine is dropping output is driving me nuts.
Hope this is April fools! by Alioth · 2014-04-01 03:39 · Score: 2

Websites should be seen AND NOT HEARD.
I've got no problem with there being an audio version of the story. However, I do have a problem with it being an AUTOPLAYING audio version of the story. Due to autoplaying audio and video (one an ad a while back on Slashdot which would periodically make the sound of a slamming door!), the audio is permanently muted on my work workstation.
I hope the autoplaying sound was just an April fool's joke. If not it's incredibly badly thought out, given the number of people who read Slashdot where they don't want suddenly a bunch of sound coming out their computer.

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Re:WTF would you think we would enjoy an "audio ve by TangoMargarine · 2014-04-01 04:34 · Score: 2

Wouldn't care if it didn't auto-play. Blech.

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Re:I guess you are looking for the illiterate crow by TangoMargarine · 2014-04-01 04:36 · Score: 2

Make it NOT AUTOPLAY. One click is not going to break their arms.

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Re:WTF would you think we would enjoy an "audio ve by fortfive · 2014-04-01 06:48 · Score: 2

If this is a joke, it's not very funny. Could have been made funny by robotic voice saying funny things. I would have done an NSA agent conversation accidentally bleeding through.
If not a joke, well, I don't know how to express the superlative of jumping the shark, but this is it.