After founding Google more than a quarter century ago, Larry Page and Sergey Brin liked pranks and started pulling out ridiculous ideas on April Fool's Day. One year, Google advertised a lunar Copernicus research center position. Another year, the business envisioned a “scratch and sniff” search engine feature.
The jokes were so ridiculous that people laughed them off as Google mischief. So Page and Brin decided to reveal something no one thought feasible 20 years ago on April Fool's Day.
Gmail, a free service with 1 gigabyte of storage per account, seems pedestrian in an age of one-terabyte iPhones. But it seemed absurdly large back then, enough to hold 13,500 emails before running out of space, compared to 30 to 60 emails in Yahoo and Microsoft's then-leading webmail services. That added 250–500 times more email storage.
In addition to the quantum leap in storage, Gmail has Google's search capabilities to help users find old emails, photos, and other personal data. It automatically threaded a series of related messages into a single discussion.
Before becoming Yahoo's CEO, former Google executive Marissa Mayer helped build Gmail and other corporate products. “The original pitch we put together was all about the three ‘S's”—storage, search, and speed.
Because it was so bizarre, readers called and emailed The Associated Press after it published an article on Gmail late on April Fool's Day 2004 to tell them Google had fooled it.
“Creating a product people won't believe is real was fun. In a recent AP interview about his work on Gmail, former Google engineer Paul Buchheit said it revolutionized people's attitudes about web browser programs.
Known as “Caribou” after a Dilbert running gag, it took three years to complete. “There was something sort of absurd about the name Caribou, it just made make me laugh,” said Buchheit, the 23rd employee at a firm with over 180,000 employees.
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