Gmail was launched in April 2004 as a free email service. The initial storage offered with Gmail was 1 GB per user. It was offered as a limited beta service. The testing phase continued till July 7, 2009 when it was made commercially available to all users.

#2. Paul Buchheit

Paul Buchheit was the Lead Developer behind today’s most popular email service Gmail. He also happens to be the 23rd employee at Google. Buchheit started working on the email service project in 2001. He had also worked on the original prototype of Google’s AdSense advertising engine.

3. Cloud Storage

Google offers 15 GB of free storage with Gmail today, it was limited to 1 GB per user at the time of launch. Google increased it to 2 GB on its first anniversary and 10 GB in 2012. You can send emails of up to 25 MB in size. If users wish to send larger files, there is an option to insert files from Google Drive into the message.

#4. New interface

The initial user interface only had basic elements required to send and receive emails. Gmail has subsequently added several new features in Gmail. The biggest update was pushed in 2011 with a slicker interface. Recently, Google brought AMP to make Gmail more interactive.

#5. AI and Machine Learning

Google has integrated various machine learning features in its Gmail service. The all-new smart reply feature allows users to quickly draft and send responses to emails. Apart from predictive typing and searches, machine learning has also played a key role in blocking spam messages. Earlier this year, Google revealed that it blocked 100 million spam emails using its machine learning algorithm.