Google's email service Gmail was launched to the public five years ago this week. Back then, the service turned the web email industry on its ear by offering an entire gigabyte of storage to users who were lucky enough to receive an invite. Small potatoes now, but that was a nice chunk of storage from an email service back then.
For some of us, it was also a chance to get a really good address with our real names in them. I chose a simple first name/last name approach. It had a nice ring to it after previous addresses with other services that I had to explain to people who still found them hard to remember. All of the good ones had already been taken at that point on all the other big-name services.
The Present
Gmail has grown by leaps and bounds since that time, and has gone through a ton of changes, and somehow still sits in beta. Who knows if that will ever change? I read an Ars Technica interview with Gmail's product manager Todd Jackson the other day in which he discussed the reason behind the beta label.
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