2004: Google unveils Gmail. It will change webmail … and a few other things as well.
Seven years ago, if we wanted to talk to somebody halfway around the world, we’d open up Outlook, Eudora or some other bulky piece of software on our desktops and type an e-mail.
Most of us had webmail, which was a convenience on the road since we could access it from any computer, but it wasn’t enjoyable. Web inboxes were slow and cumbersome, messy with checkboxes and radio buttons, and often so riddled with spam they had to be emptied frequently lest they reach capacity.
Gmail changed all that. It was fast and elegant just like a desktop app. There was so much storage, you never had to delete anything. In fact, you couldn’t — there wasn’t even a Delete button! And you didn’t miss the Delete button, because it was almost entirely spam-free.
Gmail was so slick and easy to use, many of us switched to it full-time and have never gone back.
On its seventh birthday, it’s difficult to ignore the enormous influence Gmail has had not only on web-based e-mail services, but on rich web applications in general. Several of the concepts introduced by Gmail, which were at the time on the bleeding edge of application design, have since been adopted by the web’s mainstream.
Posted via email from Stuff important and amusing to Rob OBrien
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