Gmail
Gmail is a free POP3 and IMAP webmail service provided by Google.[1][2] In the United Kingdom and Germany it is officially called Google Mail.
Gmail launched on April 1, 2004 as an invitation-only beta release and became available to the general public on February 7, 2007. Although tens of millions of users [3][4][5] have taken advantage of stable releases for years, to this day[update] the service remains in beta status.
With an initial storage capacity offer of 1 GB per user, Gmail significantly increased the webmail standard for free storage from the 2 to 4MB its competitors offered at that time. The service currently offers over 7250 MB of free storage with additional storage ranging from 10 GB to 400 GB available for $20 to $500 (US) per year.[6][7][8]
Gmail has a search-oriented interface and a "conversation view" similar to an Internet forum. Software developers know Gmail for its use of the Ajax programming technique.3:16 AM | | 0 Comments
Features
Storage
The Gmail service currently provides more than 7250 MB of free storage[6]. Users can rent additional storage (shared between Picasa Web Albums and Gmail) from 10 GB (US$20/year) to 400 GB (US$500/year).[12]
On April 1, 2005, the first anniversary of Gmail, Google announced the increase from 1 GB, stating that Google would "keep giving people more space forever."[13]
In April 2005 Gmail engineer Rob Siemborski stated that Google would keep increasing storage by the second as long as it had enough space on its servers. On October 12, 2007, Google ramped up the storage counter to 5.37 MB per hour.[14]
Approximately a week later, the counter went back down to 1.12 MB per hour. On January 4, 2008, the counter went down to about 3.35 MB per day, or 0.14 MB per hour. From October 2008, the counter went down to about 353.9 KB per day.
Gmail Labs
The Gmail Labs feature, introduced on June 5, 2008, allows users to test new or experimental features of Gmail, such as bookmarking of important e-mail messages, custom keyboard-shortcuts and games.
Users can enable or disable Labs features selectively and provide feedback about each of them. This allows Gmail engineers to obtain user input about new features to improve them and also to assess their popularity and whether they merit developing into regular Gmail features. All Labs features are experimental and are subject to termination at any time. Labs features can only be used in the English language interface of Gmail.
On December 10, 2008, Gmail added support for SMS Messaging through its integrated Chat.[15][16][17]
On January 28, 2009, Gmail added support for offline access through its integration with Google gears.[18]
Spam filter
Gmail's spam filtering features a community-driven system: when any user marks an email as spam, this provides information to help the system identify similar future messages for all Gmail users.[3:15 AM | | 0 Comments