No joke: Google launched Gmail on April Fool's Day 20 years ago

Not exactly an ad, but a reminder of a key moment in the history of advertising: the launch of Google's email system Gmail marked not only a leap in terms of personal computer use and comunications, but also the mass scanning of emails in order to tailor commercials to what people were talking about.... Twenty years on, we can all have our opinions on what that's meant for us as individuals - no, I'm not interested in knee braces just 'cos a friend mentioned having sprained a muscle - and as a global society. In this brief glimpse, news service AP describes how Gmail was revealed to tech reporter Michael Liedtke: "Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin unveiled something no one would believe was possible on April Fool's Day 20 years ago: Gmail, a free service boasting 1 gigabyte of storage. Gmail now has 1.8 billion active accounts worldwide."

Keywords: Gmail 20th anniversary