Gmail
Gmail
Most of us have heard of Gmail, a free-to-use email service developed by Google designed to allow users to access via the web, using third-party programs through both PoP or IMAP protocols. Distributed at first as a limited beta release package on the 1st of April 2004, it would continue its testing stages until their completion on the 7th July 2009.
Buchheit, while developing Gmail, also had the vision to include the original prototype of the Google AdSense platform, which would allow future website publishers to place Google adverts on their websites to earn money. Today just 15 years later, Gmail has an estimated 1.4 billion users who generate for Google, an estimated $1.68 billion in America alone. However, globally it is a rather impressive $132 Billion.
As previously mentioned, Gmail was created by Paul Buchheit while working for “Google” as a project developer in August of 2001. He took just one day to complete the initial program using code from a previous project named “Google Groups,” writing in secret it was given the code name of “Caribou or Reindeer,” this about the comic book “Dilbert.” Buchheit, no stranger to web-based email, had already, in the 1990s, studied the feasibility of such a project while a college student at Case Western Reserve University.
From its early days as just a cloud-based email program, Google has, over the years, expanded the product by adding many apps into the basic functionality of the program, which has in turn given its user’s many free services, services they would have paid for in the past.
So, just what kind of apps does the Google Gmail interface have?
Simply put, once you open a Google Account (required if you want to have Gmail), then you will have access to a literal treasure-trove of easy to use products. Below we list just a few of them.
Google Search: Perhaps seen as Google’s main core project it receives according to industry experts a minimum of 3 billion searches per day, all of which are gleaned from its 189 regional domain levels.
YouTube: Purchased by Google in 2010 has turned into a monolithic revenue earner, it has over a billion users and pulls in a minimum of $10 billion each and every year.
Google Groups: This has been a favorite amongst most Gmail users since its conception and allows users to join groups of their liking, enabling them to publish their articles, thus generating income from them if they have joined the Google Adsense program. (as mentioned above, the creator of Gmail, Paul Buchheit, used the code from “Google Groups” to form the basis of the Gmail cloud-based program back in 2005)
Google News: If like me you are a news hound and enjoy keeping up to date with headlines and breaking news from around the world, Google News is a must for you. It is free to use and is fully automated, although it should be said that the actual news sites shown within the app are selected by human editors, something which does not always go down well with its users. However, in saying that, one distinct plus is that you can read the news in over 20 different languages plus when you have integrated the type of communications you wish to receive, Google will do this automatically for you until you change your preferences.
The above is just a selection of the services you can get from google after registering for a Google account when setting up Gmail. There are many others, too many to digest in this short narrative. Still, it does give you an idea of just why Gmail has serged in popularity, eclipsing most other cloud-based email providers found everywhere on the internet.
Where did Gmail’s creator Paul Buchheit come from, and what became of him?
Paul Buchheit started his professional life while in his early 20s and worked for “Intel,” which now has its headquarters in Santa Clara, California, in what is called today Silicon Valley. Intel is now the second-largest manufacturer of semiconductor chips worldwide, after Samsung Electronics.
Buchheit, after leaving Intel, became Google’s 23rd employee and was at first tasked with just developing Gmail, a task he started in 2001. He has also been credited as the inventor of the Google Adsense Interface.
Once completed, he continued to work at Google until he, along with his friend Bret Taylor, left Google in 2006 and started “FriendFeed,” a real-time feed aggregator which could consolidate most updates from the many social media, social networking sites found around the globe, the program was launched in 2007.
Facebook, obviously in concise order, saw the potential of the FriendFeed program and purchased it in 2009 in a private deal, which essentially made Buchheit an employee of Facebook. Buchheit being the self-driven type of person he was, was to stay at Facebook for just one year leaving in 2010, to join “Y Combinator, an investment firm specializing in funding early-stage startup companies. He was to remain at “Y Combinator” until 2008, where he is said to have invested over $1.20 million in 32 different companies from around the world.
He now acts as a full-time angel investor. (usually, a wealthy person who provides venture capital for a business start-up in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity, a slice of the business) He was successful in this enterprise as he was awarded the prestigious Economist Innovation Awards in 2011 for his Computing and telecommunications field skills.
Well, folks, I have come to the end of another short narrative, exploring the workings of the inner sanctums of Google Gmail, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for reading. It is most appreciated. I would also like to thank America’s favorite place to shop online, BargainBrute.Com, home to the best online shopping deals to be found anywhere on the internet, for giving me the platform to write on. Remember, if you are looking for any good quality, exclusive Christmas online deals, pop over and give them a try, join the BargainBrute family and find out just why they were voted America’s favorite place to shop online in 2019.
