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Gmail

Gmail
Gmail Icon.png
Type of site
Webmail
Available in 72 languages
Owner Google
Created by Paul Buchheit
Website
Alexa rank Increase 8,154 (December 2016)
Commercial Yes
Registration Required
Users 1 billion (February 2016)
Launched April 1, 2004; 12 years ago (2004-04-01)
Current status Online
Content license
Proprietary
Written in Java (back-end), JavaScript, Ajax (UI)

Gmail is a free, advertising-supported email service developed by Google. Users can access Gmail on the web and through the mobile apps for Android and iOS, as well as through third-party programs that synchronize email content through or protocols.

Gmail started as a limited beta release on April 1, 2004. It exited beta status on July 7, 2009.

Gmail had an initial storage capacity offer of 1 GB per user, a significantly higher number than the 2 MB its competitors such as Hotmail offered at that time. Today, the service comes with 15 GB of free storage. Individual Gmail messages, including attachments, may be up to 25 MB. In order to send larger files, users can insert files from Google Drive into the message.

Gmail has a search-oriented interface and a "conversation view" similar to an Internet forum. Gmail is noted by web developers for its pioneering use of Ajax.

Google's mail servers automatically scan emails for multiple purposes, including to add context-sensitive advertisements next to emails, and to filter spam and malware. Privacy advocates have raised concerns about this practice, with some of the concerns including that the automated background scanning of emails raises the risk that the expectation of privacy in email usage will be reduced or eroded; information collected from emails could be retained by Google for years after its current relevancy to build complete profiles on users; emails sent by users from other email providers get scanned despite never having agreed to Google's privacy policy or terms of service; governments and organizations can potentially find it easier to legally monitor email communications; and at any time, Google can change its current company policies to allow combining information from emails with data gathered from use of its other services. Google has been the subject of lawsuits concerning the issues, both from Gmail users and from non-Gmail users.


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