Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin love pulling pranks. The pair rolled out bizarre ideas most years for April Fools’ Day since the beginning of their company more than 25 years ago. But one of their best April 1 tricks wasn’t a spoof at all.
Starting in 2000, Google’s April Fools’ jokes were consistently over-the-top. People learned to laugh them off. Just another example of Google mischief, they’d think. One year, Google announced a new beverage called Google Gulp that would increase intelligence. Another time, the company talked of rolling out a “scratch-and-sniff” feature. A Google Wakeup Kit would try ever more drastic measures to rouse the sleeping user—ending with a bed flip.
But one April Fools’ Day 20 years ago, Page and Brin decided to unveil a real product that no one would believe was possible.
The “prank” was Gmail. The new service was free. It boasted one gigabyte of storage per account. At the time, that sounded like a preposterous amount of email volume, enough to store about 13,500 emails before running out of space. The then-leading webmail services run by Yahoo and Microsoft stored just 30 to 60 emails.
Besides the quantum leap in storage, Gmail also came equipped with Google’s search technology. That meant users could quickly retrieve a tidbit from an old email, photo, or other personal information stored on the service.
“The original pitch we put together was all about . . . storage, search, and speed,” says former Google executive Marissa Mayer. She helped design Gmail and other company products.
The concept was so mind-bending that shortly after The Associated Press published a story about Gmail on April Fools’ Day 2004, readers began calling and emailing. They insisted that the news agency had been duped by Google’s pranksters.
“That was part of the charm, making a product that people won’t believe is real,” former Google engineer Paul Buchheit recalls.
Gmail now has about 1.8 billion active accounts. Each offers 15 gigabytes of free storage and access to Google Photos and Google Drive. That’s 15 times more storage than Gmail initially offered!
Although it immediately created a buzz, Gmail started with limitations. After all, Google initially had only enough computing capacity to support a small audience of users.
“When we launched, we only had 300 machines, and they were really old machines that no one else wanted,” Buchheit says with a chuckle.
But that scarcity made Gmail seem exclusive. It drove demand for invitations to sign up. At one point, invitations to open a Gmail account sold for $250 apiece on eBay. “It became a bit like a social currency, where people would go, ‘Hey, I got a Gmail invite, you want one?’” Buchheit says.
Although signing up for Gmail became easier, the company didn’t begin accepting all comers to the email service until Valentine’s Day 2007.
A few weeks later, on April Fools’ Day in 2007, Google announced another new feature. It was called “Gmail Paper.” It told users they could have Google print their email archive on “94% post-consumer organic soybean sputum.” (Sputum is mucus.)
April Fool! Google was just joking around again.
