April Fools’ Day (April 1) is a rare occasion when people can freely lie to tease each other without fear of distractions.
When it comes to pranks, it’s hard for any business to surpass Google.
First, Google posted recruitment information for engineer positions at a research center about to open on… the Moon.
However, that same day, Google also announced another extremely exciting piece of information: they will launch a completely new email service, with a memory capacity of up to 1,000 MB – equivalent to more than 500,000 messages.
At that time, Hotmail only gave users 2 MB of memory capacity, while Yahoo Mail was slightly better with 4 MB.
Immediately, the above announcement attracted the attention of global media and users.
Not to mention, the press release that Google issued was written quite informally and cutely.
`The inspiration for us to create Gmail came from a Google user. She complained about the poor quality of current email services. She said she had to spend hours sorting and searching
So she asked us: ‘Can’t you guys do anything?’
The idea of a better email service attracted the attention of a Google engineer – who initially thought this was just a `fun` project.
It can be said that, in everyone’s eyes, it is a myth that Google creates something other than a search toolbar.
According to Georges Harik – Director of Google’s startup department at that time, it took the media a long time to realize that Gmail was a real project.
`The journalists called and asked us: ‘Are you guys joking or are you serious?’` he recalled.
Previously, CN website expressed skepticism about the authenticity of the information: `Google also pranked the technology world on April Fool’s Day.`
Many people consider this an obvious PR trick, but Sergey Brin – co-founder of Google – doesn’t think so.
In the book `In the Plex`, journalist Steven Levy once said: `Years later, Brin is still excited when talking about the ‘reverse’ trick – cheating by not lying.`
The `Gmail` trick may not be the funniest thing Google has ever done on April Fool’s Day, but it’s certainly the most important.
This turning point turned a young startup into one of the world’s largest Internet companies just a few years later.
18 years have passed, many of Google’s once fierce competitors have also had to find ways to imitate Gmail.
The birth of Gmail, using Ajax instead of plain old HTML, proved to everyone how smoothly web applications could run.
Currently, Gmail is the most popular email platform in the world, with more than 1.9 billion users.
Indeed, no one expected that Google’s April Fool’s trick that year would last for 18 years and influence people’s lives so much!