Legal Research

Yes, They Launched On April Fool’s Day

Gmail was born on April 1, 2004 — here’s the earliest version I could find at the Internet Archive — an interesting day to launch a new product. On the eve of its fifth birthday, Todd Jackson, Gmail Product Manager, gave an interview with the folks at Ars Technica. They talked a lot about Gmail Labs, which has been churning out a new feature every couple of weeks. Here’s one interesting quote concerning the “Beta” tag that Gmail still carries after 5 years:

“I got the impression from our conversation that the Gmail team does not lose much sleep worrying over whether Gmail is worthy of a specific version number. Jackson touted a philosophy of rapid feature development and discussed his perception that communication is a constantly evolving landscape, so his team doesn’t see the point in ever calling Gmail ‘finished’.”

Full post as published by Jenkins Webblits on March 31, 2009 (boomark / email).