Google Mail (Gmail)

Gmail is a free, advertising-supported Webmail, POP3, and IMAP service provided by Google.

Gmail was launched as an invitation-only beta release on April 1, 2004 and it became available to the general public on February 7, 2007, though still with beta status. As of July 2009, it has 146 million users monthly. The service was upgraded from beta status on July 7, 2009, along with the rest of the Google Apps suite.

With an initial storage capacity offer of 1 GB per user, Gmail significantly increased the Webmail standard for free storage from the 2 to 4MB its competitors offered at that time.

Gmail has a search-oriented interface and a "conversation view" similar to an Internet forum. Software developers know Gmail for its pioneering use of the Ajax programming technique.

Gmail runs on Google Servlet Engine and Google GFE/1.3 on Linux.

Google Mail (Gmail) функционалност

Storage

The Gmail service currently provides more than 7400 MB of free storage. Users can rent additional storage (shared between Picasa Web Albums and Gmail) from 20 GB (US$5/year) to 16 TB (US$4096/year).

On April 1, 2005 the first anniversary of Gmail, Google announced the increase from 1 GB, stating that Google would "keep giving people more space forever."

In April 2005 Gmail engineer Rob Siemborski stated that Google would keep increasing storage by the second as long as it had enough space on its servers. On October 12, 2007 the rate of increase was 5.37 MB per hour. As of January 18, 2010, the rate was 0.000004 MB/s, or 0.0144 MB/h.

Gmail Labs

The Gmail Labs feature, introduced on June 5, 2008, allows users to test new or experimental features of Gmail, such as bookmarking of important e-mail messages, custom keyboard-shortcuts and games.

Users can enable or disable Labs features selectively and provide feedback about each of them. This allows Gmail engineers to obtain user input about new features to improve them and also to assess their popularity and whether they merit developing into regular Gmail features. All Labs features are experimental and are subject to termination at any time.

On December 10, 2008 Gmail added support for SMS Messaging through its integrated Chat.

On January 28, 2009 Gmail added support for offline access through its integration with Gears.

On July 14, 2009 Gmail brought Tasks out of Labs testing and made it an official feature.

Spam filter

Gmail's spam filtering features a community-driven system: when any user marks an email as spam, this provides information to help the system identify similar future messages for all Gmail users. Users may tune the system to allow mail marked as spam to be handled in particular ways.

Gmail Mobile

Gmail Mobile is a version of Google's Gmail email service. It is a free service, developed to provide access to Gmail from mobile devices such as cell phones, or smartphones. Gmail Mobile was released on December 16, 2005 and is available in many different languages. Gmail Mobile offers many of the features as Gmail delivered effectively to smaller, mobile screens. Users have the ability to compose, read, reply, forward, mark unread, add a star or trash email messages.

On September 22, 2009 Google brought Push Mail support to its Gmail service using Google Sync for iPhone and iPod Touch platforms

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