‘Glad it wasn’t an April Fools’ Day prank’: Sundar Pichai as Gmail turns 20

Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin launched Gmail on April Fools' Day. Sundar Pichai reflected on the two-decade journey of the e-mail service.

As Gmail completed 20 years, Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Monday reflected on the e-mail service's remarkable journey which began on April Fool's Day.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai reflected on Gmail turning 20. (AP)

“Happy 20th birthday, @gmail! Glad it wasn’t an April Fools’ Day prank after all,” he posted on X (formerly Twitter), adding a smiley icon.

Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin launched the beta version of Gmail on April Fool’s Day in 2014.

Check out what Sundar Pichai wrote on the 20th anniversary of Gmail:

Gmail was launched as a free service boasting just one gigabyte of storage per account, enough to store about 13,500 emails.

“The original pitch we put together was all about the three ‘S’s” — storage, search and speed," said former Google executive Marissa Mayer, who helped design Gmail and other company products before later becoming Yahoo's CEO.

When Gmail was launched on April 1, many people couldn't help but wonder if it was a prank, considering that Page and Brin routinely pulled off elaborate pranks on people.

Their April Fools' Day pranks in the years prior to Gmail's launch included posting a job opening for a Copernicus research center on the moon. Another year, the company said it planned to roll out a “scratch and sniff” feature on its search engine.

But soon, users discovered that Gmail was no joke and that it would redefine email communication for years to come.

Over the years, Gmail revolutionised the way people communicated via e-mail.

Last year, Google announced that artificial intelligence (AI) technology will be introduced to Gmail, with a “Help Me Write” option that can craft lengthy replies to emails in seconds, and a tool for photos called “Magic Editor” that can automatically doctor pictures.

“I think people are really going to like this,” Page, who was 31 at that time, had said.

In the years after Gmail's launch, Google launched more widely-used products such Google Maps and Google Docs with word processing and spreadsheet applications. It also acquired YouTube before launching the Chrome browser and the Android operating system that powers most of the world's smartphones.