Gmail turns 15, Google says making it better

Google's email service Gmail that has nearly 1.5 billion monthly active users turned 15 on Monday and the company plans to customize it for its users in the days to come.

Created by Paul Buchheit on April 1, 2004, Gmail started with an initial storage capacity of one gigabyte per user.

Today, Gmail allows 15GB free storage. Users can receive emails up to 50MB in size, including attachments, while they can send emails up to 25MB in size. In order to send larger files, users can insert files from Google Drive into the message.

"Over the years, Google also improved Gmail's spam filtering capabilities and today, using Artificial Intelligence (AI), Gmail blocks nearly 10 million spam emails every minute," the company said in a statement.

Google has included more languages including Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese to its "Smart Compose" feature on Android and would reach iOS users soon.

"It will personalize suggestions for you, so if you prefer saying "Ahoy," or "Ello, mate" in your greetings, Smart Compose will suggest just that. It can also suggest a subject line based on the email you've written," the company added.

To let users take action without having to leave their inboxes, Google would now allow them to respond to comment threads in Google Docs.

"This way you don't have to open a new tab or app to get things done," said Google.

Google also rolled out the feature to let users schedule emails to be sent at more appropriate dates while fluctuating between time zones using Gmail.

"Gmail's tabbed inbox feature was the first of its kind, helping you organise messages by category, so you can see what's new at a glance. AI-powered features like Smart Reply and Nudges helped you reply faster and stay on top of your to-dos,' the company added.

Google rolled out a big redesign of Gmail in 2018 and added several new features, including Smart Reply, email snoozing, follow-up Nudges and hover actions, as well as the inline attachments and images on Android.

Google in January released a new interface design for the mobile version of Gmail that includes new visual implementations, as well as feature additions.

--IANS

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