It’s 5:45 AM on April 2, and I can find no news articles or other online postings suggesting that Google’s Gmail was an April Fools joke. Looks like it was real, after all!
UPDATE: Kevin Fox says he works for Google, and that Gmail is real. His account his entertaining and eminently believable:
“Gmail is real.
Real real real. Not ‘I have a friend who reads this guy’s blog who claims to know for a fact’ real. Not even ‘I read this guy’s blog and he says it’s not an April Fool’s joke’ real. Well, maybe for you, gentle reader, it’s exactly that real, but for me it’s ‘I came to work for Google and got handed a dream assignment to design the UI for a product that’s going to change the world’ real, and now I’m thrilled that my best kept secret was kept so well that even my close friends took the ‘it’s gotta be a joke’ path yesterday.
Nearly two months ago my Mom sent me an email, saying she read a piece in the newspaper speculating that Google was working on an email product.
‘Really, Mom? That’s interesting. It’s funny how they press makes all kinds of speculations. First we’re going IPO, then we’re not, then we are, then we’re waiting. We never said anything but the press likes to make stuff up.’
Then I sent her email around to the team. Today several of them asked me if I’d come clean to my own Mom yet. I did. This morning. :-)
Where was I? Oh yeah. Free email, a gig of it. If you’ve been reading the paper or the blogs today, you’ve read about it, spun either as an April fools joke (though if it were only that it would be a pretty short-sighted jest: ‘Here’s this great product! Ha-ha, fooled you!’), or a piece of ill-timed PR. In truth, as guessed by a few of the more circumspect bloggers, it was both and neither. A double-April-fools joke. Metapranking, if you will. Google-style fun with a big pot of gold at the end.”
Well, I think that settles it.
I was right about one thing, though: Erik Thauvin’s screenshot is “totally fake,” according to Adams.
Hat tip: Jan Philipp Lenssen, of “ Categories: Technology & Nerdy News
April 2nd, 2004 at 7:10:42 am
Yes, it was real: see http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2004_03_31_index.html and http://blog.outer-court.com (also a screenshot there)
April 2nd, 2004 at 8:01:05 am
That screenshot is on Google’s server (http://adwords.google.com/) and therefore proves nothing — if Google were trying to trick us, they could certainly create a fake screenshot to bolster their case.
Both of the screenshots I have seen so far are unconvincing. Erik Thauvin had one, but the timestamps on the messages aroused my suspicion, and his cryptic e-mail answer didn’t help any. Now you show us a screenshot on Google’s servers that is clearly fake — the writing in those “tax”-related e-mails is so sterile, they obviously aren’t a real correspondence between a father and daughter. At best it’s a fake screenshot for marketing purposes; at worst it’s a fake screenshot for hoax purposes.
I am inclined to believe that Gmail is real simply because it’s 10:00 AM EST on April 2 and we haven’t been told otherwise yet. But the screenshots themselves do nothing for me.
April 7th, 2004 at 11:02:19 am
Why should google think of email? They should better concentrate on their search engine dominance or i should say monopoly.
April 7th, 2004 at 11:17:20 am
Shahid, I’m not sure if you’re clear on the concept of what a “monopoly” is. Google’s search engine has plenty of competition (Yahoo, MSN Search, Lycos, Excite, HotBot, Northern Light, just to name a few). But Google is far and away the most successful and widely used, not because of monopolistic practices or lack of competition, but simply because it is the best.
Just because you are a successful business delivering a quality product/service does not mean you are monopoly.
June 15th, 2004 at 8:52:29 am
Hmmm, now that Yahoo has introduced its upgraded Yahoo Plus including 2GB of space, I’m rethinking my planned move over to gmail. I like my gmail address, which is basically my first.last name, but I like the disposable email feature and Outlook compatibility of Yahoo Mail. What do to, Brendan, what to do?