Gmail: E-Mail-Client Gigant

Ein unglaubliches Angebot

Gmail hatte 2004 einen etwas unorthodoxen Start.

At a time when you paid for email services such as AOL and had to spend a ton of time searching for things in Outlook, Gmail completely revolutionized something that seemed so unexciting and routine: your email inbox. 📧

The press release announcing its launch was dated for April 1 — so many thought it was simply an April Fools’ Day joke.

It also didn’t help that some of the features of Gmail seemed unbelievable or, at the very least, too good to be true.

For example, Google offered 1 GB of free storage for each Gmail account — this was an amount of free storage space that was simply unheard of at this point in time. To put this in perspective: this was 500 times more storage than what Microsoft’s Hotmail offered (yes, Hotmail only gave you 2MB per account at the time). 😱

According to an interview with Gmail’s first product manager, Brian Rakowski, the April 1 launch was intentional. He said that the “ultimate April Fools’ joke was to launch something kind of crazy on April 1 and have it still exist on April 2.”

Mit seinem unglaublich großen Speicherplatz, der benutzerfreundlichen Oberfläche, den Suchfunktionen und vielem mehr hat Google Mail die E-Mail-Welt verändert, als es auf den Markt kam.

Google — and more specifically, Paul Buchheit — worked on Gmail for nearly three years before consumers could use it, and it was one of the first (if not the first) major cloud-based apps that could replace conventional PC software. 💽

Da Google bei der Entwicklung seines E-Mail-Programms von Anfang an die Webtechnologie nutzte, wurde Gmail durch die Verwendung von JavaScript zu einer echten Software und nicht zu einer Abfolge von Webseiten.

There were instances in which the project could have just been abandoned altogether. Internally, Googlers were hesitant about the concept for a variety of reasons — so it’s incredible that it even became a product in the first place.

Free email inbox — meet AdSense

Google AdSense, das Produkt, das Nachrichten nach Schlüsselwörtern durchsucht, die für Werbezwecke verwendet werden können, wurde bei der Erstellung von Google Mail als Prototyp entwickelt.

This tool sparked a debate around online privacy that still continues to this day (and is, of course, making headlines in recent months, thanks in part to things such as GDPR and the Cambridge Analytica scandal). 🔒

Dies war jedoch eine der ersten Ideen für Google Mail: ein System zu schaffen, das den Text von E-Mails analysiert, damit Google parallel dazu Anzeigen schalten kann.

According to Marissa Mayer herself, she almost prevented AdSense from ever coming to light. 😳

While she was initially against having ads in Gmail, Buchheit supposedly stayed up all night finishing the product and Mayer saw ads everywhere the next day — and they were well done and well targeted.

Kurz gesagt, hatte Buchheit herausgefunden, wie man Text scannen kann, der mit Anzeigen übereinstimmt, die bereits von Kunden für Suchanfragen gekauft worden waren. Die Mitbegründer Larry Page und Sergey Brin wurden bald darauf auf das Produkt aufmerksam, und das Unternehmen beschloss, die Technologie außerhalb von Google Mail auf andere Websites anzuwenden.

This product is what we now know as AdSense, one of Google’s largest sources of revenue.

So, to put it simply: the work that made Gmail free by developing targeted ads next to it didn’t just change the business model for email services, it indirectly changed the business model for a lot of websites based on ads. 🆓

Google Mail neu erfinden

As you’ve probably already heard (or seen for yourself), Google recently released a new redesign of Gmail. 🤗

E-Mail ist immer noch lebendig und gut, aber E-Mail-Clients haben in den letzten Jahren ein wenig stagniert, so dass die Neugestaltung eine willkommene Abwechslung ist.

While it definitely has a more sleek and modern feel, following that of Material Design, it’s not a drastic difference from the last interface.

In fact, it almost looks like a combination of Gmail and Inbox (more on that in a minute). The new Gmail is clean, visual and packed with new features. 😍

Einige dieser Funktionen sind das Schlummern von E-Mails, so dass sie Stunden oder Tage später wieder in Ihrem Posteingang erscheinen, intelligente Antwortvorschläge in jedem E-Mail-Thread und die Tatsache, dass Sie Widgets anderer Apps auf der rechten Seite des Bildschirms laden können (so können Sie Aufgaben und Kalender verwenden, während Sie in einem E-Mail-Thread sind).

Beyond these new features, it’s apparent that Google is focusing more on both productivity and security.

Google WorkspaceSeit Jahren liegt Google im Bereich der Produktivitätssoftware für den Arbeitsplatz hinter Microsoft zurück, aber es sieht so aus, als ob Google mit seinem neuen Design und seinen Funktionen versucht, diesen Platz zu erobern.

In an interview with The Verge, Jacob Bank, lead product manager for Gmail, said that Google’s redesign was done with a focus on “making people safer and more productive,” both important aspects in appealing to business users.

It certainly looks like we’ll be seeing Gmail move even more toward a business focus in due time. 💼

Ein superschnelles Web-Erlebnis

One of Google’s main priorities when creating a new product is that it’s fast. User experience is at the heart of everything Google creates, and Gmail is no exception. 🏃‍

Even though they were the next big, exciting thing, web apps were slow and clunky around the time of Gmail’s launch. So, Google’s attention to a fast response time and high performance was a major development in the world of web apps.

Gmail, like all Google products, was built with the RAIL model in mind. RAIL is a “user-centric performance model that breaks down the user’s experience into key actions.”

Sie erklären weiter, dass jede Webanwendung vier spezifische Aspekte in ihrem Lebenszyklus hat, und die Leistung der Anwendung passt auf unterschiedliche Weise zu ihnen. Diese sind Reaktion, Animation, Leerlauf und Last.

This model helps designers and developers focus on what’s most important: making your users the focal point of your performance effort. 🚀

With these four elements of an app’s lifecycle, Google has the following guidelines:

• Antwort: Antwort in weniger als 50 ms
• Animation: Erstellung eines Bildes in 10 ms
• Leerlauf: Maximierung der Leerlaufzeit
• Laden: Inhalte bereitstellen und in weniger als 5 Sekunden interaktiv werden

A separate product for early adopters

Wie kann man ein Produkt herstellen, das sowohl die Massen als auch Early Adopters anspricht, wenn es sich um ein Produkt handelt, bei dem die Menschen im Allgemeinen konservativ sind?

The Gmail solution: create a separate product for early adopters, built on the same infrastructure. 👍

Posteingang von Gmail is an email service that was developed by Google and launched by-invitation-only in 2014 (later launching to the public in 2015). It’s a product that came from the Gmail team, and it serves, according to Google, as a “completely different type of inbox, designed to focus on what really matters.”

It’s essentially a version of your Gmail inbox without all of the clutter. Inbox identifies and categorizes your emails so that you can quickly see what needs to be addressed and what can be archived or saved for later. ✅

Gmail is the classic version, which only gets features as soon as they are perfected and can be delivered without people freaking out about how Gmail has changed — which can probably explain why there seems to be quite a bit of Inbox influence in the Gmail redesign.

Die Entscheidung, Posteingang von Google Mail abzutrennen, geht auf einen ziemlich dramatischen Streitpunkt bei Google zurück.

The Google engineers, testing out potential new designs (similar to Inbox), hated the fact that the more advanced features were missing and felt like the designers were ruining Gmail. It actually got to the point that the head of Gmail’s design team created a presentation called “You Are Not the User,” detailing every design/feature decision the team made based on data.

After more drama and back-and-forth about it, they reached a compromise. They decided to streamline Gmail while keeping the advanced features available for those who wanted them. 👩‍💻

Inbox is quite useful for those of us who need to go through hundreds of emails a day — and it certainly helps keep your email experience a bit more pleasant and organized.

With all this in mind, Gmail is a product many of us use in our daily lives, so we’re excited to see what else Google has in the works for transforming the way we email! ✨

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