Gmail Pilot: Now Worldwide
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Pal Takacsi, Engineering Project Manager
Five years ago, the Gmail email service was born from a pilot project created by a small Google development team. From the very beginning, we aimed to ensure that our mail was fast, convenient and as spam-free as possible. We developed by launching services such as video chat and themes , today, on the eve of the fifth anniversary of Gmail, tens of millions of people worldwide use Gmail, most of whom live outside the United States.
Last year, we created an experimental version of Gmail (Gmail Labs), a public testing ground for new features that allows our users to decide for themselves which features are worthy to become part of their mail. Today, we are pleased to announce that an experimental version of Gmail has become available in 49 languages to users around the world.
It may seem strange to you why if most of Gmail’s features were immediately launched in all supported languages, Gmail Labs were still not available in Russian? The fact is that the project was originally an experiment that our employees engaged in as a 20 percent project (our employees can devote 20% of their working time to developing projects of interest to them), so there were many risks. The fact is that every time a user logs into Gmail, we create an individual Java script for him personally. Since there are 43 possibilities in the experimental version, there are 2 to the 43rd degree (~ 8 trillion) possible versions of the Java script. If you take into account the 49 languages that Gmail Labs works today, you get even more - 49 x 2 to the 43rd degree (~ 430 trillion versions). Obviously, testing all these versions is not an easy task. We put a lot of effort to create a modular architecture to support such a set of functions, and so far it works very well. So we thought, why not do another 422 trillion combinations?
Since the creation of the experimental version of Gmail in June last year, we have launched 43 features over 43 weeks. This includes useful features (for example, Gmail Offline and Reminder about attached files ), tricky functions (for example, Import / Export filter ) and even funny features (for example, Protection against rash letters) All these features are available on the Labs tab in the Settings section. Keep in mind that all these functions are at the very beginning of development, so they do not go through the stages of project examination and product analysis, and are not tested as deeply as the basic functions. Therefore, sometimes the experimental version may fail. If you find problems after logging in to your Gmail account, you can temporarily disable Gmail Labs at any time using this link .
Five years ago, the Gmail email service was born from a pilot project created by a small Google development team. From the very beginning, we aimed to ensure that our mail was fast, convenient and as spam-free as possible. We developed by launching services such as video chat and themes , today, on the eve of the fifth anniversary of Gmail, tens of millions of people worldwide use Gmail, most of whom live outside the United States.
Last year, we created an experimental version of Gmail (Gmail Labs), a public testing ground for new features that allows our users to decide for themselves which features are worthy to become part of their mail. Today, we are pleased to announce that an experimental version of Gmail has become available in 49 languages to users around the world.
It may seem strange to you why if most of Gmail’s features were immediately launched in all supported languages, Gmail Labs were still not available in Russian? The fact is that the project was originally an experiment that our employees engaged in as a 20 percent project (our employees can devote 20% of their working time to developing projects of interest to them), so there were many risks. The fact is that every time a user logs into Gmail, we create an individual Java script for him personally. Since there are 43 possibilities in the experimental version, there are 2 to the 43rd degree (~ 8 trillion) possible versions of the Java script. If you take into account the 49 languages that Gmail Labs works today, you get even more - 49 x 2 to the 43rd degree (~ 430 trillion versions). Obviously, testing all these versions is not an easy task. We put a lot of effort to create a modular architecture to support such a set of functions, and so far it works very well. So we thought, why not do another 422 trillion combinations?
Since the creation of the experimental version of Gmail in June last year, we have launched 43 features over 43 weeks. This includes useful features (for example, Gmail Offline and Reminder about attached files ), tricky functions (for example, Import / Export filter ) and even funny features (for example, Protection against rash letters) All these features are available on the Labs tab in the Settings section. Keep in mind that all these functions are at the very beginning of development, so they do not go through the stages of project examination and product analysis, and are not tested as deeply as the basic functions. Therefore, sometimes the experimental version may fail. If you find problems after logging in to your Gmail account, you can temporarily disable Gmail Labs at any time using this link .
