Gmail: Blast from the Past!

I've subscribed to Office 365 and installed Outlook to access my Gmail account. Just for testing. I haven't gone insane.

One of the interesting default features of Outlook is that it downloads every single email you've ever received. Every one. By default. Given that GDPR is on the horizon (7 days and counting!) I thought you might be interested in this one before the bonfire of the emails begins.

Gmail was launched on 1st April 2004 (the entire History of which is available here via Wikipedia), I purchased a beta key off of eBay (I think!) and signed up in February 2005.

Here's the first ever email I received in my Gmail account; a Welcome from the Gmail Team:

Original Gmail "welcome" email

My particular favourite section;

"As you're using Gmail, you might also see some ads or related links. We believe that you shouldn't have to share your inbox with large, blinking, irrelevant ads. Gmail's small text ads are matched by computers, and designed to be relevant to the messages you're viewing. Which means for once, you might even find ads to be interesting and useful."

See? Outlook can be useful for some things ...