Gmail

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gmail
Gmail logo / icon
gmail.com
description Freemail provider
Registration Google account required
languages German, 72 other language versions
owner Google LLC ( more )
Published April 1, 2004
Members over 1.5 billion (October 2018)
status on-line
programming language C ++ , JavaScript , Java

Gmail , formerly time-consuming and in some regions even Gmail is a free, advertising-financed email - service of the US company Google . In addition to the Webmail -Access the retrieval of e-mails is also on the official Gmail app and e-mail programs from third-party via POP3 and IMAP4 possible.

The service, which is offered free of charge, caused a great stir in the free mail market. The range of functions in the browser-based interface, which is largely implemented using Ajax technology, is based on independent e-mail programs. Since mid-2012, the offer has been the most widely used email provider worldwide .

history

Discontinued Gmail logo

From its announcement on April 1, 2004, Gmail brought great movement to the freemail market , mainly due to the initial mailbox size of one gigabyte of storage . Other providers of this market, which is dominated by Hotmail , Yahoo Mail and in Germany also by GMX and Web.de , had only granted their users between two and twenty megabytes until then.

After the announcement and a closed beta phase from April 2004, it was possible to register using an activation code or an invitation from an already registered user from August 2005. It has been offered worldwide without prior invitation since February 2007. The public test phase lasted until July 2009.

E-mail address

Gmail ignores points in the front part of the e-mail address , emails to the account benutzername@gmail.com So come on even if the address benutzer.name@gmail.com or benutz.ername@gmail.com is. Filters can be used to forward emails with such an address, for example, or to have them moved directly to the trash. The same applies to the plus sign after the user name. Mails to username+extension@gmail.com or username+test@gmail.com arrive just like mails to username@gmail.com .

Usernames must be at least six characters. Gmail makes it possible to send emails under different identities and sender addresses. E-mail accounts from other providers can also be accessed via POP3.

Brand problems

Germany

old gmail logo

This service was originally called Gmail in Germany , but had to be renamed in 2005 because of a dispute over the German trademark rights with a Hamburg mail company. The latter had registered the brand name G-mail before Google and used it commercially. In July of the same year, Google introduced the extension @ googlemail.com to the email addresses of new German users instead of the @ gmail.com domain . In April 2012, Google acquired the Gmail brand and the gmail.de domain in Germany out of court. As of June 20, 2012, all new users will receive an email address with @ gmail.com . Previous users have been able to change their @ googlemail.com address to @ gmail.com since June 26, 2012 .

United Kingdom

On 19 October 2005, which was British version of Gmail in Gmail renamed because "Gmail" was already registered by another company as a brand name. Here, too, the name change meant that email addresses were now @ googlemail.com . As of May 3, 2010, Gmail was back in the UK as Gmail .

Poland

In February 2007, Google lost a dispute against the owners of gmail.pl , a group of poets from Poland ( Grupa Młodych Artystów i Literatów , GMAiL for short ).

China

An IT company from China registered the name gmail.cn before Google and, like Google, offers e-mail addresses with the ending gmail.cn .

Functions

The e-mails are accessed with an e-mail program via TLS- POP3 and TLS- SMTP ; Since October 2007 it has been possible to access via IMAP.

Labels

Received e-mails are not stored in different folders , as was previously the case , but in a central mail archive. Messages are also grouped into topics that Google calls “conversations”. In place of folders, Gmail uses so-called "labels", which can be freely defined and assigned to messages using a mail filter or manually. With these labels it is possible to assign mails to several categories - in contrast to the usual folder structure.

Web interface

The main difference between Gmail and other freemail services is the functionality offered by the browser-based interface, which is based on independent e-mail programs (such as Outlook or Thunderbird ). This was implemented to a large extent with a technique known as Ajax in JavaScript and DHTML and includes an address book, a spell checker and other functions that can be accessed via keyboard shortcuts . These are just as fast and convenient as a locally installed mail program, since most of the functions are carried out on the client side , i.e. on the local computer.

In addition, the Gmail web interface can be expanded to include mostly useful functions by activating new functions in Gmail Labs . There are also a number of authorized and unauthorized extensions for Gmail. For example, there are message checkers for displaying the current number of new messages or programs such as GmailFS that make Gmail accounts usable as virtual drives . To ensure that Gmail can also be used in offline mode, the service has been using Gears since the beginning of 2009 , which was discontinued in November 2011. In order to reach more users, HTML5 has been used since then .

An email that has just been processed is automatically cached by Gmail so that only parts of the written text can be lost in the event of a connection breakdown or timeouts. A security query is also used to check whether the user intends to change pages if unsaved text would be lost in this way.

A special user interface is displayed on mobile devices . This includes numerous functions of the Gmail desktop interface, but adapted to smaller screens.

Storage

Gmail started with 1 GB of storage. Ultimately, most Gmail competitors increased the storage capacity of their offers after the public beta phase of Gmail began, in some cases drastically. On the first anniversary of the free service, Gmail responded by doubling the storage capacity to 2 GB. Since then, the maximum mailbox size has continuously increased in small steps, the expansion was accelerated at times, and the mailbox size has not been increased since 2013. As part of the launch of the cloud-based Google Drive , the storage space was increased to 10 GB in April 2012. The merger of Gmail, Google Drive and the then Google+ Photos in June 2013 now gives the user 15 GB.

Users can also purchase additional storage space through a monthly subscription, which is also shared between Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos . There are payment plans for up to 30TB for personal use.

The maximum size of an email is 25 MB; up to May 2007 the limit was 10 MB.

search

Gmail includes a search bar for email. It also enables you to search for contacts , files stored in Google Drive and events from Google Calendar . On May 21, 2012, Gmail improved search functionality by adding autocomplete based on the user's emails. Like Internet search, Gmail's search function does not support searching for fragments of words (“substring search”). However, word components are definitely found in the context of so-called stemming (e.g. the search for "month" also finds e-mails with the word "months").

Apps

There are Gmail apps for Android and iOS . The Android variant was the first app in Google Play to reach one billion installs. In 2014, Google introduced Inbox by Gmail as another email app . In September 2016, Google announced that Gmail would support CSS selectors for screen size. The aim is for e-mails to be displayed better on devices of different sizes. On April 2, 2019, Google Inbox will cease operations.

On September 22, 2009, Google added a push function to Gmail using Google Sync for iOS and Windows Mobile . Google also offered the option of synchronizing Gmail with various mobile devices using the ActiveSync protocol. In December 2012, access via the ActiveSync protocol was restricted so that no more new devices are allowed. Alternatively, Google offers the option of synchronizing mobile devices using the open protocols IMAP, CardDAV and CalDAV .

Integration of other Google services

Google talk

The Google Talk service has been integrated into the Gmail web interface. This function, based on the XMPP standard, offers the possibility of writing to contact persons from your own address book who are also picking up their e-mails, to chat with them or to set up a voice or video connection . The chat logs are archived in a separate directory. It is possible to establish a connection with users of external messaging services ( ICQ , MSN , AIM , Yahoo Messenger ) via so-called "XMPP transports". At the beginning of December 2007, AIM was integrated into the Gmail chat.

Google Voice

In August 2010, Google released a plug-in that provides an integrated telephone service on the Gmail Google Talk user interface. The service initially had no official name and was simply referred to by Google as “Google Voice in Gmail Chat”. It allowed users to make free calls within the US and Canada from their Gmail accounts. Other countries can also be called for a fee. As of August 26, 2010, the service recorded over a million calls within 24 hours. In autumn 2012, the video chat function introduced in Gmail in 2008 was replaced by Google Hangouts . Google Voice has been part of Hangouts' mobile apps since 2014.

Google buzz

On February 9, 2010, Google launched its new social networking tool, Google Buzz, which is built into Gmail and allows users to share links , media and status updates . Buzz started with an automatic opt-in, which sparked an outcry in the Gmail community that prompted Google to quickly withdraw that move. In autumn 2011, Google Buzz was closed because Google wanted to concentrate on the social network Google+ . Google+ has also been closed since April 2, 2019.

G Suite

On February 10, 2006, Google introduced its own Gmail domain for students at San José City College. This possibility has slowly expanded to more companies and educational institutions. Google expanded the service in 2006 to include customizable versions of Google Calendar , Google Sites and other Google services. First published under the name “Google Apps for Your Domain”, the service has been called “G Suite” since the end of 2016. Both companies and smaller companies are addressed through various editions.

safety

Gmail logs the last ten accesses to the mailbox with the IP address and time stamp. It also shows where the same mailbox is still open at the same time (with IP address and browser type, accessible on the mailbox page at the bottom).

Spam filter

The spam filter of Gmail has a community-based system: As soon as any user marks an email as spam, this information of future similar messages used by the system as an aid to identify to all Gmail users. Users can set the system to individually process emails marked as spam. Google Inc. states that all mail to or from Gmail is only read by the respective account holder, and that content read by computers is only used to increase the relevance of advertising or to block spam emails.

Google has been using artificial neural networks to detect spam since 2015 .

Attachments

As a security measure against potential viruses , emails sent to a Gmail account that have an attachment with executable files (which Google recognizes via the file extension ) will not be delivered.

Protection against abuse

If an algorithm detects something that Google calls "anomalies that may indicate possible misuse of your account", the account can be automatically suspended. The lock lasts from 1 minute to 24 hours, depending on the type of activity detected. Possible reasons for a ban are:

  • “Receiving, deleting or sending large amounts of email via POP or IMAP within a short period of time. If you get the error message "Blocking in sector 4", you will not be able to access Gmail again for about 24 hours. "
  • "Sending a large number of undeliverable messages (messages that have been returned to the sender)."
  • "Use of file sharing or file storage software or third-party software with automatic login to your account."
  • "Open multiple instances of Gmail."
  • "Problems with the browser. If your browser keeps reloading every time you access your inbox, there is likely a browser problem. In this case, you may have to delete the browser's cache and cookies. "

Child pornography

Google is working with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) to fight child pornography on Gmail servers to find children around the world who are being abused. For this purpose, Google is creating a database of child pornographic images together with the NCMEC. Each picture is given a unique number, a hash . After that, Google Gmail will scan for these unique hashes. If suspicious images are found, Google reports it to the authorities.

financing

Before mid-2017, the Gmail service, which was free for end users, displayed context-related text advertising ( Google Ads ) that was adapted to the content of emails and was displayed in the same way as Google's search engine interface. For this purpose, not only was the opened e-mail analyzed, but the most recently received e-mails were also included. In contrast to many other freemail providers, Google refrained from automatically adding an advertising text to the end of every email or advertising banner on the website.

After the service was criticized for this, Google announced in June 2017 that it would no longer personalize advertising based on the texts in emails. The advertisement has since been selected based on other account activities that a user performs while signed in to their Google Account. Text from emails from G Suite customers was also not previously used for personalized advertising.

criticism

Various data protection experts warned in 2008 against a further deterioration in privacy, as Gmail automatically searches all e-mails in order to be able to display context-related advertising. At the beginning of 2016, the German consumer association issued a warning against Google because of two inadmissible clauses in the data protection declaration. Any further use of the data obtained for marketing purposes is not excluded by Google. The first major exchange of blows took place during the Computers, Freedom & Privacy conference in Berkeley . Chris Hoofnagle of the Electronic Privacy Information Center warned that "Gmail will lower the lowest common denominator in data protection for all webmailers".

Although the operator Google points out that every user must agree to these terms of use when creating his access, the point is considered problematic by data protectionists: Because senders of e-mails who are not Gmail users themselves do not consent to opening and processing the Emails, it is not enough for your own users to accept the terms of use.

There was also criticism at the start of Gmail because of the license terms, as they not only allow the e-mails to be indexed, but also no guarantee was given that e-mails deleted by the user would actually be deleted. It turned out that Google was referring to the regular backups .

In addition, there are many formulations in the data protection regulations that give Gmail extensive room for maneuver to curtail user privacy. For example, Gmail can pass on personal data (including the content of e-mails) if it can " assume in good faith ", for example "to protect the rights, property or safety ... of the public."

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

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