The History of Email
Take a scroll through the history of email and learn more about one of our most used mediums of electronic communication today. Who invented it? How did it start?
How much do you think you know about email’s history?
From the first email sent through that famous phrase “You’ve got mail,” here’s the story highlighting some of the key enabling products and technologies that made today’s most common digital means of communication possible.
From big name companies to people and apps you’ve never heard of…
This is our long history of email.
Who invented email?
Did you know that the title for “inventor of email” is still hotly debated?
Shiva Ayyadurai (Twitter: @va_shiva) claims to have invented email when he was only 14 years old. Ray Tomlinson is also widely regarded as the creator of email while working for the U.S. government in 1971. So who really invented email? I don’t know, you?
The History of Email
Email was supposed to replace paper mail, and Slack was supposed to replace email. Now, I get chat messages, email, and paper mail too.
History of Protocols for “Electronic Mail”
1970’s
The first messages are sent over a distributed network of 15 research computers including the one at MIT. The Mail box protocol, FTP-Mail, Mail Protocol, and Arpa Network Text Messages are among the now-obsolete protocols that were invented and used at the time. The term “Electronic Mail” also started getting used in RFC papers!
Mail Transfer Protocol (MTP)
1980
The US Government’s ARPANET, which was the first distributed network that looks like the modern internet was invented this year which spurred on even more innovation in the email space! The Mail Transfer Protocol started the transition away from relying on FTP servers to send electronic messages between people.
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)
1981
Proposed by Jon Postel in 1981, and an improvement upon his MTP protocol, SMTP was a standardized way for computers to exchange emails that is still used widely today! SMTP acted as an email postal service; it let you write a letter, put it in an envelope, and send it to anyone on the Internet. Sendmail, the most common mail transfer agent today which came out in 1982 still uses this protocol.
Post Office Protocol (POP)
1984
Post Office Protocol built on SMTP as a way to add post office and post office boxes to email. Instead of sending email directly to another computer, you could send it to a post office (like Gmail), and the recipient could then pick it up from the post office in their inbox.
POP (1984) and POP2 (1985) continued being worked on, and eventually got replaced with POP3 in 1988. POP3 is still used widely today.
Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP)
1986
Internet Message Access Protocol was like bringing a copier to the post office. With POP, when you pick up an email, you can only read it on the computer you first used to read that email. With IMAP, you can read the email from anywhere as many times as you want.
America Online (AOL)
1993
You’ve got mail! A phrase so popular they even made a movie out of it.
Can you remember the sounds of dial-up tones in the background?
Then you might remember AOL, which was the internet on CD-ROM that showed up in the mail.
America Online popularized email with the iconic “You’ve Got Mail!” (which ended up as a movie with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks).
AOL brought email to the average family at home, giving them a permanent email address they could keep as long as they wanted. Some people still have their AOL email address from the 1990s!
Email from Hotmail & Yahoo!
1996
Hotmail and Yahoo Mail gave everyone a free, permanent email address, even if you wanted to change your Internet Service Provider. With an AOL email address, you had to keep paying and using AOL to keep your email address. Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail let you change Internet Service Providers without changing your email address.
Microsoft Outlook Email
1997
Microsoft Outlook launches and hotmail.com eventually becomes Outlook.com in 2012. You can read more about Microsoft Outlook’s history here.
Gmail
2004
Gmail from Google was an invitation only hit in 2004.
Gmail provided everyone one gigabyte of storage, which was considered unlimited at the time. Gmail remains one of the most popular email services today and has increased the free storage available to 15GB. Mozilla Thunderbird, an alternative and popular email client, also launched this year.
iPhone & Android
2007/2008
Until the iPhone and Android phones were released, everyone had to use a desktop computer or a laptop to check their email. With mobile smartphones, everyone suddenly had their email in the palm of their hands.
ProtonMail
2013
ProtonMail was the first email service to encrypt your emails. Before ProtonMail, any computer between you and the recipient could read your emails. Now, all email services have this feature, but in 2018 it was revolutionary at the time.
Inbox by Google is History
2014
Inbox by Gmail was Google’s sandbox for new email ideas. Inbox by Gmail was the first place to keep related emails together, added a “undo send” feature, and helped you unsubscribe from mailing lists automatically. This service was discontinued in 2019 by which time the most popular features had already been incorporated into the Gmail you use today.
Gmail hits 1.5 billion users
2018
On October 26th, 2018, Gmail announced via twitter they had reached 1,500,000,000 users. This milestone represents how much email has exploded since its simple beginnings as a way for science teams to communicate across the country. In 2020, the global population was 7.8 billion, meaning there was one Gmail user for every five people.
Email Today
2019–2020
In the two years since Gmail announced a massive number of users worldwide, a number of email stories made headlines. From well known names with past success, through attempts to rename the Inbox all together, email is back in the news again. It feels like one of those old things that is becoming new again.
Gmail updates
In April of 2019 Google shut down the popular app “Inbox by Gmail”. Now in 2020 we’ve seen a number of updates from the Gmail team from search chips to giant Google meet buttons. With all the changes, the Gmail user interface faces increasing competition from a number of new email applications.
Email app privacy
An email service offering to help users Unsubscribe settled with the FTC after accusations of selling user data, increasing consumer privacy concerns with software as a service products overall.
With a higher level of scrutiny over data privacy and security, a new standard was set for products and services across the board. Consumers don’t want companies and products to sell their personally identifiable data. In other words, user data shouldn’t be the product.
New email apps & services
From a new luxury email app for Gmail users priced at $30/month to a service that helps you unsubscribe for free, new apps are coming to market. Some new email products have gotten as bold as trying to rename the Inbox. Even Seth Godin built a product to help fix the email promo folder in Gmail.
Apparently, life’s too short to be overwhelmed with email, and email is important after all. So, what would make it better? Could we all use some help with it? One new web app to organize Gmail that makes labeling & filtering easier, thinks a little categorization and sorting; or as Marie Kondo calls it “tidying up” might do the trick. 😉
Of course, there’s a lot more to our long history with email, and many other new apps to mention too. How do you remember your history with email?
