Happy Birthday...

...Google

We started our journey together 12 years ago… us for a life as Expat with a first stop in Buenos Aires and a few weeks later you came into my world.

Happy 12th Birthday my dear Friend.

Google Doodle created by Wayne Thiebaud

So here’s what was happening in the world in 1998

• President Bill Clinton did not have sexual relations with that woman.
• El Nino is kind of a big deal.
• Winter Olympics are held in Nagano, Japan.
• Viagra is approved by the FDA.
• Charlton Heston becomes president of the National Rifle Association.
• Windows 98 released by Microsoft.
• Apple Computer unveils the iMac.
• Notable TV premieres: Dawson's Creek, Sex and the City, Will & Grace, That '70s Show, the Powerpuff Girls, Charmed, Felicity, and the King of Queens.
• Popular movies: Armageddon, Titanic, Saving Private Ryan, Godzilla, There's Something About Mary, The Wedding Singer, Shakespeare in Love, and Deep Impact.
• Popular music: Celine Dion, Chumbawumba, Marilyn Manson, Green Day, The Offspring, Spice Girls, Aerosmith, Alanis Morissette, Shania Twain, Sublime, Natalie Imbruglia.

And

• Jeffrey and Celine finally decided to make it official and tied the knot just before moving to Buenos Aires

FYI, Gmail was launched as an invitation-only beta release on April 1, 2004 and it became available to the general public on February 7, 2007.

We got an invitation less than 6 months later and sign up for our first common email address (cjsuiter) on 12 September 2004. We then decided to create individual ones a few months later.

First off, welcome. And thanks for agreeing to help us test Gmail. By now you probably know the key ways in which Gmail differs from traditional webmail services. Searching instead of filing. A free gigabyte of storage*. Messages displayed in context as conversations.
So what else is new?
Gmail has many other special features that will become apparent as you use your account. To help you get started, we encourage you to visit our Help Center, there you can browse frequently asked questions, read our Getting Started guide, or contact the Gmail User Support Team. You'll also find information in the Help Center on such topics as:
• Importing your contacts from Yahoo! Mail, Outlook, and others to Gmail
• Using address auto-complete
• Setting up filters for incoming mail
• Using advanced search options
You may also have noticed some text ads or related links to the right of this message. They're placed there in the same way that ads are placed alongside Google search results and, through our AdSense program, on content pages across the web. The matching of ads to content in your Gmail messages is performed entirely by computers; never by people. Because the ads and links are matched to information that is of interest to you, we hope you'll find them relevant and useful.
We're working hard during our limited test to improve Gmail and make it the best webmail service around. Thanks for taking the plunge with us. We hope you'll enjoy Google's approach to email.


Thanks,
The Gmail Team
P.S. You can sign in to your account any time by visiting
http://gmail.google.com

* compare to 2 and later 4MB from its competitors.  6 years later, I’m still only using 30% of my 7520MB… and I’m the kind of people who doesn’t delete any mail!!