Each company is privately owned by its respective founders—but while that’s true in one sense, Google is also linked to parent company Alphabet Inc., which was founded by none other than Larry Page himself. Many people use Gmail for their personal and professional needs.
Who owns Gmail?
Gmail is owned by Google. It’s open-source, meaning that while Google might host and maintain your account, anyone can use and contribute to its development. When Gmail began in 2004, it offered one gigabyte of storage per user, which was far more than its competitors at the time.
Google’s mail servers automatically analyze emails for a variety of reasons, including spam and virus filtering and the insertion of contextually relevant advertisements next to emails. If you have privacy concerns about email on Google, there are plenty of other services out there that offer their takes on email.
If you’re looking for something simpler or better integrated with other services like Microsoft Office apps or iCloud, check out Outlook or Spark instead; if privacy is your primary concern, try encrypted services like ProtonMail instead. But regardless of where you decide to go—or whether you opt-out entirely—your inbox will always be yours.
How did Gmail start?
When Google introduced its revolutionary e-mail system in 2004, it came with 1 gigabyte of free storage. At that time, that was huge. The biggest competitor at that time (Hotmail) had only 2 megabytes of free storage, and users could upgrade to 10 megabytes for $19.95 a year. Today, Hotmail is still around but has since been renamed as Outlook, so it’s fair to say that Yahoo took over as a leading e-mail provider.
But Gmail didn’t stop there. After steadily increasing its storage allowance over years, by 2012 users were enjoying 7 gigabytes of free space on their mailboxes. That same year, Google launched another product: Drive—the company’s equivalent to Dropbox and OneDrive.
Some might be surprised by how far ahead of competitors technology giants are today when it comes to cloud services such as Microsoft Office 365 or Apple iCloud.
It makes sense: why buy something if you’re going to strip it down or dissolve it entirely? As it stands, at least for now, both companies seem dedicated to maintaining their respective businesses and keeping customers happy.
