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The Evolution of Pre-Launch Gmail In Screenshots

techcrunch.com — While the screenshots were not identified by particular dates, they were laid out from left to right in rough order of where they stood in Gmail’s evolution. In the very first screenshot, dating back to March 2002, we see Gmail when it was a simple Paul Buchheit hack to search his messages by keyword.

Who dugg this? Made popular Jun 7, 2008

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  • sourceholder, on 06/07/2008, -1/+74Wow, these are literally "screen shots".
  • zyklon, on 06/07/2008, -2/+56Oh wow, 1gb mailboxes. I remember those days. Anyone else? Also, remember invites? Wow. Nostalgia.
  • BlockedUser, on 06/07/2008, -2/+46No gallery viewing and convenient buttons :/
  • tidu, on 06/07/2008, -0/+39Plus, they're presented as inconveniently as possible.
  • VibhuC812, on 06/07/2008, -3/+35Buried as Inaccurate: Pre-Launch Gmail was intelligently designed.
  • treelovinhippie, on 06/07/2008, -3/+33When is Gmail going to get out of beta? ... it's kinda ruining their chances with many schools, universities and businesses who see all of Google's software offerings, but then see the "beta" tag and think it is not stable. I know Google just leaves it there for legal reasons, but come on. If I were rich enough to own Google shares I'd be pretty pissed at them.
  • baldr, on 06/07/2008, -0/+29they don't need the 'beta' tag for any legal reasons...
  • Neiby, on 06/07/2008, -0/+26So? Who cares who submits a story. If it's interesting, I read it. If it isn't, I don't. I never even look at the submitter. It's irrelevant.
  • ampm2, on 06/07/2008, -29/+52ANOTHER POPULAR STORY BROUGHT TO YOU BY MrBabyMan
  • irgeorge, on 06/07/2008, -2/+25Dugg for Mozilla nostalgia.
  • inactive, on 06/07/2008, -2/+24these are about as exciting as the all new season premiere for Antiques Roadshow
  • Jeffler, on 06/07/2008, -1/+20And the world keeps spinning...
  • TimTheSuperGuy, on 06/07/2008, -1/+16My school uses Gmail...
    My work does too, actually.
  • inactive, on 06/07/2008, -0/+13Hooray, no spam here!
  • inactive, on 06/07/2008, -0/+12Yeah, seriously. Something that could have been really cool, made ***** annoying by a stupid page design.
  • AgentVladimir, on 06/07/2008, -0/+12These websites seem to have no concept of when a slideshow is and isn't appropriate.
  • jasdf, on 06/07/2008, -2/+13I find Gmail's SPAM filtering to be 100% effictive.
  • kr3mliyn, on 06/07/2008, -1/+10Mozilla
  • cgruber, on 06/07/2008, -0/+9Grandma?
  • ortucis, on 06/07/2008, -1/+10I still have 90 invites left.

    Maybe asking people for doing unspeakable things for those invites wasn't such a good idea.
  • AndrewDB, on 06/07/2008, -1/+8Invites are still there, they're just in a collapsible window.

    http://i28.tinypic.com/2itps8p.png
  • Alkine, on 06/07/2008, -0/+6what logo?
  • Neiby, on 06/07/2008, -1/+6I remember when people were trading Gmail invitations. There was even a website setup for people to basically beg for them. That's where I got mine. :)
  • tnoy, on 06/07/2008, -1/+6dugg down for burying for such a childish reason.
  • TheCoreh, on 06/07/2008, -1/+6It's already out now. For over 4 years. Why can't we know how was it called during development?
  • ho0ber, on 06/07/2008, -0/+5But.... that show is awesome!
  • bluntphallus, on 06/07/2008, -1/+6http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/290/xyzzygw0.jp ...
  • spinninnzen, on 06/07/2008, -0/+4Ask him how long its going to be before we can have the same functionality out of Google Talk as the in-Gmail chat client. Never understood why they have to be different if they are both created by Google
  • zizzy, on 06/07/2008, -5/+9ANOTHER IRRELEVANT COMPLAINT BROUGHT TO YOU THIS TIME BY ampm2
  • jasonpoon, on 06/07/2008, -1/+4I use the Better Gmail Firefox extension and its redesign UI.

    I wonder when will Gmail out of beta...
  • Megal, on 06/06/2008, -1/+4Word up.
  • inactive, on 06/07/2008, -2/+5beta4life, yo!
  • srg13, on 06/08/2008, -0/+3I think GMail is brilliant - especially compared to Yahoo and Hotmail... I find its generally very fast, and the minimalist user interface is very nice in my opinion.

    Not to mention that GMail has a spam filter that actually works - I regularly get spam in my Hotmail and Yahoo inboxes, but only one or two manages to make it into my GMail inbox in a year!
  • mrmacky, on 06/07/2008, -1/+4Not gonna lie, I liked the versions where you could both read the message and see your "inbox threads", in one window.

    Was it removed because of screen real estate, i.e, them trying to target those running their browser @ 800x600, and not wanting to display a narrow column for reading e-mails?
  • ithejosh, on 06/07/2008, -2/+5I've had Gmail for a long time now... I can't imagine my life without it nowadays.
  • Lokomis, on 06/07/2008, -0/+3QQ
  • zwaldowski, on 06/07/2008, -0/+3Actually, it was probably a nightly of Mozilla. Mozilla's browser chrome looked like ***** until they made Winstripe for the FF1 beta. Download a nightly of Seamonkey right now and it looks the exact same as those browsers with a different logo.
  • farmerbb, on 06/07/2008, -0/+3They were using an old version of the Mozilla Suite. Check the "m" logo in the upper right corner of those screenshots.
  • Cyona, on 06/07/2008, -1/+3All the programming tears that went into building GMail...
  • zwaldowski, on 06/07/2008, -0/+2Mozilla Suite, yeah. Hell, Seamonkey nightlies look exactly like that even with the newer logo.
  • quadvods, on 06/08/2008, -0/+2The outlook web access style of viewing a list of emails in a frame at the same time as the body would have been nice to keep..
  • Neiby, on 06/07/2008, -0/+2I agree, or at least 99.999%. It's rare for me to get spam in my inbox and it's extremely rare for good mail to get marked as spam.
  • dmkirt, on 06/07/2008, -2/+4Seems like I've been using Gmail forever. I cannot remember when I first heard of it.
  • norbiu, on 06/07/2008, -0/+2Call your mommy to tuck you in.
  • RIPtechtv, on 06/07/2008, -3/+5The best part is they are using an old verison of Netscape.
  • srg13, on 06/08/2008, -0/+1Yeah - I only get maybe three or four in my inbox in a year - while my spam folder gets up into the thousands every month.
  • kr3mliyn, on 06/11/2008, -0/+1Touché bluntphallus, seems Vista DOES have a valid use.
  • norz, on 06/14/2008, -0/+1The Greased Lightbox script gives you convenient buttons and keyboard shortcuts: http://shiftingpixel.com/lightbox/

    Requires one of these:
    * Firefox with Greasemonkey extension
    * Safari with GreaseKit
    * Opera 8+
  • norbiu, on 06/07/2008, -2/+3You're kidding me right? YM is the most bloated piece of dog ***** I've ever used. How is that better?
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