--- title: Back in 2004, email seemed like a solved problem. But an... description: In 2004, email was considered a solved problem with basic inboxes and folders. A Google engineer named Paul used his 20% project time to build an email app... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/back-in-2004-email-seemed-like-a-solved-problem-but-an-engineer-at-google-had-different-ideas--ybo9w18wk twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Back in 2004, email seemed like a solved problem. But an engineer at Google had different ideas... | daily.dev og:description: In 2004, email was considered a solved problem with basic inboxes and folders. A Google engineer named Paul used his 20% project time to build an email app... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/back-in-2004-email-seemed-like-a-solved-problem-but-an-engineer-at-google-had-different-ideas--ybo9w18wk og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/YBo9W18WK.png og:image:alt: Back in 2004, email seemed like a solved problem. But an engineer at Google had different ideas... og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Back in 2004, email seemed like a solved problem. But an engineer at Google had different ideas... **[freeCodeCamp](https://daily.dev/sources/freecodecamp)** · 1 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary In 2004, email was considered a solved problem with basic inboxes and folders. A Google engineer named Paul used his 20% project time to build an email app centered on search rather than deletion. Gmail launched on April 1, 2004 with 1 GB of storage — a massive leap over competitors offering only megabytes — and fundamentally changed how people managed email. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Bugs Apple Loves](https://daily.dev/posts/bugs-apple-loves-o0kmoosxs) · Hacker News · 3 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#google](https://daily.dev/tags/google) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/back-in-2004-email-seemed-like-a-solved-problem-but-an-engineer-at-google-had-different-ideas--ybo9w18wk) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Back in 2004, email seemed like a solved problem. 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