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When Gmail arrived 20 years ago, people thought it was an April Fools prank

Google advertised 1 GB of free storage on April 1, 2004, and it sounded too good to be true. Here's what happened next.

Prior to 2017, Google's email service automatically scanned the text of each message not only to detect spam or malware, but to place relevant advertising alongside. After facing several lawsuits around that practice -- especially concerning matters of race, religion, health, finances, or sexual orientation -- Google said it would stop reading users' emails and use other data sources for contextual ads. As an elder millennial on the cusp of Generation X and a Gmail user from the beta days, I remember when email was the main method of communication with far-flung friends and family.

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