Gmail turned 9 this month



Gmail turned 9 this month, and before we know it, it will be heading off to middle school. It's grown up fast. In fact, it knows 57 languages now — the latest one being Cherokee.

Google's email platform has greatly evolved since its inception, with a lot of user feedback taken into account.

"Gmail was inspired by one user’s feedback that she was tired of struggling to find emails buried deep in her inbox," the company said on its official blog. "So we built a new email that leveraged the power of Google Search. You told us you were tired of spam, so we set to tackling that, and today your feedback makes it possible for Gmail to filter out well over 99% of incoming spam."

The company posted on Wednesday an infographic outlining how it's changed in time.

We almost forgot we had to wait a whole two years for GChat. Not to mention you had to be invited to sign up for an account by an existing user for the first three years. And although Gmail got its first Android app in 2009, the site didn't officially leave its beta test phase that same year.

For a full look at how the platform has evolved, check out the infographic below (click to enlarge) 



Mashable composite, images via iStockphoto, kemie, and logo courtesy of Google
By Samantha Murphy  15 hours ago