14 DAY TRIAL // Gmail has always been a very popular webmail service and, ever since it was officially released, it has been drastically improved with a large number of new functions. But what's more important is that since the day it was born and until today, Google has continuously improved Gmail in order to make it work faster and faster and, according to Wiltse Carpenter, Tech Lead, Gmail Performance, the company will continue to focus on this aspect in the near future too.
Gmail's loading times are pretty important for most users and, along with spam filters and POP3 support, it is one of the most applauded and praised features of the Google mail service. According to the Gmail team member, since the company has been working on the Gmail loading times, the service really became faster with approximately 20 percent, as it was working in its first days of availability.
"First, we listed every transaction between the web browser and Google's servers, starting with the moment the "Sign in" button is pressed. To do this, we used a lot of different web development tools, like Httpwatch, WireShark, and Fiddler, plus our own performance measuring systems," Wiltse Carpenter explained.
"We made good progress on every front. We reduced the weight of each request itself by eliminating or narrowing the scope of some of our cookies. We made sure that all our images were cacheable by the browser, and we consolidated small icon images into single meta-images, a technique known as spriting. We combined several requests into a single combined request and response. The result is that it now takes as few as four requests from the click of the "Sign in" button to the display of your inbox," he added.
Gmail was first released on April 1, 2004 and, for approximately 3 years, it was only available by invitation. However, most people who wanted a Gmail account could find an invitation quite easily because every registered member received 100 free invites supposed to be delivered to non-Gmail users. When Gmail was officially released, it quickly captured a large audience because of the large storage space (1 GB at that time). As the Google mail was improved, the storage capacity has also been increased, reaching the actual 6.7 GB milestone a few days ago.