Gmail Chat is one of the most popular online chatting services used by people around the world. You would be amazed to know that while Gmail was released in April 2004, it didn’t have integrated chat functionality until February 2006. However, since then, Gmail Chat has gone through various phases of development and has added lots of features to its bag. Here is a brief of how things have gone through.
Birth of Gmail Chat: The Initial Design
People at Google went through lots of design ideas, before finalizing chat “mole” – the pop up chat window. Take a look at a few of them
Chat within Threads: To maintain relatedness of chats to email which could be the reason for the chat.
Separate Tabs for Chats: Each chat opened in a different tab which gave enough space for chatting and also kept chat conversations away from Inbox
After testing with group of people and analyzing the findings, Google tried a design reminiscent of a sticky note that stayed up on the page at all times
After further testing, they simplified the design and finally came up with what you today use as Gmail Chat.
February 7, 2006 – The Release of Gmail Chat
Gmail received chat functionality on February 7, 2006, using the Ajax for server browser communication. Some of its initial features were:
- Simple design, worked within browser.
- Saved Chat history like email messages. These chats could be viewed and searched anytime.
- Came integrated with GTalk, so that users don’t have to separately login to their GTalk account to chat with their buddies.
Here is how it looked at release.
February 14, 2006 – Gmail Chat gets its First Emoticon: Hearts
A week after its launch Gmail Chat got its first emoticon in form of a heart. Users could use a combination of “less than sign” and “3” (<3). This would convert into a pink heart in Gmail Chat .
Here is how it looked like
May 11, 2006: Gmail Chat Learns New Languages
Gmail Chat added compatibility with 17 new languages. These were UK English, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Japanese, Korean and simplified and traditional Chinese
May 11, 2006: Gmail Chat learns to Speak
Gmail Chat added the feature of playing a little ping sound whenever someone sent a new chat message, so that the users could work in other windows without worrying about missing a message from their friends. This feature was already available in Google Talk.
November 28, 2007: Gmail Chat gets emoticons and Group Chat
In November 2007, it finally got rich emoticons, a break away from traditional emoticons. These were bright yellow in color and were offered in two shapes round and square. You can check our detailed post about hidden Gmail Chat smiley’s here.
February 22, 2008: Invisible Mode for Gmail Chat
Google added one of the most important chat features to its Gmail chat – The invisible mode- which makes the user appear, signed out on AIM network is very popular among users now. However there are ways you can check whether some is offline or invisible on Gmail Chat and Google Talk.
April 30, 2008: Edit Contacts from Chat List
Gmail enabled users to make edits to Gmail contacts directly from the chat list. All they need to do is to hover the mouse over one of the contacts to prompt a pop-up with contact details. When they click on the contact name, it automatically becomes an editable field. Simply type in the desired name and hit “enter” to save the new contact name.
November 11, 2008: Voice and Video Chat Feature in Gmail Chat
Gmail added voice and video chat to its mail .Users had to download small software to enable this feature. With this one could call and video chat with another Gmail user without using any other IM client like GTalk or Skype.
However there have been questions over the performance of Gmail Video Chat especially when one of the parties is in invisible mode.
January 21, 2009: YouTube, Picasa, Flickr and Yelp Previews in Chat
Users could now preview YouTube videos, Picasa and Flickr images, when someone pasted a link in the chat window. These previews could be clicked to load the actual video or image.
