Prehistoric GMail Message

April 30th, 2008 · by David Bradley >> 7 Comments

This isn’t so much a tip, as just a bit of fun. Open up your GMail account. Click “All Mail” to show all your messages. Now, click “Oldest” to take a trip back in time to your first Google Mail message. Mine was the welcome message from Google itself dated May 18, 2004, although inevitably there is a spam message in there too, dated December 31, 2001 (which is obviously wrong).

Oldest GMail

So, what’s your oldest GMail message, did you beat me?

The “Oldest” link will also show you how many messages you’ve accrued in your account. Currently, I’m sitting on 14,316, but I know for a fact that I’ve deleted great tranches of messages in the past and my main GMail account is not my main email address.

GMail count

Thanks to factoryjoe for asking the original question on Twitter.

Share or bookmark:

7 responses so far ↓

Chris Messina // Apr 30, 2008 at 4:40 pm

Cool — thanks for reblogging!

I might suggest adding the #gmail hashtag just to make people’s replies easier to find!

http://hashtags.org/tag/gmail/
http://twemes.com/gmail
David Bradley // Apr 30, 2008 at 4:45 pm

Ah, cool. I might reblog about hashtags at some point too

db
Chris Messina // Apr 30, 2008 at 4:46 pm

Looks like a better hashtag is:

http://twemes.com/GmailTwitterMeme
Hsien Lei // Apr 30, 2008 at 6:29 pm

My oldest email is also my Gmail welcome message dated on June 20, 2004! And I’ve got 11400 emails.

Hsien Leis last blog post..Eye on DNA Headlines for 30 April 2008
Paul // May 2, 2008 at 11:02 pm

I did this the other day and I was surprised how long I’ve had a gmail account. I think my Yahoo account goes back to the late 90’s.

Pauls last blog post..Psystar Open Computer Tested
David Bradley // May 3, 2008 at 1:19 pm

Yeah, I had a Bigfoot account, when they first came out, which I guess would have been around 1993-ish…I think Bigfoot was swallowed by MS and subsumed into Hotmail, correct me if I’m wrong…

db
seo // May 3, 2008 at 8:16 pm

For some reason I have one from 2001 as well. I’m sure Gmail was not even around back then :S

seos last blog post..A few quick updates