Utkarsh Sinha

You’ve heard about Google’s April Fools day. There have been some funny hoaxes like Google Gulp, Google TiSP, etc. They’ve even had press releases about the latest technology they’re working on (and you can’t be sure if its a prank or an actual project they’re working on).

And Google had initially used their April Fools Day technique to spread word about Gmail.

In 2004, they announced a free web-based email system, with one whole gigabyte of storage space. This was completely unheard of. Competitors offered 10mb, sometimes even 50mb of storage space. And you had to actually BUY email space if you wanted some 250mb or 500mb of storage.

It was the perfect way to spread word about a radical new service. People didn’t have instant access to it (invite-only). But they heard from those who did get invites (forums, IRC, etc). They’d talk about all the features gmail had, how amazing it was (no eye popping ads? WHAT?).

Spreading through word of mouth, the number of people wanting this service grew exponentially. Ideal for a marketing person.

And on the next April fools day (2005), they announced doubling the storage space. From one gigabyte to two gigabytes of storage. For free.

That was Gmail. Things worked perfectly for Gmail. And that is probably what a large number of people use these days.

Question: Is Google TiSP somehow going to be true? Google is going into the ISP market… so was TiSP metaphorically equivalent to the technology they’re developing right now?