The first Gmail was associated with Garfield the cat.
In the early days of the internet, settling on the perfect username sometimes required finding the right niche email service — like the first G-mail, which gave cat lovers the ability to show off their feline fervor. Those first email accounts weren’t handled by Google, owner of today’s incredibly popular Gmail service; instead, they were run by the studio behind the Garfield comic strip. Paws, Inc. — owned by Garfield creator Jim Davis — launched “Garfield’s G-mail” around 1997, though internet historians have few details to go on about its origins or eventual demise. What is known is that the service allowed users to sign up for their own email address that ended with “@catsrule.garfield.com.” G-mail was, after all, marketed as “email with cattitude.”
Internet lore suggests the original G-mail was shuttered when Google’s Gmail emerged, though online sleuths say that’s unlikely, considering that Google didn’t launch its email service until 2004, and Paws, Inc., moved its email service to e-garfield.com around 2001. Plus, Paws, Inc., never used the “@gmail.com” domain name. It’s more likely the digital mailboxes were eventually shuttered once interest died off, as happened with many now-outdated remnants of the internet’s past. Garfield comics, however, have remained popular with cartoon enthusiasts, and a new animated film is slated to hit theaters in 2024, returning the fictional tabby cat to the screen for the first time in 15 years.
Today, Google is both a noun and verb, but at one time, the tech giant’s name was simply a typo. In 1997, Google founder Larry Page and fellow Stanford student Sean Anderson were coming up with titles for a data-indexing website when the name emerged. Initially, Anderson suggested “googolplex” (one of the largest describable numbers), which was then shortened to “googol.” Anderson went online to see if the term was available to purchase for a web domain, but misspelled the word, typing “google” instead. The name stuck: Google.com was registered as a domain in September 1997, and its search engine feature debuted a year later. But building Google’s more popular services would take some time — the search engine wouldn’t release its email accounts for six more years, and at first through invite-only. Eventually, of course, Gmail grew into the digital mainstay it is today.
