Wishing Gmail a happy 20th birthday! You’ve largely grown now; please fix the spam

20 years ago Monday, Google introduced Gmail to the world, and The Chocolate Factory celebrated by enacting new rules that could reduce the amount of spam users receive.

Sure, it may have seemed like an April Fool’s joke in 2004, but now, with nearly 2 billion users, Gmail is arguably the most popular choice, along with Search and Android. has become Google’s most successful company.

Gmail’s ability to filter spam is better than other email competitors, but it’s not completely secure. Last year, the company announced measures targeting users who send more than 5,000 messages a day to their Gmail addresses. From now on, those who violate these regulations will face strict measures.

“Many bulk senders don’t appropriately secure and configure their systems, allowing attackers to easily hide in their midst,” Google warned last year.

A few months ago, all bulk senders started verifying emails to exploit loopholes, adding a one-click unsubscribe option to all messages, and new spam rate thresholds (users who specify messages (set daily based on the number of spam) is only 0.3% and is not subject to damage control requests for bounced emails.

“Most senders already meet these requirements, and for those who are still working on it, we`re sharing clear guidance to help,” Gmail security and trust group product manager said. “Doing so is crucial to close loopholes we know attackers are targeting, and will help make email safer for everyone.”

Many of the requirements are being rolled out in stages, but Gmail ’s 20th anniversary marks the day Google started rejecting non-compliant traffic.

“Bulk senders who don`t meet our sender requirements will start getting temporary errors with error codes on a small portion of messages that don’t meet the requirements,” Google wrote. “These temporary errors help senders identify email that doesn’t meet our guidelines so senders can resolve issues that prevent compliance … We strongly recommend senders use the temporary failure enforcement period to make any changes required to become compliant.”

For failing to adhere to certain requirements for bulk senders—alignment with an SPF or DKIM domain, proper header alignment, no header spoofing, valid forward and reverse DNS records, message formatting compliant with RFC 5322, and sending all messages using TLS—mass senders may encounter one of five error codes.

Google said it had received positive feedback from across the email ecosystem after announcing the change last year and was encouraged by how quickly senders were meeting the requirements.

Of course, a good presentation also has its drawbacks. In this case, the rules apply only to the individual’s Gmail account and not to accounts running on Google’s business productivity suite Workspaces.

Well, happy 20th birthday, Gmail.