A recent post on ‘X’, formerly Twitter, went viral as the post claimed that Google was going to shut down its popular email service Gmail on August 1, 2024. The post has been viewed more than seven million times sending the netizens into panic.
“Google is sunsetting Gmail”, read the fake news release addressing 1.8 billion users of the service worldwide.
“After years of connecting millions worldwide, enabling seamless communication, and fostering countless connections, the journey of Gmail is coming to a close,” read the faux statement. Even the fraud showed screenshots of an official-looking email announcing its demise and insisted that it was not a joke. As more people started sharing the same convincing image, you would be bound to believe it.
The post, however, was based on an original email notifying that Google only changed its default Gmail view which used to be ‘basic HTML’ to a new and more colorful view. This change was made in January 2024.
“The Gmail Basic HTML views are previous versions of Gmail that were replaced by their modern successors 10+ years ago and do not include full Gmail feature functionality,” the previous email read.
The post, though, was able to create a lot of panic among the Gmail users as it was viewed more than 4 million times by Thursday evening. But to some people, the screenshot of the post appeared to be completely fake or hoax.
The viral post left many people confused as one of them wrote in social media, “really confused if this is real or not”.
Another user wrote, “Hope they shut it down, no security or privacy.”
Google, however, came forward to declare publicly that Gmail is “here to stay” using the same platform to rebuff the false claim. Hence the worried netizens are requested to stay calm as the post has been denied by none other than Google itself. Gmail service is not going anywhere anytime soon.
Google, however, has a history of shutting down its products and services even when they are popular. So many Google products and services are removed by the company that a devoted website known as ‘Killed by Google’ lists 293 Apps, services and hardware in all. In 2023 alone, Google killed its Stadia gaming service, its Snapchat-like YouTube Stories feature, and it began closing old and inactive Gmail accounts. None of them, however, was as popular as the Gmail service. So it was really surprising that the fake news about shutting down the world’s most popular email service spread like wildfire across the globe.
A communications expert told the BBC it was ‘a classic example’ of the dangers of misinformation.
“Most people believe what they see online, and there’s a lack of tools and processes to verify the facts,” said Richard Bagnall, boss of communications evaluation firm CARMA.
“Whilst social networks can act without responsibility and pump unfiltered, unverified information to their audiences, this Gmail incident won’t be the last case we’ll see.”