EMAIL Full Form: What is EMAIL?

When it comes to communication, Email is a very common term. Email has revolutionized the way of communication. It has removed many limitations of communication and allowed us to communicate with more than just texts. But most people do not even know that the term ‘Email’ is just an abbreviation and there is also a full form of Email.


In this article, we have briefly covered the most important topics of Email, such as Email full form, what is Email, a brief history of Email, Email protocols, benefits, and more.

What You Will Learn


What is the full form of Email?

The meaning or full form of Email is "Electronic Mail". Email can also be written as 'email' or 'e-mail'. After the introduction of the Internet, email is the most essential service that works with the Internet. It helps people connect easily, and shares their thoughts or files using a unique email address. 

The term electronic is used here to indicate that communication is established with the use of electronic devices, while the term mail indicates digital messages (or files, or both) entered through those devices.

Email Full Form

The full form of Email can be explained as:

E Electronic
Mail Mail

Let’s talk about what an Email is:

What is an Email?

Email is one of the easiest ways to exchange digital data (such as texts, documents, media files, etc.) between electronic devices over electronic communication systems using the Internet. It is an effective and relatively easy way of communication and connects people from all over the world. Emails can be sent anywhere in the world to any single person or multiple people. This is known as broadcasting.

These days most companies are using email to connect with customers as well as other business partners, marketers, etc. One of the big advantages of email is that we can also use some basic formatting, font design, font colors, and HTML structures to make our email more attractive. To send a message or mail, we only have to get the email address of the recipient.

Note: An email address refers to a unique id or address at which a mail is to be sent. It usually contains a unique username and the domain name of service providers, which are joined with a sign ‘@’. For example- example@gmail.com, where ‘example’ is a username and ‘gmail.com’ is a domain name of the email service provider (which is Google in this case). 


Brief History of Email

Back in 1960, the email system came into existence. However, there were some limitations in the early days, such as email service was possible only when both the sender and receiver were online. Additionally, another limitation was that email could only be sent or received when both users were using the same computer. 

Later in 1971, an American computer programmer named Ray Tomlinson implemented an email service on the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) system. At that time, there was no Internet and ARPANET was the precursor to the Internet system. He was the one who introduced the '@' sign that helped distinguish a username from the users' system name. With continued development, he could eventually come up with a program to send messages to various computers connected via ARPANET, as well as to send files. 

Since Ray's email system was limited to a single network, i.e. ARPANET, more developments took place. In 1978, an Indian programmer named Shiva Ayyadurai created an email software program and in 1981 registered copyright under the name 'Email'. He is the person who actually coined the term email and it is Shiva's email system that we currently use.

Email Protocols

There are mainly three different types of protocols used in email. They are:

• IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol)
• POP (Post Office Protocol)
• SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol)

IMAP allows people to check the received mails from anywhere within the network range. POP allows authenticated users to recover (or download) mails from the remote server.  SMTP is used to forward emails from one server to another; it also stores tags, access provider name, recipient name, and email address.

Benefits of Email

Some of the most common benefits of using email are the following:


Emails are delivered much quicker than traditional postal services.
Emails can be sent anytime (24 hours a day and 365 days a year).
Emails can be sent to an individual or group of people simultaneously.
Emails are free to use on the Internet.
It is not compulsory to download any software; emails can be directly accessed using any browser (called webmail).

Popular Email Service Providers

Nowadays, many email service providers have emerged. However, the most popular email providers are Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo! Mail. Gmail (short for 'Google Mail') is the most popular of the three.

Hotmail

Hotmail was developed in 1966 by two individuals, named Jack Smith and Sabeer Bhatia. Hotmail is one of the oldest email service providers that we still have currently. It became available for commercial use in 1996. Soon, the company was acquired by Microsoft in 1997 and Hotmail was renamed MSN Hotmail. The name was later changed to Windows Live Hotmail before the final rebranding as Outlook.com in 2013.

Gmail

Gmail is the most popular email service provided by Google. It was first provided as part of a beta release in 1994. At the time, there were some bugs or issues that the company was working on during testing. Later in 2009, Gmail was released for commercial use. Google was a popular brand, and therefore, Gmail surpassed all other competitors and became increasingly successful. Additionally, it was free to use, provided up to 1 GB (which is now 15 GB) of free storage for email, and supported multiple languages.

Yahoo! Mail

Yahoo!  Mail was released in 1997 by Yahoo, a US-based web provider that was founded in 1994. Yahoo! Mail was liked by people and was an instant hit due to its easy user interface and features. Besides, it was made available in about 27 languages, more than the competitors of the time. This contributed to some extent to the success of Yahoo's webmail service. 


Email vs Gmail

The main difference between email and Gmail is that email is a way to exchange electronic messages or digital data between electronic devices via the Internet, while Gmail is one of the email platforms (or client, or service provider) that lets users use email service with easy GUI support and extended features. It is not easily possible to use an email service without an email client or email service provider.

Summary

Email (stands for ‘Electronic Mail’) is a means of sending texts, documents, media, and other digital files between electronic devices via the Internet. Besides, an email client or platform is always required to obtain an email ID or email address to begin using email. Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, and Hotmail are some most popular email clients (email service providers).




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