Gmail is one of the most popular email services in the world. It accounts for over a third of all opened emails globally, according to the email marketing company MailChimp.
So it’d be shocking and inconvenient for many if Google decided to shut down Gmail. But that’s what one person claimed in a viral post and screenshot to X viewed 8 million times. VERIFY reader Christina texted us to ask if the claim was true.
THE QUESTION
Is Google sunsetting Gmail?
THE SOURCES
Killed by Google, an open source site tracking apps, services and hardware Google has shut down
THE ANSWER
No, Google is not sunsetting Gmail.
WHAT WE FOUND
Gmail is not shutting down any time soon, according to Google’s own social media accounts and blogs.
On Feb. 22, 2024, an X account with nearly 100,000 followers posted a screenshot that appeared to be of an email in which Google said it will make Gmail accounts inaccessible after Aug. 1, 2024.
But hours later the official Gmail X account declared that “Gmail is here to stay.”
Google’s official blog for Gmail makes no mention of the service’s imminent demise. Its most recent blog post was a Feb. 6, 2024 article about avoiding common cybersecurity mistakes.
Killed by Google, an open source site tracking apps and services Google has shut down, does not list Gmail. Killed by Google lists four services Google plans to end later in 2024, including one that Google plans to shutter in December 2024.
Some, like those behind Killed by Google, are critical of Google for its history of killing features, apps, services and hardware — 293 in total, according to Killed by Google. On Feb. 22, the same day the post about Gmail went viral, Google announced it would shut down the standalone Google Pay app in the U.S. on June 4, 2024.
Google also recently sunsetted Gmail’s basic HTML view in January 2024. Basic HTML view was a simplified version of Gmail that allowed people to open the email service when using unsupported browsers.
Once it was sunsetted, people who used basic HTML view were automatically switched to Gmail’s standard view, which is the same version of Gmail used by most people. Those people did not have their Gmail accounts deleted.
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