Facepalm: Don’t believe everything that you read online, especially when it comes from a social media post. Some internet users were in a frenzy recently after a screenshot apparently showed an email from Google stating it was “sunsetting” Gmail. The message was, of course, not real and only a joke, but it’s still been viewed 6.7 million times and gained 1,247 reposts. It also prompted Google to respond to the hoax.
The post on X included an edited message sent from Google. It read that as of August 1, 2024, Gmail will officially be sunsetted, marking the end of its service. “This means that as of this date, Gmail will no longer support sending, receiving, or storing emails,” the notice explained.
The post was satire, naturally. While Google is infamous for the number of products and services it has added to its graveyard over the years, Gmail is massively popular, with almost 2 billion users worldwide.
What Google has killed off is the basic HTML version of Gmail, which lacked many of the service’s features and was only kept around for those using very slow internet connections and ancient web browsers.
this is insane. I hate this company pic.twitter.com/pXBRezPAyX
– Daniel (@growing_daniel) February 22, 2024
The fake post uses an edited version of the notice Google sent out to tell customers that the basic HTML version of Gmail was being killed off.
The post did fool a lot of people, enough that Google felt the need to respond. The official Gmail X/Twitter account posted a single line that read: “Gmail is here to stay.”
Gmail is here to stay.
– Gmail (@gmail) February 22, 2024
Something that Google really is shutting down in the US is the Google Pay app. With (most of) the rest of the world now using Google Wallet instead of Google Pay, the United States will also be transitioning to the former. The Google Pay app will be shuttered on June 4. Users will be able to continue viewing their balance and transferring funds to their bank account after June 4 by going to the Google Pay website.
Hoaxes are easy to come by on X, especially now that people can pay for their blue verification checkmark. One of the more famous examples came in 2022 when a person pretending to be Eli Lilly crashed the pharmaceutical company’s stock price after they tweeted it would no longer charge for insulin.
