Mobile Gmail supported pictograms following a request from Google Japan

February 19, 2008 10:02 PM

From an article titled “Mobile Gmail users now can send emails with pictograms. Regular Gmail users also can receive emails with pictograms [jp]”:

Google announced on January 28th that Mobile Gmail, Google’s Web mail service for mobile devices, supported pictograms (emoji) of major mobile phone providers in Japan. Pictogram functions were also added to the regular Gmail service.

Mobile Gmail users are now able to send and receive emails that contain pictograms. And from February, regular Gmail users can also see pictograms on their PC screen and send emails with pictograms. That sounds great.

This news is reported on Google Japan Blog [jp]:

Since pictograms are widely used among mobile phone users in Japan, we wanted to allow Mobile Gmail users to use pictograms for their communication. This project was started following a strong request from us to make Mobile Gmail “pictogram-ready”.

As it reveals, it was originally an idea of Google Japan.