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It was the American Independence Day in 1996 – a deliberately chosen day. Developers Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith released their free email service Hotmail that day.

After a little more than 20 days – at the end of July, 1996 – the service was already being used by 20,000 users of the still young Internet. A respectable success, but the two founders wanted more.

The first growth hack in history

And so Smith and Bhatia discussed things with their investors. The discussion focused on the question of how the company could quickly get new users without a significant marketing budget.

The result of the brainstorming was a single line at the end of each e-mail sent via Hotmail:”PS: I love you. Get your free e-mail at Hotmail.” This is reported by author Adam L. Penenberg in his book* Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter; How Today’s Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves.

If you clicked on the blue “Hotmail” link, you were redirected to a registration page. There, you would receive all the relevant information on Hotmail’s offer. In addition, you were given the opportunity to create your own free e-mail account immediately. (That wasn’t standard at that time.)

Microsoft pays 12 million US dollars

Even though nobody knew the term “growth hack” in 1996, it was exactly what the Hotmail founders had succeeded in doing. With a simple trick, the company generated several million users – without having to place an ad.

While Hotmail took six months to break the 1 million-user barrier, the company reached the second million just five weeks later. When Microsoft took over Hotmail for 400 million US dollars just under a year later, the service already had 12 million users. At the turn of the millennium, there were 65 million users.

Today, Hotmail no longer exists. Since 2013, Microsoft has been promoting the first growth hack in history under the name Outlook, which has now spread to millions of computers and smartphones.

Mounir Lamouri works as a software engineer at Google – more precisely, he works in the team for the company’s own browser Chrome. in Chromium Blog, Lamouri reports about a serious change included in the upcoming version 64 of the browser.

Starting in 2018: No more autoplay in chrome

As the software specialist writes, the new chrome version, which is due to be released in January 2018, will be extended by a particularly user-friendly feature.

Specifically, the Google browser will be supplemented by a technology that blocks all autoplay functions. This means that site operators and advertisers will no longer be able to surprise Chrome users with video and audio content that starts automatically with sound.

With this step, Google is sending out a clear signal for more satisfaction among its own users – and there are not just a few of them. In Germany, 34 percent of Internet users use Chrome. No other browser is used more often.

The exceptions

Although Google turns off the autoplay feature by default, there are some exceptions. Users of version 63 and above can create exceptions for individual pages in the browser settings.

For example, if you use YouTube a lot, you can bypass the block and allow videos to start automatically. Everyone should be aware that this permission also applies to advertising.

Even without access to the settings, the technology behind the browser detects when you manually start videos on certain pages over and over again. As a result, the algorithm may reactivate the autoplay function for these situations. If you don’t want this, you can undo it in the settings.

Despite the built-in protection, advertising can start automatically with sound. This is due to the settings of the site operator, if they consciously decide to present you with the ads.