Gmail was the Google email service that introduced emoji support in October 2008.
Google added emoji to Gmail while standard Unicode code points for the characters were still being developed. The feature was created in collaboration with au by KDDI, a Japanese mobile carrier whose networks already supported pictographic messaging. Gmail’s implementation used Google’s own emoji graphics and a Private Use Area encoding rather than the standardized Unicode emoji repertoire familiar on modern devices.
This timing is easy to mix up with Apple’s emoji history. Apple introduced its first Apple Color Emoji font to iPhone OS on November 21, 2008, initially with access tied to Japanese mobile-phone settings and carriers. Unicode later accepted a broad emoji proposal, and Unicode 6.0 released a major standardized set in October 2010.
Google’s work helped demonstrate that emoji could move beyond Japanese mobile-phone ecosystems into a widely used webmail service. Modern Gmail messages rely on Unicode and platform-specific rendering, so the same emoji may appear differently across operating systems, browsers, and fonts even though the underlying character sequence is shared.