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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-11T21:43:59+00:00

I’m wondering how it’s implemented in Gmail, that every time you receive e-mail, the

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I’m wondering how it’s implemented in Gmail, that every time you receive e-mail, the list of mails is automatically refreshed. It looks like the server is sending some kind of event to the browser, but how is it possible? Or maybe it’s simle: the browser ask the server for new messages every let’s say 2 seconds? But it would probably kill the performance…

Anyone have some ideas?

EDIT: OK, so if it’s the simple answer, how do they manage performance? When I send an email from an other account to the gmail account the view is "refreshed" almost instantly. You were saying about a simple function that returns true / false, but it must have some logic (db connection or reads some files). How they manage it?

See also: How is GMail Chat able to make AJAX requests without client interaction?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Dont know exactly which technoloy Gmail uses, but the concept is to open a channel – using reverse AJAX, comet or sprocket based techniques.

    Think of it as the client requesting the server for data, but the server does not return for one minute unless it has new mail. Using this technique, the client can almost show the results in a real time manner and it does not have to poll every 2 secs. Makes sense?

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