Wonder what happens when you send an email? Google tells all with “The Story of Send”

The technology behind sending an email has become an afterthought to most of us. It’s not because the process isn’t potentially interesting, it’s because email has become such a huge part of our daily lives. Basically, we take it for granted.

Google decided to share more about what goes on behind the scenes with “The Story of Send“, which is a website accompanied by a cool video that tells you more than you ever thought you needed to know about the process of sending email.

Here’s what the company had to say about it today:

If you’re anything like me, you send and receive a lot of emails every day. But have you ever wondered where your message goes after you hit “send?” How does an email travel from your computer to your friend’s smartphone across the country or around the world?

We’re answering those questions with Story of Send, a new site that gives you a behind-the-scenes look into how all that virtual information makes its journey through the real world—from your Internet service provider to our data centers and beyond. Along the way, you’ll discover everything from where we filter for spam and scan for viruses to how we’re minimizing our impact on the environment through energy efficiency and renewable power.

This behind-the-scenes look is an extension of Google Green, the part of the company that focuses on using renewable energy to power its data centers.

Head on over to “The Story of Send” and follow the interactive timeline that Google has designed to enlighten you on how some of its backend processes work:

Be sure to catch the cool video, too: