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Google to Launch Free Mail Service?

prostoalex writes "The New York Times article on Yahoo and Terry Semel's management (soul stealing form required) mentions Google preparing "to offer a free e-mail service, people close to the company said, in a bid for Yahoo's most important source of loyal customers"."

25 of 329 comments (clear)

  1. Certainly seems like they're planning for it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    $ whois googlemail.com

    [snip]

    Registrant:
    Google Inc.
    (DOM-302458)
    2400 E. Bayshore Pkwy Mountain View
    CA
    94043 US

    Domain Name: googlemail.com

    Registrar Name: Alldomains.com
    Registrar Whois: whois.alldomains.com
    Registrar Homepage: http://www.alldomains.com

    Administrative Contact:
    DNS Admin
    (NIC-1467103)
    Google Inc.
    2400 E. Bayshore Pkwy Mountain View
    CA
    94043 US
    dns-admin@google.com +1.6503300100 Fax- +1.6506188571
    Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
    DNS Admin
    (NIC-1467103)
    Google Inc.
    2400 E. Bayshore Pkwy Mountain View
    CA
    94043 US
    dns-admin@google.com +1.6503300100 Fax- +1.6506188571

    Created on..............: 2001-Jul-18.
    Expires on..............: 2005-Jul-18.
    Record last updated on..: 2003-Dec-30 15:39:37.

    Domain servers in listed order:

    NS1.GOOGLE.COM 216.239.32.10
    NS2.GOOGLE.COM 216.239.34.10
    NS3.GOOGLE.COM 216.239.36.10
    NS4.GOOGLE.COM 216.239.38.10

    Alldomains.com - The Leader in Corporate Domain Management

    $

    1. Re:Certainly seems like they're planning for it... by the+uNF+cola · · Score: 5, Informative

      Or they could be saving money on law suits for trade mark stuff.

      If someone took googlemail.com and used it, they could lose their trade mark and cause confusion, with or without knowing it. Paying $200 for 5 or so years for a trademark'd domain is sure cheaper than keeping a lawyer in court.

      --

      --
      "I'm not bright. Big words confuse me. But Wanda loves me and that should be enough for you." - Cosmo

    2. Re:Certainly seems like they're planning for it... by fbg111 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Looks like the Google home page "www.google.com" will remain as it is - light and uncluttered. "www.googlemail.com" will probably be another tab link on the main page, like "Groups", "Images", "Directory", and "News" are.

      --
      Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
  2. Almost a dupe by GillBates0 · · Score: 3, Informative
    Most of the arguments/speculations in this story were addressed in this earlier Slashdot story (incidentally submitted by me). A few useful links there:

    Google Eyes New Email Service, Expansion on Monday January 19, @04:02PM

    Posted by simoniker on Monday January 19, @04:02PM
    from the ultimate-internet-moogles dept.
    GillBates0 writes "According to a CNN/Reuters story, Google is developing a service to attach its lucrative keyword-based advertising to email: ''I'm sure Google is getting more and more concerned about locking in users. It wouldn't surprise me if they did something very sophisticated with e-mail,' said Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch.com, who tracks the industry.' Apparently, Google has purchased an e-mail management software maker and registered the domain name googlemail.com. The article also speculates that Google is slowly on the way to becoming a full-fledged portal, with the gradual addition of more and more portal-like features like Froogle."

    --
    An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
  3. YahooPOPs! -- I'm LOVIN' it !!! by Amsterdam+Vallon · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you have a fairly advanced toolset of software knowledge, you can download YahooPOPs! over on the SoresForge page.

    What is it? Well, YahooPOPs! is an open-source initiative to provide free POP3 and SMTP access to Yahoo! E-mail accounts. It works in both Windoze and Unix.

    What it does is emulate a POP3/SMTP server and enables popular email clients like Outlook, Netscape, Eudora, Mozilla, IncrediMail, Calypso, etc., to DOWNLOAD AND SEND emails from Yahoo! accounts.

    It's amazing, bro. I had NO idea it'd even work. I had to download it to believe it. There are also other similar programs out there for MSN, Lycos, etc.

    No self-respecting webmail user should be WITHOUT it.

    --

    Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
  4. The irony... by EvilDrew · · Score: 5, Informative
    The story is about google from the New York Times, and yet somehow the submitter didn't give us the obligatory NYT/google link. ;-)

    Here ya go. (The same article is also available in The Ledger)

  5. Re:I wish someone would... by Liselle · · Score: 5, Informative
    ...but I really wish SOMEONE would do some "duplication and evolution;" maybe THAT would light a fire under some asses at google.
    Now that you mention it, you've reminded me of something: I've been told that AlltheWeb has gotten pretty good these days, and my own experiences with it have been mostly positive. They are tied to Overture, but the results seem to be pretty good, and the home page is blissfully plain.
    --
    Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
  6. Re:Makes sense by jacoplane · · Score: 2, Informative

    There's an interesting interview with Google co-founder Sergei Brin about the future of google advertising.

  7. Re:Next? Maybe Google Emacs... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Google would want a UI that humans can understand.

    You mean like Vi? :^) Google Keyboard Shortcuts has a UI similar to Vi's. None of that control and meta Emacs nonsense.

  8. Try alltheweb.com by gad_zuki! · · Score: 5, Informative

    I use alltheweb when not using google. Between those two I generally find what I want.

    Alltheweb is a bit more international than google (I believe its hosted in Europe somewhere) and is owned by Overture who sells google lots of search info.

    About us page here.

    They also seem to have a knack for lowering the importance of weblogs, which seems to be a big issue with some people nowadays.

    1. Re:Try alltheweb.com by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      You can generally tell how good a search engine is based on how often it searches.. Alltheweb has always lagged behind in terms on how often they search/how many pages they search/etc - and more importantly how often they come back.

      Here's site stats from one of my sites - a very large site dedicated to clubbing - one interesting thing to note here is that MSN has very recently (this month only) aggresively scanned my site - but will they come back and re-scan alot of those pages? (last visit for microsoft was feb 11th..) - alltheweb hasn't even seen ~20% of the website in all of it's scanning, so how is it supposed to index me? In comparrison, Google comes back every few days (grabbing my main index pages almost nightly, a large percentage of the inner pages at least once/month)

      MSIECrawler 22737
      Googlebot (Google) 15518
      Inktomi Slurp 3410
      Jeeves 2306
      Alexa (IA Archiver) 1731
      Fast-Webcrawler (AllTheWeb) 907
      Lycos 863
      Turn It In 434
      larbin 413
      WISENutbot (Looksmart) 101

      -mark

  9. Re:Google Portal? by Blue+Stone · · Score: 4, Informative
    "One of Google's mayor strenghts is its simple interface. When compared to other search engines including Yahoo, Google's interface seems very clean and simple, and also the way the whole site is put together."

    Yahoo's search page is also pretty simple, but probably not what people generally think of using when searching with Yahoo.
    Maybe that's just a question of priorities - which set of features gets on the 'front' page. So long as Google keeps its front page the simple one, that probably won't be an issue.

    --
    Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
  10. Re:Google MusicSearch? by mobby_6kl · · Score: 3, Informative

    AltaVista already has (and had for some time now) this feature

  11. Re:I wish someone would... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    You know, if you use syntax, you nearly always get what you are after on google.

    Instead of typing:
    K8NNXP motherboard reviews
    (for example)

    type:
    "motherboard" +K8NNXP +review
    You will be sure to get a result from that :)

  12. Re:The question is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative
    I hate to spoil it for a lot of you people, but Google is no longer run by the engineers.

    That's totally false. The CEO you mention is Eric Schmidt, who has a PhD in computer science and is the author of Lex, the automatic scanner generator. The founders still hold controlling interest in the stock. Google is the most engineering-driven company you're likely to come across.

  13. Re:True, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    I agree, but Google isn't very relevant anymore regaring searches.
    I still use it but if the search doesn't get a good hit within two pages I switch to Teoma which usually has the relevant information on the first page.
    Everything you've stated above as being positive Google attributes also apply to Teoma.
    Google has crossed the line when it's core service which is to provide relevant search results and it's need to sustain itself economically are at odds with one another.
    I don't want a new Hundai every other year I want a new Porsche every year is the attitude I see displayed by Google and it shows in the search results. In their efforts to raise the bottom line they have lost site of the bottom line.

  14. Re:I wish someone would... by Reivec · · Score: 5, Informative

    I just searched "motherboard reviews" on google and about 9 out of 10 links it came up with DID take me to actual reviews, so I am not sure what your complaint here is. I am hearing more and more people trash google for having too many ads and not enough content but I have personally not once found this to be a problem on google. I always find what I want pretty damn quick there.

  15. Usability by MochaMan · · Score: 3, Informative

    Ok, I'm a software developer, I've got a bookshelf full of cryptography books and one lying at my bedside. But... until a mail client or webmail service makes encrypted email just as easy as regular email it's not worth my time.

    By "easy" I mean that I should literally have to do nothing to use it. If I have to create a keypair it should be when I sign up, and I shouldn't have to ever need to think about it again. I should have a "send encrypted" button beside the "send" button or a preference. I shouldn't have to get my friends to mail me their public keys, the service/client should obtain them automatically somehow. Essentially I shouldn't have to do a single thing more difficult than today's webmail services.

    I really don't have anything top secret enough to say to my friends that I would find value in encrypted mail. The huge inconvenience that is the current state of encrypted mail just isn't worth it to me... and it definitely won't be to my mum, or non-tech friends.

    However, if someone can do encrypted mail without any added inconveniences, I will be the first to sign up.

  16. Re:Google Portal? by Rai · · Score: 3, Informative

    Actually, Google already has a lot of extra services here. But like you, no matter how many new services they offer, I do hope they keep the front page clean and minimal as it is now.

  17. If you don't want blogs in your results; HOW TO by MikeCapone · · Score: 5, Informative

    They also seem to have a knack for lowering the importance of weblogs, which seems to be a big issue with some people nowadays.

    Here's a simple way to get most blogs out of your results in google or any other search engine (personally I use Gigablast as my primary):

    Type search query plus "-blog"

    Et voila!

    Of course it can't help it if some pages are ranked high because they are linked from blogs, but I don't think that anything from the user-side can change that.

  18. Re:Internal link/redirect by hazem · · Score: 4, Informative

    The way it works (I believe!) is that once you've done your search, all of the search result hyperlinks go through a redirect on google.com.

    That is how Yahoo! seems to work, but not Google. For example, if I search for "Slashdot" on Google, I get this as the first link (right-click, copy link location):
    "http://slashdot.org/"

    in Yahoo!, I get:
    "http://rds.yahoo.com/S=2766679/K=slashdot/v =2/SID =e/l=WS1/R=1/H=0/MI=other/*-http://rdre1.yahoo.com /click?u=http://www.slashdot.org/&y=028A85020D5FD4 C2&i=482&c=8540&q=02%5ESSHPM%5BL7ls~lw%7Bpk6&e=utf -8&r=0&d=wow-en-us&n=E9D45H3DU8S41MO9&s=1306&t=&m= 4038FB5A&x=01914BFE9E6908BB"

    When Yahoo! started doing that is when I stopped using Yahoo.

    From looking at these results, I don't think Google really has any idea what links I selected.

  19. Re:Internal link/redirect by Adam9 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yeah, it happens on Google, just not as cluttered.

    Taken from a search for Slashdot:

    <a href=/url?sa=U&start=1&q=http://slashdot.org/&e=74 17>

  20. Re:Actually, there already is a Google OS by ahogue · · Score: 2, Informative
  21. How Google's email will work by Aspherical+Cow · · Score: 5, Informative

    According to a friend of a friend (I know, I know), Google email will place targeted advertisements in the email based on the content of the email! They plan to convince everyone that the data will not be kept, stored, or used after the ad has been placed. Why would people choose google over yahoo, hotmail, etc? They are offering 1GB of storage for free! Yes, one gigabyte for every user.

  22. Re:Actually, there already is a Google OS by toddestan · · Score: 2, Informative

    It would only be a GPL violation if they distributed the binaries for their Google OS without the source code. Since Google OS is only used internally at Google (as far as I know), then they are not in violation of the GPL.

    Still, it would be pretty neat to see Google OS if you ask me.