Google to Launch Free Mail Service?

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Google to Launch Free Mail Service?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Sunday February 22, 2004 @02:00AM from the hit-them-where-it-hurts dept.

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"."

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Certainly seems like they're planning for it... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-02-22 02:03 · 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 · 2004-02-22 02:14 · 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 · 2004-02-22 02:15 · 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
YahooPOPs! -- I'm LOVIN' it !!! by Amsterdam+Vallon · 2004-02-22 02:23 · 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.
The irony... by EvilDrew · 2004-02-22 02:24 · 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)
Re:I wish someone would... by Liselle · 2004-02-22 02:32 · 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."
Try alltheweb.com by gad_zuki! · 2004-02-22 02:45 · 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.
Re:Google Portal? by Blue+Stone · 2004-02-22 02:45 · 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
Re:I wish someone would... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-02-22 03:20 · 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 :)
Re:I wish someone would... by Reivec · 2004-02-22 05:35 · 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.
If you don't want blogs in your results; HOW TO by MikeCapone · 2004-02-22 05:58 · 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.

--
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
Re:Internal link/redirect by hazem · 2004-02-22 07:00 · 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.
How Google's email will work by Aspherical+Cow · 2004-02-22 09:52 · 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.