Slashdot Mirror
Google's Gmail To Offer 1GB E-mail Storage?
tstoneman writes "Wow, according to the New York Times (free reg. req.), looks like Google is really trying to push the envelope by offering 1 GB free storage for e-mail users via a service called Gmail, still in the testing phase, so that users never need to change their e-mail address. In addition, they want to offer their searching capabilities so that users can search through their entire set of e-mail, I guess forever. CNET News also has more details." Update: 04/01 02:38 GMT by S : The Google site now has an official press release, naturally dated April 1st.
ZDNet Article
MSNBC Article
(\(\
(^.^)
(")")
*This is the cute bunny virus, please copy this into your sig so it can spread
AN FRANCISCO, March 31 -- Google, the dominant Internet search company, is planning to up the stakes in its intensifying competition with Yahoo and Microsoft by unveiling a new consumer-oriented electronic mail service.
The new service, to be named Gmail, is scheduled to be released on Thursday, according to people involved with the plan. It will be "soft launched," they said, in a manner that Google has followed with other features that it has added to its Web site, with little fanfare and initially presented as a long-running test.
E-mail has become a crucial weapon in the competition to win the allegiance of Internet users, who often turn to one or two Web sites as the foundation of their online activities.
As Microsoft's MSN and Yahoo are preparing to attack Google's role as the first place most people turn to carry out an Internet search, Google is hoping to counter those assaults by moving onto the turf its competitors have already claimed in providing e-mail services as part of their portals.
Google is starting far behind Microsoft, which claims 170 million active users for its Hotmail service, America Online and Yahoo. But Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., is planning to play on its information search strength to compete with the existing services.
Google will offer consumers better access to searching their own e-mail and could well upset the industry balance by offering free access to services that previously were only available by paying a monthly subscription fee.
The standard industry practice is to offer tiered mail services, providing only limited storage for free and charging higher fees to users who want to preserve larger numbers of e-mail messages. Google, by contrast, is planning a service to be supported by advertising that will permit its users to store very large amounts of mail at no cost.
One internal Google study put the operational cost of maintaining electronic mail storage at less than $2 per gigabyte.
In recent weeks, Google has picked up the pace of updating and adding new features to its basic search service, as part of its effort to position itself as a strong business ready to sell shares to investors in what is expected to be the most popular initial public offering by a Silicon Valley company in years.
Early this week, for example, Google polished its appearance, making the company's array of services more accessible. The company also moved its Froogle catalog shopping search engine into a more prominent position on the first page of the Google Web site.
Google has been closely watched in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street during the past year for any indication about its plans for an initial public stock offering. The company has steadfastly declined to respond to speculation.
Its chief executive, Eric Schmidt, told The Wall Street Journal this week that the company was exploring many options, but he explained at a recent industry conference that Google does not necessarily need to move forward on an offering any time soon.
Google's entry into the e-mail business will sharpen the lines between the major competing portals like Yahoo and MSN and Internet service providers like AOL and Earthlink. Google recently lost its position as search provider for Yahoo, which has turned to a company it acquired, Overture, to take advantage of the growing amounts of advertising revenue available on search pages.
To date, Google has maintained a strong relationship with AOL. But as it enters a business that competes directly with one of America Online's core offerings, it could find that AOL, like Yahoo, begins to view Google as a more direct competitor.
Microsoft has also dramatically increased the importance of building its own capability to offer search services of its own. The company has been showing a range of features that it hopes will make its MSN service more of a draw to Web users who rely on search engines as starting points for finding information and services on the Inter
Even though the article notes that 1GB per user will cost Google only about $2 to maintain (they didn't say if that was a annual cost or what), if they did get 100M users that would be pretty expensive!
The number of users who will actually use that much storage is very small. I have a large email volume, plus SPAM, which I save (but filter into another folder with spamassassin). My email archive goes all the way back to 1997 and is still not much larger than 1GB. Even with SPAM, I think most users will take months or even years to reach a 150-200MB, much less 1GB.
And of course, it's very likely that Google will aggressively filter SPAM in the same way that Yahoo! or the others do.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Check it out:
http://www.gmail.com/
Actually.... .Mac doesn't offer a 1GB email package. The 1GB iDisk is what costs $350 (it's much more useful than 1GB of mail, still a ripoff though.) .Mac's 200MB mail costs $90/year, for the curious.
source
I've got more mod points and GMail invi
It's owned by Google alright!
Registrant:
Google Inc.
(DOM-425410)
2400 E. Bayshore Pkwy Mountain View
CA
94043 US
Domain Name: gmail.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.: 1995-Aug-13.
Expires on: 2006-Aug-12.
Record last updated on..: 2004-Mar-31 16:50:22.
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
Thalasar
Hell, look at googles own news release date
http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/gmail.html
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Open the artcicle and press Ctrl or cmd f and search for the word gigabyte.
The article mentions maintaing email storage is as cost effective at $2 per gig.
The New York Times was an unwitting accomplice. The CNET article is very explicit in the claim though . . .cool.
2000 - MentalPlex
http://www.google.com/mentalplex/
2002 - PigeonRank
http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html
[shrug] It sounds like a Google AF joke to me, but it seems like it'd be a bad idea for Google to mock free e-mail when it would be a good idea for Google to get into that (even if it wasn't a gig worth of space). If it's a joke, then it's almost like they're saying, "Haha, free e-mail. Riiiiiiiiight."
As far as bandwidth and space are concerned, think about it... they have 4 billion web pages cached. How big's a web page? 4 KB? Not even including images, that's a lot of hard drive space. And bandwidth goes without saying.
Of course, they probably want attention. They got it. But Google gets attention for pretty much anything.
Posting anonymously for fear of mod retaliation from those who still think the sun revolves around the earth. :) If you still want to argue, please answer these questions:
How many meters are in a kilometer?
How many grams are in a kilogram?
How many bytes are in a kilobyte?
Actually no, he's right. 1000Gb DOES == 1Tb. You probably have the decimal mutiples that hard drive manufacturers use mixed up with the binary multiples that everyone wishes they used. 1000 Gigabytes == 1 Terabyte. You're thinking of Mebibytes and Gibibytes. Try an RTFM here and here.
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
No, I reckon its far more likely that they've released this on / near April 1 because the possibility of it being an April fool's joke is generating almost as much interest as the service they'll be offering. Double the interest, double the anticipation and double the publicity. I'd love to know how many clicks the gmail site has got by the day's end.
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
An excellent looking Job Oppurtunity!
I don't think gmail is a joke. It looks like Google's real April Fool's joke is here:
http://www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job.html
Well using the only e-mail address I could find on the site I e-mailed google to ask them if it was an April fools joke. So far this is all I got back:
Hello,
Thank you for your feedback. Gmail uses completely automated
technology to give you search in your inbox, highly relevant ads, and
other useful information. Your comments will help us make improvements
to our email service and policies as Gmail evolves over the next
several months from a limited testing period to wider availability.
Sincerely,
The Gmail Team
All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
A quick whois shows that gmail.com is indeed registered under Google Inc.
The link in the press release http://gmail.google.com doesn't work, but http://gmail.com works. Also there is a Gmail FAQ page.
Intersting Terms and Conditions from the gmail.com info page:
Gmail Program Policies
To uphold the quality and reputation of Google Gmail, your use of Gmail is subject to these program policies. If you are found to be in violation of our policies at any time, as determined by Google in its sole discretion, we may warn you or suspend or terminate your account.
Please note that we may change our policies at any time, and pursuant to our Terms of Use, it is your responsibility to keep up-to-date with and adhere to the policies posted here.
Prohibited Actions
In addition to (and/or as some examples of) the violations described in Section 3 of the Terms of Use, users may not:
Generate or facilitate unsolicited commercial email ("spam"). Such activity includes, but is not limited to
sending email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act or any other applicable anti-spam law
imitating or impersonating another person or his, her or its email address, or creating false accounts for the purpose of sending spam
data mining any web property (including Google) to find email addresses
sending unauthorized mail via open, third-party servers
sending emails to users who have requested to be removed from a mailing list
selling, exchanging or distributing to a third party the email addresses of any person without such person's knowing and continued consent to such disclosure
sending unsolicited emails to significant numbers of email addresses belonging to individuals and/or entities with whom you have no preexisting relationship
Send, upload, distribute or disseminate or offer to do the same with respect to any unlawful, defamatory, harassing, abusive, fraudulent, infringing, obscene, or otherwise objectionable content
Intentionally distribute viruses, worms, defects, Trojan horses, corrupted files, hoaxes, or any other items of a destructive or deceptive nature
Conduct or forward pyramid schemes and the like
Transmit content that may be harmful to minors
Impersonate another person (via the use of an email address or otherwise) or otherwise misrepresent yourself or the source of any email
Illegally transmit another's intellectual property or other proprietary information without such owner's or licensor's permission
Use Gmail to violate the legal rights (such as rights of privacy and publicity) of others
Promote or encourage illegal activity
Interfere with other Gmail users' enjoyment of the Service
Create multiple user accounts or create user accounts by automated means or under false or fraudulent pretenses
Modify, adapt, translate, or reverse engineer any portion of the Gmail Service
Remove any copyright, trademark or other proprietary rights notices contained in or on the Gmail Service
Reformat or frame any portion of the web pages that are part of the Gmail Service
Use the Gmail Service in connection with illegal peer-to-peer file sharing
Security
You must promptly notify Google of any breach of security related to the Services, including but not limited to unauthorized use of your password or account. To help ensure the security of your password or account, please sign out from your account at the end of each session.
Account Inactivity
Google will terminate your account in accordance with Section 9 of the Terms of Use if you fail to login to your account for a period of nine months
I think Gmail might be real. Because this is clearly Google's joke for today:
http://www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job.html
Heh. "Massively parallel lava lamps".
"Don't bother me with that pocket calculator stuff" - Deep Thought
They have a detailed FAQ about it, registered gmail.google.com and even international domains like www.gmail.se (even if it's not even mentioned by Google officially yet), professional terms of use documents, etc. The news about Gmail is also said to have been published by Cnet back in March.
They might have used this special date to gain extra PR from the confusion about it, however I doubt it's a joke.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Ah...it's back....here's the REAL Joke
I've dirtied my hands writing poetry, for the sake of seduction; that is, for the sake of a useful cause. --Dostoevsky
"'It's going to go down in history as one of the biggest pranks ever pulled,' wrote one message poster at Slashdot.org, which bills itself as a news provider for nerds."
Too bad they referred to you just as "one message poster" instead of LostCluster. I'd demand a correction.
Macintosh humor! MacComedy.com