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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.
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/
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
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.
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.
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.
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