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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.
The first of April perhaps...
I can't wait to see what Google's anti-spam technology is going to look like. You can't do a webmail service these days without one...
My first thought is that they're going to give one GB of text storage and forbid the use of the service to transfer binary attachments. (with limits on how many e-mails you can get from a particular sender per day and how big each message can be enforcing the rule so that good old usenet encoders don't work.) Therefore, they can give everybody a full GB of apparent storage, while older rarely-checked messages sit in compressed space... readable text always compresses well. :)
Yup, heard that right.
I don't know that this is neccessarily a good idea. Do you really want a corporation holding 5, 10, 20+ years of your email? What if you're under investigation? All the sudden everything you've said over the past 20 years is very easily accessiable.
"Well Mr. Jones, it seems as though you're awfully interested in increasing your penis size for some pre-teen lolitas.. What do you have to say for yourself?"
They must have had this idea for a while then:
Registrant:
Google Inc.
(DOM-425410)
2400 E. Bayshore Pkwy Mountain View
CA
94043 US
Domain Name: gmail.com
Created on..............: 1995-Aug-13.
Expires on..............: 2006-Aug-12.
Record last updated on..: 2004-Mar-31 16:50:22.
Either that or NetSol's in on the joke...
Sinepaw.org: Grape Winos
Many a true word in jest. I do not know exactly how the system will work, but there is enormous potential for abuse. Actually, just personal storage of large amounts of data is probably the least of the concerns. One could imagine a warez or porn distribution system based on small requests to a controlling site that then uses mail fowarding to deliver the content (thus pushing the bulk of the storage and bandwidth costs onto gmail).
I seem to recall a similar method of warez distribution used back in the AOL days. Store massive amounts in your (server side) e-mail box and transfer it to others instantly without using any of your own bandwidth. They could then download it at their leisure.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
In addition, they want to offer their searching capabilities so that users can search through their entire set of e-mail, I guess forever.
With all due respect to Google, and god knows they're one of the few companies that seems to get "it" right, what with uncluttered interfaces, unbiased services, and unobtrusive text ads -- Google also records the IP address along with the search terms of every search.
Anytime you've Googled on "anime tentacle rape", "venereal disease STD symptom", "P2P download", "closeted gay", "arguments for atheism" or "overthrow government", Google has recorded your computer's IP address and has tried to set a cookie in your browser. To Google's credit, the search still works even if you don't accept the cookie; but Google is keeping the IP and search term log -- forever.
After just a few hundred searches, you don't need to be a Kreskin to do a little data-mining and get a good idea of a user's interests, proclivities, and possible "deviancy" from his search terms.
My fear then, is this: will you be the only one who can search through your database of email, "I guess forever"? Or will Google be able to search it too. Or even if they lock themselves out of search or reading your email directly, will Google, as they do now for web searches, keep a log of the searches you make on your own email?
Again, you can tell a lot about someone if you have a list of all his Google searches, but you can probably learn even more and more immediate information if you have a list of his searches through his email.
Remember the "Halloween X" email recently released, from Mike Anderer to SCO about Anderer's attempts to raise money on SCO's behalf? Imagine if Anderer had been searching for that email before -- or after -- the release of the "Halloween X" letter; I suspect you could learn even more juicy details by seeing what search terms he used?
What if Richard Clarke and Condaleeza Rice has stored their emails in Google GMail? Of course, the government wouldn't store email in GMail -- but imagine if the people in analogous positions in your company did -- say the head of security and her deputies? Could Google learn much about your company's financial dealings from the search terms they used to review their mail?
What if you stored and looked for emails regarding your company's Non-Disclosure Agreement or upcoming patent for some new technology? Could a competitor glean import information just from your search terms?
If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, are you still answering "yes" to wanting to try out GMail for yourself?
It's simple: too much information concentrated into any one set of hands -- even hands as apparently benign as Google's -- invites abuse or -- even if Google never bends to that temptation -- tempts others to steal that data.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Or just give friends the account login like an FTP dump.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
That's right AOL. Don't believe me? Here's how it worked. Anyone who grew up on AOL knows what I'm talking about.
Each AOL account could have up to five screen names. Each screen name could have up to 550 e-mails* in their Inbox. Each e-mail could have a maximum file attachment of 15MB.
So...15MB times 550 is 8GB times 5 is about 40GB. That's per account, and thanks to the various account generation/phishing tricks, it wasn't uncommon to have several AOL accounts at any one time.
What did this mean? Well, it meant that AOL became one of the biggest warez havens in the blossoming Internet. And all with point and click easy, none of the file decoding nonsense of USENET.
How did AOL do this? I have no idea...but there were entire groups of people uploading warez non-stop so they could forward the mails around. At some point AOL cracked wise and started nuking attachments that had been downloaded X times. But for many years, it was glorious. Imagine sending several GB of software to someone with a single click of a button.
* actually you could have 550 in both Inbox, Outbox, and Read mail and various AOL tools helped you do this, bringing your capacity to a whopping 120GB.
- JoeShmoe
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-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
This is what I like about Google...they are thinking big and long term. You'd be crazy not to switch email account (over time of course). All I want is an email address without a digit and lots of space and with google I just might get both.
As soon as the service is out to the general public everyone on my contact list will be informed of my new email account.
-----
One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
The following has no evidence to back it and is idle speculation.
Could such moves lead to an attempt to shut down the distributed email system as we know it? Consider the following scenario:
Complete paranoia, but the cynic in me says 'what if'?
If you look at Google's press release on the matter, you will note it is dated April 1, 2004 UTC.
All of their other press releases are simply dated, without the timezone...
Hmmm.. That's odd. Wonder why?
1GB, that's a pretty hefty size. My concern is that such a wealth of storage is going to be abused by pirates.
Those of you who are familar with AOL back in the early days found their large capacity email to be a haven for piracy. Large file attachments that once initially uploaded, could be forwarded and shared with hundreds of people in seconds, once recieved, it could be forwarded again to yet even more people. All without the delay of re-uploading, nor even having to download the complete file.
I hope that Google has something up their sleave to preemptively nullify this problem before it starts. I used to make entertainment software for PC's and eventually had to disolve the S-Corp due to dwindling sales lost to piracy. The above mentioned method the result of...
Possible solutions would be to limit the size of attachments. Possible disallow forwarding attachments greater than 50MB. Dunno, just hope this is just paranoia talking and not an omen commanded by my Rice Krispies.
Come to think of it, you could write a client that automatically interfaces (for hotmail even, who cares, right?), that would automatically manage 100 or so accounts, including logging into each one occasionally to ensure the account stays active. It could then create a virtual email account that combines the storage capacity of each. Your main account then would automatically forward incoming mail from your "main" account to one of the 100 or so sub accounts for long term storage.
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
i wouldn't touch this service with a 10-foot pole given google's lack of a serious privacy policy. i didn't notice any statement regarding privacy in the announcement. but the privacy policy for the whole site includes, "Google may decide to change this Privacy Policy from time to time." also, do you know what google *really* does with those cookies?
talk about a profiler's goldmine. don't tell me any of you believe google (a for-profit company) wouldn't scan every last email for "marketing" reasons?
peace