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World's First 1GB Web Mail May Not Be From Google

Posted by timothy on from the fancy-that dept.

xPertCodert writes "According to this article, the world's first 1GB web mail is not going to be Google, but from the largest Israeli web portal. With 30Mb per attachment, it seems to be quite useful as well. Looks like an idea of extra-large e-mail storage is becoming really hot these days."

26 of 537 comments (clear)

  1. Is this a joke submission? by Liselle · · Score: 5, Informative

    First 1GB email service? First of all, what is Spymac, chopped liver? They already have a free email service with 1GB of storage.

    I'm going to issue a press release... I will be the first person to send data over phone lines. Maybe it will be hardware you install in your computer! Buy my stock!

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    1. Re:Is this a joke submission? by Tumbleweed · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Yeah, I sent a note to the editor about that before the posting went live, but no correction on it as yet. *shrug* Welcome to Slashdot.

    2. Re:Is this a joke submission? by Liselle · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Yeah, I've lost count of how many times I've sent in corrections that I saw when it was in "Mysterious Future" mode. I give up. Why even bother with the link at all, if they don't check/care about the emails the subscribers send?
      Welcome to Slashdot.
      Seriously. :P
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    3. Re:Is this a joke submission? by dr.badass · · Score: 4, Informative

      First of all, what is Spymac, chopped liver?

      Yes, actually. Spymac is pretty awful in my experience. The mail service is no exception.

      First, they ask you for about six pages of information vs. Gmail's two fields. Next, their 'activation' mailing takes two weeks Then you find out that you have a 10MB attachment limit on your 1GB mail account. Then you find out that the advertized POP3 access doesn't, you know...work. (It doesn't at this very moment on my account.)

      The end result is a pretty run-of-the-mill webmail service. It made me realize that the promising thing about Gmail isn't the 1GB, it's the features.

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  2. I wonder if they filter out... by SCSi · · Score: 5, Funny

    attachments that end in .rar or .r[0-9][0-9] :) I swear, I was only "checking my email".

  3. Google can do it, but can Walla? by LostCluster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This definitely seems like an attempt to steal Google's thunder, but you have to ask if an Israel-local portal company really has the global reach that Google has to be able to offer high-performance ad-supported e-mail to everybody.

    I'm not quite sure that they're going to have enough non-local ads in order to serve the world in the way that Google now seems pretty confident in its global geotargeting systems.

  4. ah extra room by jacquesm · · Score: 5, Funny

    I really needed that for all that spam...
    (is that kosher food ?)

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  5. spymac by morcheeba · · Score: 5, Informative

    Spymac already offers 1Gig Email for free. Gmail's conversations sound like the most useful feature of their service. beta review

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  6. Spam by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    In other news, world's first 1gbyte spam messages began circulating late yesterday afternoon.

  7. Attachments? by InvaderXimian · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Why a 30MB attachment limit? They could just say 50TB attachment limit and nothing would really be changed since most mail servers have a 5MB attachment limit, at most. Very few of them have a bigger limit.

    1. Re:Attachments? by Tripster · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So true, I run a couple of mail servers for ISPs and we have 3-5MB limits imposed on incoming file sizes. This is for a couple of reasons, firstly we shouldn't have to load up the virus scanner even more with huge files, as it stands the scanners will skip over files over a certain size, but I'm sure the virus writers are eventually going to note this and start sending multi-megabyte virus files.

      Next is the dialup issue, if any of you have ever done tech support for a dialup pool you will have run across the clueless user who gets some huge attachment that will take at least 30 minutes to download, but clueless user is so used to his mail checks taking 30 seconds or less he never lets it download and at that point his email becomes "stuck" he thinks because everything behind said attachment is never being downloaded, nor is the attachment being deleted as it should.

      Finally let's not forget here that email is one of the worst methods for moving files around, especially largish files, I mean the overhead required to encode the file in text format for sending means you practically double the original size of the attachment to send it. Throw in some bounces and you waste megabytes of bandwidth.

  8. Cute by Pahalial · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But..
    a) Unknown and unheard of company
    b) Physically quite a ways from most wired countries, as opposed to widespread google (Akamai?) servers
    c) Israeli only so far, vs. however many localizations (let alone simple translations) google/gmail has/will have.
    d) None of the advanced searching/sorting features that Gmail has been promising and actually do sound fairly nice.

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  9. How can web portals afford this? by KingOfBLASH · · Score: 4, Interesting

    1 GB is a lot of information, and it has to cost a decent chunk of money to allocate that much storage for every user, and to pay for bandwidth for 30MB attachments, and for the rack space and electricity. How are web portals like google making back the cost of 1GB email?

  10. So what? by Seoulstriker · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Everyone with a Gmail account, including myself, knows that email storage space is not the only part of an effective email system. The Gmail interface is so simplified, efficient, and intuitive, that there will probably not be anything coming out that can compete with it. (ask people who both have Gmail and Spymac and see what they think)

    Not only that, but the Israeli service requires money whereas Gmail is free. I am confident that Gmail will be the only truly successful free gigabyte email service.

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    1. Re:So what? by glinden · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Exactly right. GMail asks and answers the question, "What e-mail client would you build if you never had to delete any of your old e-mail?"

      GMail is designed to organize your information for easy access later. Messages are threaded, part of a conversation on a topic. Searching your mail is emphasized. And, because it's web-based, you can access you mail and any information in your mail from any computer.

      The 1G of storage is just a means to the end.

  11. My Own Announcement by BandwidthHog · · Score: 5, Funny

    I would like to announce that I am now the very first Slashdot user to point out that Spymac.com offers a 1GB email service. That's right, you heard it here first. (and, uhh, don't scroll up.)

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  12. Insightful?? by FortKnox · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why a 30MB attachment limit? They could just say 50TB attachment limit and nothing would really be changed since most mail servers have a 5MB attachment limit, at most. Very few of them have a bigger limit.

    So... if I wanted to make an attachment and my mail server didn't allow anything over 5MB (and under 30MB), I'd be screwed, right?

    Wait! There's a free webbased email service that offers 1GB of space and has a 30MB attachment limit!!

    Welcome to economics 101... encourage everyone to switch to your product...

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  13. Great, a new web-based hard drive for me... by Professr3 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Ok, so how long will it take before someone registers 100 accounts or so, writes a program to break their files into chunks, and stores them as email attachments? It would take me about 2 hours to write a file manager that stores large stuff like my star trek collection or backups on their mail servers...

    When in doubt, mod +1 insightful and pray...

    1. Re:Great, a new web-based hard drive for me... by russx2 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Ok, so how long will it take before someone registers 100 accounts or so, writes a program to break their files into chunks, and stores them as email attachments? It would take me about 2 hours to write a file manager that stores large stuff like my star trek collection or backups on their mail servers...

      ... about the same amount of time it'd take Google to implement detection for this sort of behaviour. They're not exactly idiots over at Google and I'm sure they've thought about this. Should be especially easy to detect as well (lots of multiple attachments the same size, lack of normal activity etc.).

      It's a pretty risky endeavour anyway (for backups that is) as you're running the risk everyday of being caught and having your accounts wiped. Not exactly a bullet proof backup solution is it?

  14. Lovely! by Eric_Cartman_South_P · · Score: 5, Funny
    Instead of Google reading your e-mail, the Mossad will.

  15. This will be a boon by rsilvergun · · Score: 4, Insightful

    to those to dumb to work a CD-RW. I mean that. I talk to people all the time whose computers are hosed, but they can't format and reinstall because they couldn't figure out how to write their god damned crap to a CD. With this, let'em send an email (they've already figured out email usually) and download the stuff later. Sure, it's a ridiculously dumb, slow way to back up their data. But hey, if they weren't too dumb to figure out thier CD-RW I wouldn't be posting this comment.

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  16. Re:Israel? by McAddress · · Score: 5, Funny
    I'm German, so I feel qualified to answer this comment. Given the choice between an Israeli webmailer and Google, I'd choose Google. Without taking into account features, performance, etc. etc. he picks Google based on the fact that the other one is from Israel. This is accurate? How is the fact that he is from Germany qualify him to post that?

    Perhaps he meant that as a German, he was well qualified to make anti-semetic statements.

  17. Did EVERYBODY miss the train on this? by CrystalFalcon · · Score: 4, Informative

    Now, listen. Google's email service is not about the one-gigabyte limit.

    Ok, so it's a huge number, and so everybody seems to have stared themselves blind at it, and missed the print underneath.

    Google's email service is about having your email searchable. About retrieving old email by searching for a part of it. About eliminating the need for folders, dates, keywords to remember your mail. About a all-in-one-bucket, always-available mail store, that's accessed by searching rather than sorting and browsing.

    Forget about the one-gigabyte limit. That's just tweaking parameters that others already have. It's nothing really innovative.

    What's really new is their entire approach.

  18. Re:Spymac is the joke by mtnharo · · Score: 5, Informative

    Their service is real and works fine. I have an account: greengeek AT spymac DOT com. However, the problem with their service is due to the fact that they were once a very small mac-users forum/service. When Google made their announcement, spymac gained notoriety for having a 1 gig email service up and running already. Their subscriber base jumped from They got /.ed and farked, as well as having articles in several mac sites and I think zdnet or cnet too. Also, most of the services of the site are still very new, some are still in "beta" and are lacking features. They are deserving of pity for the raping of their bandwidth and servers, but they probably should have expected it too.

  19. BZZZZT WRONG by devphaeton · · Score: 4, Insightful

    30mb attachments? 1GB storage?

    NO NO NO NO!!! Email was not designed for this.

    furthermore, many email clients are not equipped to deal with attachments to the tune of 30mb. Most notable examples are Outhouse/Outhouse Express. Their attachment limit is somewhere near 1.7mb (for a 36.6Kbps dialup connection) and around 5.4mb for most broadband (most mailservers capped at 128Kbps).

    There is a hardcoded timeout interval in there that causes retrieval and sending of a message of that size to fail if it doesn't see EOF go by in a certain amount of time.

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  20. 1GB = $2 if you fill it. Advertising pays by billstewart · · Score: 4, Informative
    Sergei or Larry said that 1GB costs them $2, and that sounds about right - the cost of disk drives is approaching $0.50 / GB, and you need some duplication for reliability and some computers to drive the disks, and amortize some operations cost, so you could probably do $2 in quantity. That's not $2/month, it's just $2.

    And that's if you fill the space - while some people can do that overnight (:-), it'll take a while before their average user receives enough email to get close to that much, and the cost of disk capacity is still on a deep dive, so by the time the average user fills their 1GB, it'll cost $1 or $0.50 instead of $2.

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