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Google's Gmail Goes Into Beta for Blogger Users

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the a-gig-will-cover-ya-for-awhile dept.

deadpixel writes "Gmail, the 1gb webmail service offered by Google, has gone into beta. Blogger (owned by google) users have first crack at the service. Besides the massive storage, the free service boasts a sophisticated spam filter, no pop-ups/banners, and gives you search results relevant to the emails you receive automatically. Bring on those attachments!"

14 of 350 comments (clear)

  1. You need to be an active blogger by maddu · · Score: 5, Informative

    You need to be an active blogger to get access to GMail. I have multiple Blogger accounts. But they gave me access only in those accounts where I have been active lately.

  2. Privacy is not my main concern with Gmail by Notorious+B.I.G+Bird · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is being blown so far out of proportion. Seriously. As countless others have said, our email is scanned all the time by third parties for spam and viruses.

    If you have concerns about Google scanning your email to place unobstrusive, sometimes-actually-useful text advertisements next to your email, then there is a solution. DON'T FLIPPING USE IT! That's all there is too it!

    The thing that I'M concerned about is if they pull a similar move that Apple did with mac.com accounts. "Oh yah they'll be free forever", then two years later, once everyone is hooked on free @mac.com email addresses, they turn around and say they're going to charge $99 dollars per year. Excuse me? I dont think so. My mac.com email was my main email for nearly two years and as soon as they pulled that shit, I cancelled my account, bought my own domain, and now have free email for life. Apple was hoping that users would pay because they had been using that email address as their main email and wouldnt want to switch. Well it didnt work on me and yo should have read the mac message boards when this happened. People were pissed!

    I do think Gmail is a cool idea. Being able to store a gig of email so you (as an average user anyways) never have to delete email and have the best search engine in the world to search through old emails is awesome. But what if their idea is to get you hooked so you wont ever want to give it up, then start charging a fee for it? Even though it is worth probably $100/year, I would tell them to shove their bill up their ass and move on. This is why I won't use Gmail.

    1. Re:Privacy is not my main concern with Gmail by jdreed1024 · · Score: 5, Insightful
      This is being blown so far out of proportion. Seriously. As countless others have said, our email is scanned all the time by third parties for spam and viruses.

      If you have concerns about Google scanning your email to place unobstrusive, sometimes-actually-useful text advertisements next to your email, then there is a solution. DON'T FLIPPING USE IT! That's all there is too it!

      Seriously. A friend of mine went into a rant about this the other day, and I pointed out that he has a hotmail account. It boggles the mind that people would trust Microsoft, which is KNOWN to have questionable (if any) ethics and morals, and yet be suspicious of Google, which is known to have good ethics and morals (ie: refusing to accept payment for search result ranking, and penalizing folks who purposely try to manipulate the results for personal gain).

      --
      There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
    2. Re:Privacy is not my main concern with Gmail by x4A6D74 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Y'know, it's not like it's horribly difficult to block those ads anyway. I use Firefox with the AdBlock extension, and generally speaking those google ads show up in their own iframe ... which AdBlock is smart enough to block. So my systems all have "advertisements.google.com" (or whatever it is -- haven't had to look at it in a long time) in their blacklist. Thus, if I had gmail, my mail would still be scanned, but I wouldn't have to deal with the ads. So while the privacy concerns may still exist, at least the second half of the problem is gone.

      And honestly, as my dad was quick to admonish me in my younger days, "email is like a postcard." There's nothing to stop a bazillion people from reading it somewhere between the initial and final servers. So if you don't want your email to be read, you should already be enciphering it. It's that simple. Anything I have to send to someone that I seriously do not want anyone else to read, I encrypt -- and if they don't have PGP, I make 'em get it (generally, the people I truly need security with understand the desire for security and are willing to cooperate).

      So am I surprised that Gmail can/will scan your email? No. Does it bother me? No -- because they won't be able to scan my private messages anyway.

      --0x4A6D74

  3. Got this yesterday by boredMDer · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yesterday I signed in to BlogSpot just to check for this, and when you log in to the main page, on the right hand side there is a GMail ad.

    Click yes, answer yes to all of the questions that follow, and you have your very own GMail account.

    I have had this for what, 24 hours now I guess, and GMail is the best webmail interface I've ever seen.

    The one thing I don't like so far is that links, elinks, or links2 don't work with it. They do support javascript AFAIK which is what GMail is basically comprised of, but that's my only gripe.

    Can't wait for POP or, preferably, IMAP access. Even more preferably, IMAP over SSL.

  4. What's in a name? by fleener · · Score: 5, Funny

    Gmail really hits the Gspot. All you virgins can just look confused and mod me down.

  5. Re:1gig? by cybotix · · Score: 5, Informative

    actually the correct term for 1,024 bytes is mebibyte, for 1,048,576 bytes is gibibyte. mega/giga are decimal prefixes, so 1 megabyte = 1000 bytes, and 1000 megabytes = 1 gigabyte. (google calculator is using the old convention)

  6. Re:Details? by kbsingh · · Score: 5, Informative

    login to the blogger account, and if you are amongst the selected - there will be a message to indicate an 'invite to try gmail' on the right side of the screen.

    Not all blogger users have been invited. And people who are joining blogger now after the announcement are not getting accounts.

  7. Gmail vs. Spymac by cks3 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I set up one Gig accounts on both Gmail and SpyMac that I've had people sending attachments and emails to to see how they hadnle reaching a GIG. so far, Gmail is only up to 127MB and SpyMac is only at 27MB (but their servers would seem to be a day behind on listing my new email). So far, I have discovered that Gmail's spam filter has caught one actual spam message, and suddenly blocked 5 of 15 messages from one person with no clear reason why. Also, the ad bots only scan the body text of the emails, as all attachment only emails have been ad free. cksampleiii@gmail.com and cksample3@spymac.com if you are interested in contributing to the experiment.

    --
    http://www.sampletheweb.com
  8. The Gmail scanner... by Beautyon · · Score: 5, Informative

    doesnt present any ads to you if the content of your email is a PGP encrypted message.

    --
    ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
  9. Re:1gig? by AlecC · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is a piece of distortion introduced by disk drive manufacturers. I think Connor (now expired) first introduced it, at the time that disk drives in the low number of gigabytes were appearing. They started sizing drives with a gigabyte counted as 1000 honest Megabytes. I think Connor needed to do it because with honest gigabytes, their drive (a rotten, unreliable one it turned out to be) would not make the 4 Gigabyte mark, though everybody elses's did. To their shame, the other drive nanufacturers followed. So for all disk drives, a Gigabyte now meant 10^3*2^20, not 2^30. A sad world, my masters.

    --
    Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
  10. heh.. by rebelcool · · Score: 5, Informative

    i got it a few days ago. It is a cool service, but is it the best thing since sliced bread? nope.

    I don't see why people think gmail's spam filter is all that great - so far (and this may be due to beta issues, a lack of training etc) its allowed about 50% of spam to my account through. I've got a couple spam infested accounts forwarding to gmail to test this out.

    as for the ads, on most messages they're not even there and when they are they're very small and placed to the side of the page like google's search engine text ads. I don't even notice them. So its not like they're inserted into your mail really. And at least google doesn't attach "get your hotmail address now!" to the bottom of every outgoing email.

    So while it is cool (the best feature is the seamless conversations), it's not going to be for everyone, or cause a mass exodus from existing mail services.

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    -

  11. Re:1gig? by Z-MaxX · · Score: 5, Informative
    no jackass --- you can't just make up your own units
    Ah, but he's not. Internation System of Units (SI) Binary Prefixes

    Be bold and be proud of your geekdom! Say "mebibytes" and "gibibytes" in public!!

    --
    Dr Superlove 300ml. I use my powers for awesome
  12. For those who are curious... by citking · · Score: 5, Informative
    ...as to what the actual mail interface looks like I took a few screenshots for ya:

    Inbox

    Example message w/ text ads present

    The only thing different is the "@gmail.com" e-mail addy at the top...I cut mine out just to avoid any potential issues...sorry.

    --
    "This food is problematic."