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Gmail Addresses For Sale
challahc writes "For the low, low price of $199, you too can be one of the lucky testers of Googles new Gmail service. Just Ebay It! This CNet News story has the details." Bill Walsh adds "The account for hackers@gmail.com is asking 200 dollars! Is it a good idea to buy anything that's in beta? Couldn't Google just wipe out all of the beta accounts when the service starts up?"
the news is always so fresh
This CNN [http://news.com.com] story?
We all know the editors don't read the articles, but do they even read the submissions?
hackers@hotmail.com is now for sale! asking only 400 USD. Goes to highest bidder!
Investing forum
Its not like people buy weird stuff off Ebay anyway... aaaaaaaaaye?
**FREE** Track and view your phone's via CellID and/or WIFI and/or GPS
there's a sucker born every minute. gmail sounds pretty neat, however i'm willing to wait for the public opening. some people i'd see spending $200 for one of these accounts... yahoo/netscape/microsoft employees associated with their respective free mail... if they get in and see what it looks like, they can get ready to add countering features to their sites faster.
It pains me that I have a Google gmail account. And no invitions to sell. (I got it through blogger, who offers the accounts to those who have a certain post rate... if you have an even higher post rate than myself, you get two invitations... which my friend has, but refuses to give to me to sell.)
Afterall people it's a free service. Why are people so bent over for Google?
Pay a crap load of money for a beta account for a service that will be free sooner or later anyway. What are you gaining from getting this beta account? Bragging rights? Thats a hefty price for bragging rights.
there are currently over 190 Gmail invitations for sale on ebay. Link[ebay.com]
-- the only good thing the French ever did was two chicks at one time
Couldn't Google just wipe out all of the beta accounts when the service starts up?"
Um... yeah.... that's why they are selling it NOW, hello.
There's like 4 pages of this stuffs. hackers@gmail.com is already at $200
I can imagine that there will be a rush of registration when it goes out of beta. Unless the beta testers have already taken all the "cool" addresses, and only the "hotstudabc666" ones are left...
Clever signature text goes here.
This is pathetic... I like google just as much as the next guy, but at the end of the day it's just e-mail. Before I'd fork over $200 for an e-mail address I'd register my own domain and create a tricked out one of my own.
I do wonder though: does google allow the transferring (with or without accompanied transfer of money) of accounts at all or are they awarded on a per-person basis? In fact, the same account could be shared by a variety of people.
I plan to plan / Dutch course in The Hague
But then again, if people really do pay that much money for a damn name, then there's not much one can do about it. It just sounds kind of stupid to me.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
NEWSFLASH: CNN does not stand for "C|Net News"!
I have a G-mail account. I know many people who are interested in getting one, so I'll just make sure I'll g-mail them content which contains the words 'e-bay' 'beta' and '$199' and the advertisement on e-bay should come up pronto at the end.
This is a third party sale through Ebay... Google is not involved with the sale of these addresses. At least take time to understand the post...
gmail is brilliant. i have an account (free, thank you) and the advertisement are off to the side and are as easy to ignore as the google ads on millions of other web pages.
It's too bad this e-mail address is most likely going to get spammed like crazy...
challahc writes "For the low, low price of $199, you too can be one of the lucky testers of Googles new Gmail service. Just Ebay It! This CNN story has the details." Bill Walsh adds "The account for hackers@gmail.com is asking 200 dollars! Is it a good idea to buy anything that's in beta? Couldn't Google just wipe out all of the beta accounts when the service starts up?"
Hackers? Bill? eBay? CNN? Cnet? Google? GMail? Beta?? $199 (cost of Linux Walmart PC?) After seeing every one of those keywords appear in their own slashdot story each day, seeing them in ONE story at once just boggles the mind.
Cover your eyes and click this link!
To answer your questions:
No.
Yes.
Please, just because it's on eBay doesn't mean it's worth buying. Some people out there really need to realize this fact.
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
I hope hackers@gmail.com has good spam filters.
I had a problem with my earthlink account once... I called tech support, and was basically told to go F$$$ myself... So I emailed their CEO, and the next day I had a phone call from his personal assistant on my voice mail... and the problem was fixed immediatley... :)
Tony
hard core geek-ware
hackers@gmail.com: It was $200, then a story about it was posted on Slashdot, and it is now $800.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well, hacker@gmail.com may be "pretty", but as for other Gmail addresses, there are numerous Gmail invites which were never bid on at all, sold for a pitiful $5, etc.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
... google had its own slashdot section?
a world in progress...
...or cmdrtaco@gmail.com? ...or how about: google@gmail.com? ...or how about: gmail@gmail.com? ...or how about: test@gmail.com? ...or how about: gmale@gmail.com? ...or how about: microsoft@gmail.com?
[YAWN]
Nothing to see here folks. please move on.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Like: No spam. Not a single freaking message. Either they have an excellent filter or I haven't spread it around enough. Let's try an experiment: sclifford@gmail.com. Guess that'll be a good test of their spam filter. Cringe.
Anyway, the interface is uncluttered - just the gmail logo and a "star" flag for important messages. Everything else is hyperlinks or dropdowns. It's simple and fast.
But as a web application developer, I'm underwhelmed so far.
I think a simple icons-w/text-based GUI is easier to work with and not terribly bandwidth intensive. Anyway, there's no way to import my contacts yet, or my address book, or a PST file (or other mail format), or import mail from another service (that's stretching).
Anyway, while I think it's crass to sell your gmail account (and probably isn't kosher), doubly so for those who buy one. It's free, people - get a blogger account and make your own. Caveat emptor - it ain't worth $199.
I made about 3 posts in 2 months and I got one.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
sure...a gig for all my spam to go to...hotmail doesn't give me that
I'll take it. Email me (andrew .at. bulletmagnet.com)
Thanks
I see all of the posts about "why would anyone pay for a free email account?", etc. I got mine about 5 minutes after that CNET story first hit on Friday. I immediately went to Ebay and searched for "gmail." After several screen refreshes, a "Buy It Now" listing for $19.99 popped up. I snapped it up immediately. Why? Even though my name is not that common, someone already has it registered on Hotmail and Yahoo. So I have to add numbers, etc., to my name and I have never liked that. It was worth $20 for me to get my own name at Gmail.com. The question about couldn't Google wipe out the Gmail accounts when it's out of beta is ridiculous. The first people they gave Gmail accounts to were Google employees and "friends of the company." Why would they piss those people off by canceling the beta accounts and making them then compete for usernames with the rest of the unwashed masses? They could, but they won't. Finally, if you have used Gmail, it is a damn good email service. There are few tweaks they need to make - the contacts management functions lags far behind Yahoo and Hotmail, for example, and, to my knowledge, there is no way to have desktop email alerts such as you get with Yahoo Messenger or Microsoft IM - but there is no question that they will fix these. Flame on, but I think that Gmail will ultimately surpass Yahoo and Hotmail for web-based email.
I can see why people would want a gmail account. Porn, warez, etc. It's a gig of webspace on google's infinitely fast gigabit backbone linkS.
Toss in an autoresponder (or a script which has a web interface, logs into gmail, and sends attachment to other email addresses, or even just other gmail addresses) and you have a great warez, porn, or whatever you want distribution system, WITHOUT the kind of clauses that come with buying webspace against certain content. (If they tried making you agree to that, their admitting to reading private email and that would piss alot of people off.)
I know people who pay alot more than the $50 most of these are paying and who pay it monthly for a gig of storage on a fast server.
Another possible use, offsite backups, get enough gmail accounts to hold your critical data backups. Have an automated script that encrypts the data then emails it to your gmail account.
Here is the bad flipside to all this though, whether google wipes these accounts or not it doesn't matter. What do you think google is going to do when it finds out people are paying $50 just for a beta account? What do you think the odds are going to be of us getting free gmail after this?
yes please
I submitted a story called "802.11b goes out to the ballgame in San Fran" more than a month ago, and it still is in the "pending" column. I wonder if they're saving it for a rainy day or something...
I'd pay for a fully featured gmail account...that'd be the perfect way for me to abstract my email from my ISP and dynamic-hosted-domains by letting me store on a reputable provider.
I'm going to be leaving for college soon...my email address probably won't be coming with me, because I won't be on that ISP any more.
Looks like this was the first one with an email address to send the invite to. Apologies if I missed someone else, guess you'll have to go to ebay :-)
well, atleast they give you free shipping...
The reason people will pay $50 to get an invite is because there is no other way to get at gmail, at the moment. (Unless they get lucky and happen to be on Orkut or Blogger when Google gives out another beta block.) Their money will be made by the adwords on the sides of the emails.. why don't you have to pay to watch that shitty television show Friends? Because the advertisers will pay millions of dollars on the off chance you'll go buy some shaving cream or a new car. With Gmail, the advertisers will know exactly what their return on investment is.. and from the looks of it, that return will be good. Hence, Google wants to get as many users as possible.. which means give it out for free and give lots of storage space. Adwords will take care of the rest.
p
They wont wipe.. I mean how could they? If eric@gmail.com has used his address for anything confidential and is erased, eric-else comes and register eric@gmail.com and gets this guys personal information.. Yeah, you shouldn't use something thats for testing for anything important, but no less..
I've left to find myself. If you happen to see me, please, keep me there until I return.
thanks to some lax programming in redmond, it's mine now, and i didn't have to pay a cent!
vodka, straight up, thank you!
Pretty much the only time I deal with an email address is when I create an alias for it in my mail client. Why are people so hung up about getting the name you want ... silly people.
I've gotten not one but two messages to my Blogger-acquired Gmail account claiming to be astoundingly well-spoken, prodigy, under-15 "kids" who also claim to be starting web businesses. One of them says he's starting a web hosting business, and says he would be "honored" to have a Gmail account.
I'm not kidding!
Why the hell is everyone so hyped up to get one? Are these people who honestly want a cool web mail service earlt? Is it a status symbol? Are these people mostly spammers trying to get accounts in order to run experiments on their filters, so as to better be able to defeat them later? Are they spammers trying to get as many accounts as possible so they can automate the process of marking spam as not-junk to try to break Google's distributed Bayesian filter system?
1. they get first cracks at user names without stupid numbers after it. while i was creating my account i checked for alot of cool account names to see if they were availible and there was a lot of great names still availible
2. people are frustrated with free email accounts and you can expect a gmail account to have alot of cool features, it has alot already, and be around for a long time. i myself was waiting for a great webmail service to come along for a long time
3. the account is free, its for 1gb and google is running it...those reasons alone might justify someone spending $30 bucks or so as a "one time fee" to have first cracks at their username
basically it's worth it to alot of people. and about wiping accounts i'd have to agree that would suck to alot of users and i don't think google would piss off people that have been using gmail and doing them a favor by beta testing it by wiping the accounts. even if some are buying them on ebay there's really no way to seperate legit and ebay accounts, so i don't think they'd do that. at least i hope not
Seems to be a regular at Slashdot, posting something about e-bay and some *interesting* item being sold. Could this be the way /. is funding itself? I can see it now...
Editor 1: "We seem to be running low on funds, quick, point at something!"
Editor 2: *points at old mac in corner*
Editor 1: "Quick, put it up on e-bay, we'll run a story on vintage macs on e-bay!"
Editor 2: *Violently laughs, coughing up blood*
Editor 1: "Oooo, does e-bay have a policy on bodily fluids, I can feel another story coming on..."
Weren't all "active" blogger users invited into the beta? Something tells me the odds that maybe one or two employees from Yah, AOL (nescape, who?), or MSFT just might have slipped through the cracks that way.
...gspot@gmail.com. Anyone found it?
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
I get more than 100 spams a day. Is this a new anti-spam technique!? Sign me up! Oh wait, maybe I should sumbmit more stories....
I have been testing Gmail for a while now. There are still quite a few bugs and issues that need to be resolved. But the single most important reason to get gmail account is their spam filters. I use spamassassin+thunderbird junk control for my spam filter. But gmail leaves the combo in dust.
Btw, this is the response from Google to EBay sales:
-----
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2004 16:25:07 -0700
From: "Gmail Team" Add to Address Book
To: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [#9562759] GMAIL on Ebay !
Hello xxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
Thank you for your interest in Gmail.
Unfortunately, the popularity of Gmail has led some people to try and profit from selling invites to sign up for a Gmail account. Google is in no way associated with and does not approve of people auctioning or selling Gmail invitations. Consequently, Google cannot validate the authenticity of any Gmail invitations except those distributed via official channels.
If you purchased a Gmail account invitation through an online auction site, such as eBay, we suggest filing a complaint against the seller with the site's user protection services. We look forward to announcing a wider release of Gmail in the future, and do not encourage those interested
in Gmail to purchase an account through an online auction.
Sincerely,
The Gmail Team
Real hacker snoop the password and take hacker@gmail.com for free.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Yes, Google could in theory wipe out all the beta accounts to staert with a clean slate. But I can't immagine why they would want to do so in this case. Perhaps you are thinking of the way game companies like Blizzard handle beta programs for their multiplayer games. In that case, there is a competitive advantage to those who have had longer to build up their diablo characters, so beta accounts disappear in the interest of fairness. However, since email is not a game, the only point to wiping the beta users is if they want to seriously piss a bunch of people off, especially those who have been promised that they could save all their email on it until the end of time.
So, if you want that email address that badly, go ahead and buy it and give us poor folk something to roll our eyes at. On the other hand, this might violate google's gmail EULA, though I doubt anyone's taken the time to read through it all yet...
Don't make yourself vulnerable to a dictionary attack! I bet spammers have already added bill@gmail.com, jack@gmail.com... to their list! Use a non obvious name, nobody wants to learn your email address by heart anyway...
"In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interest."
Maybe instead of selling stock Google should auction off invites on ebay to raise a couple of billion $ :)
Me, I'll keep my gmail account thank you very much.
it's worse into worse... since the years '90, the net become a more and more expensive... nothing is free... do you think so ?
So it's a Dutch auction for the IPO, and an eBay auction for the emails.
Maybe they should just start "Gbay."
..when will h4x0r5@gmail.com be available?
the dead shall rise, from their graves, to destroy, geometry.
and I just gave away invitations to my girlfirend (who I told that gmail would be loads better than yahoo mail) and a friend who asked me how to get one. If I'd had one more invite I was going to send it to a buddy who is a "G" since I know he'd love to have a "gmail" addy. I guess trying to make a free service better by giving it to people who need it the most just dosen't resonate with people like it used to. I for one think it's better to give the beta accounts to people who don't know how it works, tha6t way we all get a fresh perspective and better service. To all those who pay for a gmail addy..... I hope it gets shut off right after their first email of "Hey, we know you bought this, too bad you didn't get to use it...."
I'll sell hacker, h4cker, hack3r, I-I4(k3r and anything else I can think of on my subdomain for that much.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I'd love to have abuse@gmail.com
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
@gmail.com - $50
hackers@gmail.com - $200
CowboyNeal@gmail.com - priceless
There are some things money just can't buy... For everything else, there's eBay.
... I mean, seriously, what tech worth half a damn doesn't already have at least h(is|er) own domain, let alone mail server?
WTF cares about yet another non-imappable free mail service, unless you're a cheapie or a terrorist?
ivgottoomuchmoney@gmail.coml .com
victimofthehype@gmai
I can't remember - is Google good or bad today?
Slashdot needs one of those weather maps with all the love/hate relationships with companies...
"Slightly heated discussion will take place today about the Google IPO, SCO still firmly in the outhouse, and there's a 30% chance that IBM will be favored with positive comments..."
-Adam
Someone whos brother works for google sent me an invite. I've had a chance to play around with it, and to be honest, I think it will be a big hit. For an online pop account, it's set up in a very nice way. Instead of the default normal inbox (new messages coming in are placed above the older ones, good has only the names of the people you have received messages from, and then all additional messages to and from that same person are put under their own thread, wityh an easy to use feature for archiving threads. It also says if the mail was sent from someone else to you, or sent from you to someone else. Theres a lot of other features, such as staring someone, but havent quite gotten that far yet. And yes, you get 1GB of storage. All in all, affter using the interface, I dont think I will go back to using other free email accounts.
I'll stick with my @abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvw xyzabcdefghijk.com mail account, thank you.
Google does do "sucky things," just like any other company and now with the enormous data-mining potential it has and the current political climate it may get more "sucky" in the future.
Yes, Google isn't Diebold or SCO, but that's not saying much.
Reminds me, time to delete my google cookies on various browsers. Thanks anonymous coward!
Screens...looks like most people were smart enough to blur them. I guess there is a chance someone would make a mistake and let you see it tho.
mck
Wrong. It was $200, then it was posted to spam databases, and now it's $-1.
Think it could be possible that someone inside Google made a few addresses- and gave them to people to sell for a small kick-back?
I'm no conspiracy theorist but it is plausable? I mean, if the first ones sell for a pretty penny you might see more sold afterward.
....move along....nothing to see here....
Google wants people to test their features, so if this trend increases the volume of spam, it can only play into their hand.
Seems there is a lot of discussion as to why people would pay for a (free) gmail service. 1) It's forbidden. It's closed. We are human, do the math. 2) Easy personal contact information is tough on the web and saturated services like free email (such as hotmail or yahoo). Address like foobar374728284748493@foobar.net are hard to remember and are taken less seriously than roberts@company.net. Early, high value names (such as god@ or hacker@) show some level of professionalism (or at least something about the f00bar3432 people). That is the kind of value people are paying for, not necessarily the gig or webmail. I own a domain name forward mail to my other accounts for professional contact or such. It works out very well if you put some thought into the domains and name. Of course, I don't use it as contact info on boards or websites :-D
* sigh * Here goes a "me too" post. If anyone has invites for Google G-mail, I'd like to have one. Thanks!! I don't use my Yahoo! mail account very much, but I would like to compare/contrast.
Step One: Create free, really expensive-to-run public email server. Step Two: Make lots of media hype, and then sell all the "good" account names on eBay to /. nerds for large sums of money.
Step Three: Profit!!!
You'll probably get more spam targeted at you becuase "2inchjohnson@hotmail.com" will be more apealing to the targetted spamming systems designed to sell you penis enlargement spams!
....move along....nothing to see here....
This is what you get when the staff's doing it the Stanford way, thanks to Orkut. Orkut started the whole "invite and hype" model with the service of same name, and continues this policy today under Gmail. If anything, it'd do good to come clean before people who have enough clout to force it to happen, no matter what your euphemism or excuse is, given your common denominator. Obviously, they need to read up on true security, versus putting the backbone of things on close circles that are easily broken when people start bragging about them. Refer to Operation Fastlink, something that would definitely clean house out of Orkut, and Google if applied to them. If you are going to run a private service, dont advertise.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
Couldn't Google just wipe out all of the beta accounts when the service starts up?
Sure. But by then you got your money. Who cares if you rip some poor sucker off? It's the American way, man! It's what makes this country great!
What about stevejobs@gmail.com? or billgates, tacobell, applesucks, gnu, etc @gmail.com?
Is when the story is accepted and then immediately shows up in the "two days ago" column, with the timestamp exactly 48 hours wrong.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
That may not work -- few people have noticed it yet, but Gmail doesn't let you send or receive Windows executable attachments, according to them not even whe zipped!
- John Harris
set up one that is
microsoft@gmail.com
should be worth a few million
LOL
i started forwarding much of my other email addresses to gmail and a couple of them are spam sinks. I get quite a bit of spam through it, still.
Don't go posting your email just yet. About 30-40% still makes it through.
-
I have a friend who invited me who is not a google employee. By your logic, he would, at the most, be 2nd tier and I would be 3rd. However, I can invite people.
I had to use the service for a week before I could invite anyone.
-
...and password protect zips, usually name of release group or site. For "security reasons". Least that's what the virus variety tells me...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
While I wouldn't want anything that's really private on this account, I wouldn't want it on hotmail either. I'd either use encryption over existing free services (less tracability) or just use my own mailserver.
Things like credit card numbers, bank data, passwords etc. will be perfectly safe, even if the data is scanned. Google are smart enough not to have the publicity problems they would get if they revealed any private info, and it's not really as if anyone cares what my email says. They are scanned for advertising purposes, they are not proof read to see if anything interesting is happening in my life. I feel safe because I know Google won't do anything with my financail details because they have PR people who know that would cripple their service uptake and I know they couldn't care less about my personal life.
Having said that, for me and I'm sure plenty of other slashdotters it's a moot point - I have my own mailserver which I can check on my home machine via thunderbird, my phone via the built in GPRS mail client and from anywhere else with a browser via squirrelmail. 10GB storage, no attachment limits and unlimited addresses I can check from anywhere - it's easily worth what I pay for it.
I had a problem with my AOL account once. It'd been canceled for a few months when I noticed they were still billing my credit card. I called them up and they basically told me to go fsss myself. I tried to email Steve Case, but he walks like a wraith in the mist among the living, and cannot be contacted by those without the second sight. So I moved to Russia and changed my name to Vladimir. That didn't fix the problem immediately, but the money I get threatening liquor store owners in St. Petersberg for Time-Warner pays for the $20 on my Visa every month.
And how does one receive messages from mailing lists that are wanted?
I think it would be really awesome if some idiots pay thousands upon thousands of dollars for some cool email addresses, and when Gmail goes live for real, everything is reset and someone else gets that address for free. That would just be so awesome. I'd really like if it did happen just to see all the lawsuits that would arise from it. Well, did I mention I'm a lawyer?
I get around 50/60 pieces of SPAM each day in my abuse address. I eventually gave up and placed an address-confirmation script in front of it...
And they say you can save all your email "to the end of time". Here, let me show you something:
.maildir .maildir
svein@cloud svein $ cd
svein@cloud svein $ du -s
839187
That's all my email for.. oh, around four years. Mind you, everything older than two months is tarballed.
No, Gmail just won't do it for me...
with the kind of growth the spammers are promising it might even be a GIRL with a huge fucking johnson.
HAND.
BTW, if someone want the email address my offer still stands. LOL
Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc.
"Quality Custom Software and IT Services"
There is also a service in Israel that is either offering or soon to offer 1GB accounts. The reason people are chomping at the bit for GMail addresses has nothing really to do with the storage space (heck, you can set up your own email server with 120 GB if you wanted). It's brand recognition.
Google has worked very hard to cultivate their brand and site to be synomymous with all things cutting edge and cool. Google is probably the absolute hottest site on the net now. Think about it, what would be your response if you told someone to go to Google and search for something and they said "What is Google?" You'd be shocked. Google has become a household name and *that* is why getting a GMail account is so important to people.
But, even aside from that, I think GMail is a really cool service. Stable, fast, and cool. Much like Google itself.
Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc.
"Quality Custom Software and IT Services"
can we say steganography? File names are superficial, an attachment is an attachment.
Moderation Totals: Flamebait=2, Troll=1, Redundant=1, Insightful=6, Overrated=1, Underrated=1, Total=12. (not mine)
it a good idea to buy anything that's in beta?
Anyway, is it a good idea to buy something that's free ?
____
nico
Nico-Live
gspot@gmail.com ;)
The way to corrupt a youth is to teach him to hold in higher value them who think alike than those who think differently
read with interest
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
If Google is smart (and I think they can be) they will have a special mailing-list processing in place. Suppose they get 1000 people subscribed to, for instance, debian-devel; what would you like to store if you were Google? one or one thousand copies?
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
now why would anyone in their right mind spend ANY money on an e-mail acount. If you want 1GB e-mail right now, see spymac.com
I think that it's pretty awful that someone is trying to sell off a beta email address. Almost by definition, any closed beta requires a degree of trust between the tester and the company, and these people have abused the trust that Google put in them. I hope Google just delete the offending accounts.
PocketGamer.org - For the gamer on the go!
can you provide it here? I will start my testing by playing with it..
In case anyone is wondering, the ebay auction is here.
640YB ought to be enough for anybody.
this is why you get your tricked out domain name that forwards things to gmail if you're so inclined...
-- the cake is a lie
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
What a jerk! I doubt anyone would be that eager as to pay $200. Eventually everyone will have one anyways!
First off, I really wanted a gmail account so I could email and receive large files. I also wanted a cool username (turns out it still was not available but one real close was). I jumped on ebay after I read about this in Wired Friday afternoon. The most current auction was quickly rising. It went from $60 to $75 in just a few minutes. I was not willing to pay this price. So, I scrolled down a few listings and there was an account that had a buy now for $40. These people were bidding each other up when they could have gotten one instanly for 1/2 the price they were bidding. I'm sure glad there were lazy ebay bidders. LouSir
Yes, I think I've already said this somewhere in these comments (I can't find it right now), but I admit it's impossible for Google to completely eradicate the sending of file attachments. But they can make it sufficently hard that "normal" users won't be able to take advantage of it for purposes like hosting a warez repository.
Scrambling with a PGP-like program, passwordifying an archive, even simple XORing can force Google's megacomputer to spend so much time looking on each attachment as to make performance suffer for everyone else.
But what if Google decides to go a different route? Instead of letting all attachments go through except these, what if they decided to only allow recognizable attachments? They would look at the information at the beginning of the file to determine what type it is instead of relying on the extension, of course.
I think that'd be a shame, and it wouldn't stamp-out EXE hosting (since you can get around it by uuencoding and pasting into a Word document, or even split it up across multiple Word documents), but it could work "good enough."
... the largest spam archive on Earth!!! just couldnt resist
I kind of get a feeling that buying up the account names might be a pretty moot point when the service is actually launched... Google could always add new domain names for people to use and open the entire set of usernames on each domain. Since the only advertisement for gmail that goes out with the emails is (presumably) the @gmail.com address they could even just do subdomains or other tld's ie @gmail.net or @red.gmail.com
I doubt they'd wipe out all the existing accounts. This would seriously peeve anyone who had (in theory) actually helped them beta test the service and established the @gmail.com address as their own. Worse, if you had registered for some online banking service or similar using your gmail address, someone snatching your account out from under you on 'launch day' might be able to get into your accounts via 'request password' or similar features...
I got the 2 invitations and gave them to 2 lucky people, who really could use a nice email account. Now I blog at about an average of 2 posts a week.. and i got the invitations in my inbox a couple days ago. It seems to me, that Google is creating like a sort of GMail community, they play it very clever I must say.
I bet no one would want one enough to buy it on ebay.
Well, someone has a sense of humor. The address Bin.Laden@gmail.com is up for sale at eBay... A beautifful opportunity to kiss privacy good-bye :D link
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