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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.
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...
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 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?
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.
well, atleast they give you free shipping...
I made one post, logged in to make a second and was offered an account. It can't have anything to do with post rate.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
My all time record is 9 weeks pending, then rejected... I've never had a story posted on slashdot even when I beat another submitter to a story by a week. I have no idea what makes a story good or bad but I know whatever it is I don't have it... be prepared for a long wait my friend :)
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
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!
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?
I've been accepted once on only 11 attempts so far. Slashdot must get more "acceptable" stories than they can actually accept, so I take it some degree of semi-randomness (who gets the editors' attention in the sea of noise first) will always be a final factor...
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 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...
I'd love to have abuse@gmail.com
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
how about: gmale@gmail.com?
I do not envy the volume of man on man porno spam THAT email address will draw.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
@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 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.
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!!!
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 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.
-
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.
How can
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
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 believe they set this up but put it on another domain. Kuro5hin or something...
wush.net - svn hosting
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
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
The compose message function in My Way sucks ass, actually. If you bold something, it makes the rest of the text after it bold on the receiver's end. The whole system they use for composing messages is flawed. It's hard to describe, though.
And My Way survives by the Google advertisements. Its owner, Interactive Search Holdings, was recently acquired by Ask Jeeves. ISH also owns Excite and iWon, and in fact, I predict that Ask Jeeves will model Excite and iWon after My Way by removing all pop-up ads network wide.
Cheers,
Doug
Doug Mehus http://doug.mehus.info/