Gmail in the News

roadies writes "Despite all the negativity and privacy concerns that surround Gmail, it has still gained cult-like status where net-d0rks feel self validated by having a gmail address and will do anything to get one. Services like the Gmail Machine, a randomized Gmail lotto that has people hitting refresh until they get carpel-tunnel in the index finger, reports over 7 million pageviews (though, definitely not uniques) in 3 days and 55 invites given away. They just added 222 more through donators who have given up invites in exchange for a text link on the high-traffic site. GmailSwap (covered recently on /.) has given away everything from cameras to good vibes. Good news for hardpressed geeks: The invites are becoming more and more available and mainstream. Ebay once had gmail invites going for a couple hundred dollars. Now, nobody is bidding on them anymore, so you can purchase one the old-fashioned eBay way for a dollar or two." Reader marklyon writes "Third party developers have stepped in with utilities that enhance and improve GMail. One utility, Mbox & Maildir to Gmail Loader allows users to upload their existing email to their GMail account. Another, POP Goes the GMail, offers the ability to access your GMail account with any POP mail reader, giving users the ability to permanently archive messages. GTray lives in your taskbar and alerts you to incoming messages. Other, more general programs, allow you to forward your Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail messages to your new GMail account. The question that remains, however, is whether Google will work with or against third party developers in GMail's future."

Comments

My experiences with Gmail invitations

[Frisky070802]

I got a gmail account relatively early (early in April) from a friend at Google. I use it mostly for mailing lists, not quite ready to put all my personal mail on it, especially when until this article I had no idea how to download Gmail for use when disconnected.

Initially I got a couple of invitations I could give away, every couple of weeks, and it was easy to find close friends to give them to. Then I found I had seven invitations this week and had run out of obvious candidates. I tried gmailswap, but the interesting ones (like a pound of Kona coffee) went too quickly, and the others were uninteresting to me. So I sent a note to my orkut friends, and quickly had well over a dozen requests for accounts despite including a disclaimer pointing to gmail-is-too-creepy.com :). I gave away the ones I had, and surprisingly got a few more the very next day. I still have a queue of about 5 people I owe accounts to.

PS. This was a really, really nice Slashdot article, with a treasure trove of gmail information. Well done.

Re:My experiences with Gmail invitations

[bendelo]

Cais, Pieroxy and tabacco where the first 3 to reply. They have all been sent GMail invitations (I even sent one to awkmayle the 4th poster).

In return I hope you guys send me an invite or two back in good time.

Have fun!

Re:My experiences with Gmail invitations

[Hektor_Troy]

I highly doubt that. (IANAL, though).

First, I'm fairly certain that YOUR privacy ranks WAY higher than any company's supposed "right" to a profit.

Secondly, the only way the advetiser would find out is by setting up a mail account of their own, and then sending mail to themself, trying to find out wether or not it's working. They could then easily save copies of the web-views, and use those.

Thirdly, such a lawsuit would be a civil matter, and I doubt that you can just get a judge to sign over a subpoena to go searching though million of people's mail. This relates to point number one.

This is of course dependent on the legal system, and we've all seen that they're very keen on protecting our rights, right?

Re:My experiences with Gmail invitations

[illumin8]

IANAL either, but...

First, I'm fairly certain that YOUR privacy ranks WAY higher than any company's supposed "right" to a profit.

This is simply not the case. When you agree to the terms of Google Mail, it specifically says that your email will be provided to any court if they are given a subpoena. Right to privacy be damned; if a court issues a subpoena, Google will pony up the data, rather than be found in contempt of court.

Thirdly, such a lawsuit would be a civil matter, and I doubt that you can just get a judge to sign over a subpoena to go searching though million of people's mail. This relates to point number one.

Yes, you can. In a civil matter, discovery allows both the plaintiff and defendant to subpoena corporate data and documents that apply to the case. If the case involved a dispute over adwords, the subpoena might very well include "the contents of all messages that triggered the customer's ads to appear." Google would have no choice but to comply.

For an example of this, look at the SCO vs. IBM case. This is a civil matter as well, and both SCO and IBM have been subpoenaing millions of documents and source code and probably emails from each other as well.

Having said all of that, I don't want you to think I'm paranoid or anything. I use Gmail every day now, and I don't really care if they read my email or not. The reason why is because email is going in plaintext over the wire every day and Carnivore is probably already reading everything I send and receive anyway. Who cares about Google reading my email? I'm much more worried about the FBI reading it and building a profile on me.

Yahoo has retaliated

[centralizati0n]

Yahoo now offers 100 mb to all free accounts, and 2 gigabytes to premium accounts. I love competition.

Use spymac.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Spymac.com has free hosting, 1GB of email, none of the privacy concerns of gmail, and a very easy to use site.

And it existed before gmail

Re:Use spymac.com

[Zephiris]

Don't forget...gmail currently doesn't require personally identifiable information, such as address, zip code, name of first born, social security number, size of anatomy elements. Spymac requires all info, including demographic information, and if I remember correctly phone number. At least if gmail doesn't ask in the future, that means my ISP still remains the 'bottleneck' for any real identity linking. I could still just use transparent anonymous proxies who don't care who I am to access gmail...which makes that even nicer. All someone in the government would have to do is send one email to spymac.com, and if they cave...it means exactly one thing: The government gets everything in about 75 miliseconds. ;p Of course, this is just a Big Encouragement for encrypted emails that the email service can't really touch, like GnuPG and PGP. It's not a matter of gmail linking 'certain information' with 'other certain information' if it becomes harder than it's worth to track you down for exercising your right to free speech.

Re:I'm lost

[wo1verin3]

Personally I love the following:

1) It's webmail like the ORIGINAL hotmail before MS tookover. Few ads, non popups, just gets you to your business

2) Google search for your e-mail, nice and fast. Beats the hell outta Eurora and Outlook searching

3) Threaded e-mails. I sent out an e-mail to a group of 10 friends, they all responded, I responded to some, etc. It all gets stored in ONE thread.

Donate those invites!

[jcull]

Wil Wheaton [clevernickname] is working on a project to donate Gmail invites to soldiers serving overseas who all have Hotmail which sucks. Go to his weblog entry for the skinny.

Re:I'm lost

[Wild Bill TX]

Actually, it is indeed 1024 MB. I heard about somebody who filled up their Gmail account (sorry, I have no link) and got the message at the bottom to say, "You have used 101% of your 1000 MB." They probably just call it 1000 MB so as to not confuse those who do not know that 1 GB is 1024 MB, which is totally lame.

Re:GTray Mirror

[IIskooterII]

Alternate.

Problem Solved

[Ieshan]

...You can "star" incoming messages based on criteria. Edit a filter. "Star It" is one of the filter options.

Problem solved?

Advantage: Fast

[jvagner]

The interface is really fast. A lot of functions don't require real page re-loads.

I do need to check POP mail (IMAP would be grand), but I realize they're probably holding off on that until the real release.

I'm glad someone values keyboard commands again.

It's a neat idea but...

[Axem]

I see Gmail as a novelty item right now. More of a way for people to brag about their gig of email. My pop3 account holds 15 meg, which is enough since I only give it out to personal friends (and the Dilbert Newsletter ;-)). I use hotmail for registering for services and all the spam goes there. I am muchly content with my non-Gmail services.

Re:I'm lost

[Anonymous Coward]

According to what I see here, you're wrong - google gives 1000mb, not 1024. (Look for the image halfway down the screen)

PGP Anyone

[eyeota]

If you're really paranoid, just PGP your messages. Granted there's no direct plugin I know of yet, but I'm sure it's about to come. Then again there's always c&p into your email.

The propensity for unencrypted emails to be read and intercepted has existed on the net, but people just ignored the possibility or figured the probability of it happening them is low.

If it bothers you there's an indefinate log of your email, encrypt it--So what if google shows you nothing by PGP ads on the right side of your screen ?

Donate Gmail invitations to troops

[Slime-Half]

As suggested over at Wil Wheaton's blog, 1 gig of space is a perfect amount for troops to recieve/send videos and other keep-in-touch files that other web accounts can't handle.

From the entry:

Help spread the word about this effort, and keep checking back here for a link to the soon-to-be-built clearinghouse for requests.

A worthy cause, I should think. Currently, I believe people are just looking over at gmailswap for service men and women to donate their invites to, until this 'clearinghouse' is created.

I thought some slashdotters might be willing to participate.

If you would like to be invited

[PureFiction]

Please send me an email to coderman at peertech.org with your first and last name, and email address (this is for the form).

I will reply with your current position in the queue of people wanting an invite, and when I get more invitations (currently 5 every one to three days) I'll send you one.

All I ask is this:
1. Please tell me if you get invited before your turn in queue, otherwise I will waste an invitation.
2. Please don't sell this invite, or sell the invites you subsequently get from your own account.

People who sell or extort for invites lack integrity and are selfish. Don't be that kind of person.

Multiple accounts violate the Gmail TOS...

[WIAKywbfatw]

I think it's worth pointing out that having more than one Gmail account is currently against the Gmail's terms of service.

From the Gmail Help Center:

Can I have multiple accounts?

While we test Gmail, we're gathering information and feedback from a
diverse group of users to polish our product. As stated in the Gmail
Program Policies, a Gmail user is allowed to open one Gmail account.

Each invitation link is valid for creating only one account. With
1,000 megabytes of storage per account, we hope you'll have enough
room to store all necessary messages and information.

If you would like to read more of our policies, please
visit: http://www.google.com/gmail/help/program_policies. html.

Thank you for your helping us improve Gmail.

So, unless you've covered your tracks very well, don't expect to hold onto those accounts. I know of at least one case where a user who made more than one account had all his accounts shut down.

Gmail is currently in beta. Use of that beta is a priviledge, not a right, so abusing it is the quickest way to find yourself locked out.

Re:Gmail doesn't support firefox

[gmuslera]

• Firefox is named in the text you pasted
• Firefox uses the gecko rendering engine, they are naming browsers, but what they should support are rendering engines. Safari is pretty like Konqueror, so Konqueror should work. Same with Mozilla and Firefox, and the rest of gecko powered browsers, and Internet Explorer and all the windows alternate browsers that uses IE rendering engine.
• If you want to complain about browsers not supported, well, Opera is not supported yet, nor links :( is a shame because those two are very ligthweight, multiplataform and good browsers.

Boon to ebay sellers

[bvwj]

Invitations on ebay are now selling for over $20

Re:Getting Invited

[cmacb]

"How does one get invited. I crave the invitation. I am almost tempted to start my own Google just so I could then invite myself to gmail.
"

If you have been using Blogger for a while then you probably already have an invitation. Sign on to blogger (as if to update your blog) and look carefully over on the right.

Re:I'm lost

[RollingThunder]

Tagging things with a label but leaving them in an "inbox" makes it hard to find the good stuff.

Not sure if you wanted to leave them in the inbox, but if you just want mailing lists filed off into only their own labels, then you can also set "skip Inbox", to get mail-folder-like abilities.

GMail Invites: I've got a bunch

[valmont]

hey all, i keep getting new invites on a fairly regular basis, if you just head-on over to my blog, find the "GMail Invites" post and add a comment with some info as to why u want a gmail account and a valid email address (feel free to use creative obfuscation to protect yourselves from spam crawler bots).

I can't guarantee you an invite but your chances should be pretty good. I'll favor in that order (mostly), people who have a blog on blogger.com, people who have at least bothered to register with blogger.com to place comments, people I've marked as /. friends, people who've marked me as their friend, unless i change my mind :)

Get a clue

[Donny Smith]

>For those who still think email is secure I got news for you: Your email is already exposed in plain text on just about any server it is sent to.

So what - I don't care about any single email being exposed to someone's eyes. But I do worry if someone has access to ALL of my email all the time - I even wouldn't care if they would read it, but I do not like to be analyzed and profiled via content of my email.

>No human will ever read your email.

This is really a stupid argument - OF COURSE they won't because they can't possibly get enough humans to read gazillons of messages in millions of accounts!
It is impossible, it'd be too expensive and it wouldn't work because humans can't analyze huge amounts of data.

When will people realize that it is FAR WORSE that AI bots "read" (analyze, parse, whatever) your email because:
a) they don't "forget"
b) they can easily "read" all emails of all accounts
c) it is cost effective (essentially free) to use them for any and all purpose they see fit.

I'm not claiming they are doing bad things with it, but they certainly have all the tools they need.
So those who mind would probably prefer to keep their email on less creepy a place (one that doesn't analyze your contacts, URLs in your email and content of your messages to show you ads and whatnot).

Here's what WINNING SCREEN looks like

[callipygian-showsyst]

Here's what a winning screen looks like on the Gmail Machine!

I got mine on the 3rd try, but I figure seeing the text of the screen will help you boys and girls that are trying to write SCRIPTS automatically keep trying the Gmail Machine!

And no, you're not getting my new gmail address! I want to keep it spam free.