Slashdot Mirror
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."
GMail offers 1GB for free, compared to 2GB for $20/yr. Maybe $20/yr isn't too much, but I think the free model still has some juice left. Not to mention the nice threading model and top-notch searching.
Mencken had it right. So glad that's old news.
Got the invite, love the interface, can't view it from work.
Still hanging on to my shell account.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Yeah but my FREE yahoo account has 100MB storage, more than the account that I get (pay for) with my cable modem subscription. 100MB of email is really more than I need for personal use.
Man, I love it when people start whining about a computer searching their e-mail. So i guess yahoo dosen't have a spam filter then? What, hotmail has to parse the text of every e-mail before it determines that that message about penis extensions is spam. How do you think e-mail programs work out that not every mail saying 'Hey, haven't talked to you in a while' is spam
G-mail's problem is not that it scans your e-mail, but rather that the good people are honest and upfront with what they are doing.
I'm sure people would all be thrilled about a virus check if it was billed as 'automatic file parser.' Sure, it might seem weird having a conversation about your favorite jewish actor and getting an add for 'learn hebrew in 24 hours' but that's only because google is utilising what everyone else has. And their only crime was the niavety that people would find this useful. Had they said 'magic pixies work out what you want and sudgest how to get it, while you browse your e-mail,' the tinfoil hate wearing community would embrace it (after all, fairies can't get through tinfoil!).
G-mail is a wonderful, not only because of the unprecedented amoutn of free space, but because of it's intuative and innovative features that help you organise your e-mail while still having that sexy, clean, not 'all up in yo' face' look google is so good for.
If i had to chooose between microsoft and google, i pick the one who vows to 'do no evil' and, so far, has done nothing to make me think otherwise
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
And this thread is how some spammer out there just received a high-quality, targetted list of addresses. Ironic, no?
-M5B
There are 1.1... kinds of people.
Every single email you send anywhere on the internet is read in it's entirety by at least one machine not in your control. That machine can trivilaly copy and archive the contents of your message and leave NO TRACE.
If you're paranoid about GMail, but you're happy to send unencrypted email to other addresses, then you're an idiot, that's all there is to say.
Advanced users are users too!
Read their SEC filings, then tell me they're not making any money on ads. There's also no shortage of "serious discussion" about the perceived harms of Google - if you've never seen GoogleWatch then you haven't been looking too hard.
The complaints are garbage. Same old "oh no their cookie doesn't expire til 2038" bullshit. No idea why you people target Google when every other website shows ads too, has the same privacy policy, and has the same expiration date on their cookies. I guess you just like to be contrarian.