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Gmail Goes Public

Posted by Zonk on from the come-and-get-it dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Google has apparently given the green light for Google's e-mail (Gmail) to be open to the general public." From the registration page: "As we make room for more Gmail users, we want to first extend invitations to Google users. We're still working to make Gmail better, so for now, we're just inviting a small number at random. Looks like that's you! We're really excited to share Gmail with you and we hope you like it." Observed at the P-I Buzzworthy Blog as well.

5 of 527 comments (clear)

  1. Bad Gmail link. by Osty · · Score: 5, Informative

    The link to Gmail in the story goes to a page that says:

    Account Already Created

    The link you followed to this page has already been used to create your Gmail account. To access your account visit http://gmail.google.com and log in with the username and password you chose during registration. To create another Gmail account, you'll need a shiny new account creation link. We apologize for the inconvenience.
    Here's a better link for Gmail.
  2. Re:the link is one-time by Mr.+Sketch · · Score: 5, Informative

    No, but you can always get an invite from the GMail invite spooler. It has almost 500k invities waiting to be given out.

    --
    Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
  3. Re:I can't even by Drooling+Iguana · · Score: 5, Informative

    Gmail lets you connect via POP3.

    --
    ... I'm addicted to placebos
  4. gmail is still buggy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Frankly, I'm surprised. Google has introduced a few bugs in its latest release of gmail.

    For example, the "mail forwarding" feature cannot be disabled once it has been enabled. Any change to it does not not save.

  5. Re:I can't even by shellbeach · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ah, Gmail misinformation. It's a wonderful thing ...

    A big thing is privacy. Google may be wonderful, but what about tomorrow?

    If you're that concerned about privacy, you could still use POP3 and SMTP with GPG or similar. Why would you bother, then? Well, having a non-ISP linked email address is a highly useful thing - for those of the community who don't run a mail server (e.g. don't have broadband or don't have the skills) this is vital to being able to switch providers and get the best deal.

    The other is web interfaces suck.

    You've obviously never tried Gmail then. I was a diehard PINE user before seeing Gmail, I hated Yahoo, Hotmail, Fastmail, etc interfaces and thought Gmail might be a good mailing list replacement for my yahoo account because of the greater storage space. I think it took about three days to forward all my mail to it and use it as my primary account. It's a beautiful interface, runs with some incredibly neat javascript - you have to see it to believe it.

    A third is the problem of using POP3 access, but still having to hike your mail client mail via SMTP. If you use your own ISP, you're at risk of getting flagged at some point in the future of failing SPF.

    But, you see, Gmail actually provides an SMTP server for you to use. That's right! You get POP3 and SMTP. And if they ever decide to stop that, there's still mail forwarding so you can throw everything else over to the email address of your choice.