Slashdot Mirror
Gmail Goes Public
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.
A bit late considering that every user in the world already has a gmail account. I mean if you wantet an account you could get one, for example from that isnoop.net like I did. And, mostly it's almost redundant since gmx.net offers 1GB as well along with their MediaCenter, a WebDAV disk for free.
everybody already has an account.
Everyone who wants one anyway.
Some of the people I invited promptly followed my lead and abandoned their six or seven hotmail (and ISP-based) email addresses and had everything useful forward to Gmail.
Others made an account and check it from time to time.
The bigger group is the last one: The people who really don't care (either through lack of understanding or sheer apathy) about Gmail's advantages.
These days I can't give away an account, because I've sent them to all my group 1 and 2 friends already. The only ones left are the "Why should i switch from Yahoo/Hotmail/Webmail?" crowd
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Gmail is great but there is one thing that I hate about it. Whenever I'm sent an attachment, I can't just forward it on to someone else. Has anyone figured out how to do this? I'd rather not have to download the attachment and then make an entirely new email with it attached.
I had a gmail address; but never used it because my email clients don't have a sane way to connect. (and no, POP is not a sane way to access 1GB folders. IMAP is).
Gmail was cooler when nobody had it yet.
Actually, the plan DOES seem to be coming together, for Google anyway. I remember several months ago, I asked about 20 people if they had heard of Gmail, and of course the people that read Slashdot had, and ordinary people in my History course hadn't. Now I have people emailing me who are completely non-technical (e.g., have other people come and fix their computer for them), telling me that their new address is @gmail.com. I have high hopes for Google; like it or not, places like Yahoo have some nice free services, yet Google was very successful in getting a lot of users switching to their services quickly.
Partially, it has to do with simplicity; I'm really hoping that eventually users will come to appreciate neat and clean appearances instead of whiz-bang embed-tag-wav-file nested-tables best-viewed-in-IE ad-clogged flash-driven interface X.
I just hope Google can apply this to other things. For a long it seemed as if it was Yahoo's way or the highway, which in turn reminds me of Microsoft.
Do more stuff, Google. Do more stuff! XMPP!
Take off every sig. For great justice.
They're missing a huge revenue stream IMHO. How many small and medium sized companies systems admins could get BACK to work (instead of writing spam rules).
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
There are actually valid reasons for some of us to not use gmail for general-purpose emailing.
d y that you seem to be thinking it is.
Aside from the obvious privacy issues -- any company who has its people put company information on another company's systems is a little nuts -- there's also the power and flexibility of running your own MUA/MTA pair.
For example, I've got my own wildcard domain -- anything at this domain goes to me. In addition, my MUA (mutt) is configured to automatically make my replies come from the address to which the email had been sent. I consider this useful to me, and a way to give out specific addresses so as to see how spam ends up getting to me.
gmail actually takes a step in that direction -- they let you use '+' notation (eg 'user+whatever@gmail.com'), but they don't do the next step -- making it so you can automatically respond as 'user+whatever' to emails sent to 'user+whatever'.
And, frankly, it's just _faster_ for me to use my own CLI MUA to go through a bunch of emails, and more convenient and familiar.
On the flip side, my dad recently decided he finally wanted to get an email account, so I created a new domain for him and had all mail sent to this domain forwarded to an account I set up for him at gmail. So he'll be using gmail for mail. I really do like gmail -- I use it for some specialized purposes -- but it's not the one-size-fits-all-so-everyone-should-use-it-alrea
Everyone in gmail has 50 invites left. They currently replenish your used invites daily. I've handed out a few gmail accounts in the past few weeks and my number of invites continues to peg at 50.
As a result, gmail was effectively completely open quite a while ago.
You, of course, are speaking only for yourself. :-) I run my own mail and Gmail is still very useful for me, most notably for the very effective search. I have procmail bouncing a copy of inbound mail to gmail that I can access on the road if I am not using my laptop to ssh in my own server (I am not running Squirrelmail or Imp, etc.). I also like sending all my list mail to my gmail account which for me makes it easy to read. I like the 'conversation' method of threading for lists. A year later and I am currently at 29% capacity.
Which is great when I'm the one who asked the question and don't feel the need to re-read what I already wrote to get to the important bit. And I would argue that the vast majority of email replies are going to a single recipient and that recipient doesn't want to re-read what they wrote.
Even better! The message toggles between 1000MB and 1GB. Wierd!
Mike
I see the offer when I load google's main page but after multiple reloads the offer switches between:
"Google's free email service with 1 GB of space"
and
"Google's free email service with 1000 MB of space"
I report to Colonel 2.6.1 and General Chaos is his boss.
I am a lawyer - although products liability is not my area of concentration. If we ignore for the moment the fact that software developers almost never have any liability when their products fuck up. It is very doubtful that any court would let Google escape liability simply by putting BETA in the corner. If you make a product and offer it to the public - substantially as a non-experimental product - you will be held liable. The courts generally look, not at technicalities, but at the substance of the transaction
This comment baffles me. Why on EARTH would you still want to use POP3 mail? I manage an Exchange server as well as my own POP3 server and now use neither for my personal email in favor of Gmail. Why? Simply because I have so many computers that I use! With Gmail I have pretty much unlimited space, the ability to SEARCH my email and actually find what I'm looking for (ever tried to find something in Outlook that you've filed away a year ago?), and I always have ALL of my email on any computer I use! I don't have to think "Wait, I sent this at home on my Mac, but I wish I had it at work on my PC in Outlook... Blah blah." Those days are gone, and frankly... GOOD RIDDANCE! Just my opinion, of course.
Last night I went to www.google.com and had a gmail link on the front page. Since I already had one, I didn't use the invite. However when I was going to email a buddy that just wanted one to mess around with to let him know, I rechecked the page and there was no link. I think they are just randomly placing the link periodically.
A week or two ago I went to Google and saw the "Start Using Gmail Now!" link (or whatever it says, I don't remember the exact wording). I already have an account, but I went ahead and set up one for my parents. Maybe this is just another way for them to increase users without going completely public? Like invites distributed randomly to users who visit Google's front page?
10100111001
I was unable to see the Gmail link despite refreshing Firefox 20+ times (even when identified as IE6 SP2), but I immediately saw the link when using IE6 SP1. Strange coincidence?
Yahoo! Mail filtered my Gmail confirmation e-mail as spam
Pictochat Art!!!
I used to do this as well. If I needed to give my address out, I'd come up with a company specific one on the spot. However, I abandoned the "forward all" account when someone started spoofing the From: line of their spams with <random text>@alanhoyle.com addresses. I started getting thousands apon thousands of bounced spam messages showing up in my inbox. My choice was either to train my mail filters to catch these bounces as spams, or quit the forward-all account. I still get more than 100/day, but the load is greatly lessened.
In my experience, the vast majority of my spam comes from email addresses posted on either my web site or from WHOIS information. Only one of my company-specific addresses ever seems to have made it onto a spam list.
Until recently, I prefered my tweaked solution with Pine, bogofilter, and a modified version of IMAP Spam BeGone. With an SSH client like PuTTY, I was using the same interface I was used to wherever I went in the world.
However, I've become hooked on GMail as it's so much more convenient to deal with Spam there. Click, click click, poof! it's gone....
- AlanH
Its the interface they're selling. Look at their 'why use gmail' page and you'll find:
Every point here is tied to the gmail interface; there is no claim that 'you get 1 gig.' So it looks like they are betting that the client you use won't be as good as gmail. I use pop3 for gmail, but I've also found myself logging on and thinking about their interface more and more.Thanks for putting on the feedbag. Thanks for going all out. Thanks for showing me your Swiss Army knife.
Google
Google News
Google Maps
Gmail
Froogle
Google's services now comprise something like 40% of my online activity. How much longer till they take over the world?
Disclaimer, Craig Shergold was a kid with cancer who became a internet hoax. Please take this as a joke and don't bother him.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
It's an interesting experiment in propagation. How fast and how far will gmail spread just by way of invitation, without it being officially open and without a costly advertizing campaign?
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
Does anyone else have the problem of hotmail sending gmail emails to the hotmail trash? I have sent numerous emails to friends with hotmail accounts and nearly ALL goto the trash. Not to sound like a part of the tin foil hat crowd but something is up with Microsoft and Google compatibility.
GMail has a number of powerful advantages over Notepad:
- Filename is optional. No need to think of a unique filename to save under -- just enter your content and go.
- Search all your past files at once. Try that, Notepad!
- Spell-checking on demand
- Load/save your text files from any computer in the world
- Cross-platform
- Undo Discard. Ever wish you could retrieve your file after closing it without saving? Now you can!
This is incredibly cool - a viable web-based replacement for basic desktop text editors. Yes, the Web OS is slowly coming together!That's the thing about GMail - it is constantly being enhanced with new features, requiring no user intervention, with no updates to install. Features are being added to it more quickly than Yahoo Mail and Hotmail, and far more quickly than desktop mail clients like Outlook, which get new features (and bugs) on a yearly cycle.
Oh, and GMail is free.