GMail Sign-Ups Via Mobile

jm.one writes "In the wake of recent releases releases Google Desktop 2.0 Beta and Google Talk 1.0 Beta, Gmail (known as Google Mail for legal reasons in some areas) is finally open to everyone. Learn more in the Google Blog entry and register at the Gmail website. Please take note that sign-up occurs via mobile phone at the moment, and only U.S. citizens can register for now. Plans to add more countries are on the way."

Comments

Invitations Still Work

[under_score]

So a person can still get on even if they aren't in the US.

Re:Invitations Still Work

[Anonymous Coward]

I have 150 left if someone wants one, leave email. I wont spam, promise. (haven't read too much spam since I migrated entirely to gmail.)

For the nostalgy of gmail-whoring which wont be no more...

Re:Invitations Still Work

[$mooth]

Sounds pretty sexy

Re:Invitations Still Work

[Deadguy2322]

Hook me up, if you would be so kind!

Re:Invitations Still Work

[newsiness]

Finally Gmail is open to everyone. Cool... If you need gmail invite you can email me at unlimited.storage@gmail.com to request one for free...:) http://www.googleyahoonews.com/

Re:Invitations Still Work

[Anonymous Coward]

gm254 at 5730 dot net

thanks a lot

Re:Invitations Still Work

[b10m]

Or just get them at spoolers like : http://b10m.swal.org/cgi-bin/gmail_invites.cgi

Re:Invitations Still Work

[Anonymous Coward]

To which email?

Re:Invitations Still Work

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought a CD full of them for occasions like this, you just put a note like:

If you're not that bloke from slashdot please ignore this email. Thanks!

And the word of the day is: 'guilty'

Re:Invitations Still Work

[slavemowgli]

Or, for that matter, doesn't have a mobile phone (yes, Virginia, there are people who don't).

Re:Invitations Still Work

[Albert71292]

I'm one of those that have never owned a mobile phone. Just don't have a use for one. My old-fashioned land line serves my needs just fine.

/already has a Gmail account though

Re:Invitations Still Work

[tahii]

Looks like Slashdot did its darndest to that site. No more gmail invites from there for a while.

mobile phone?

[justforaday]

Thanks to our corporate IT policy, I can't go to the gmail page. However, WTF does "Please take note that sign-up occurs via mobile phone at the moment" mean?

Re:mobile phone?

[mzwaterski]

From Google's page:

"You need to receive and enter a special invitation code in order to create an account. Currently, we are only sending these codes as text messages to US mobile phones. So you will need to have a mobile phone with text message capabilities (most phones have this) and the invitation code itself.

One of the reasons we are offering this new way to sign up for Gmail is to help protect our users and combat abuse. Spam and abuse protection are two things we take very seriously, and our users have been very happy with the small amount of spam they've received in their Gmail accounts. We take many measures to ensure that spammers have a difficult time sending their spam messages, getting these messages delivered, or even obtaining a Gmail account (spammers will often use many different accounts to send spam). Sending invitation codes to mobile phones via SMS is one way to address this, as the number of accounts per phone number can be limited.

If you want to open an account a different way, you may want to ask a friend with a mobile phone to receive an invitation code for you or to ask someone you know who already has a Gmail account to email you an invitation."

Re:mobile phone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Get your invitation code

To sign up, enter your mobile phone number below. We'll send you a text message with an invitation code to create your account. If you've already received a code, skip to step two! ... I CAN'T READ THE CAPTCHA

Re:mobile phone?

[KingSkippus]

That was my first thought: Sign up by phone, why? Since you can't get to it now, and in case anyone else doesn't read the article, here's what they have to say about it:

Why use mobile phones? It's a way to help us verify that an account is being created by a real person, and that one person isn't creating thousands of accounts. We want to keep our system as spam-free as possible, and making sure accounts are used by real people is one way to do that.

I think the tried and true method of getting a Gmail account is still the best: get someone to invite you. If you don't know anyone who has a free Gmail account, Google gmail invite and you'll find places where you can get them for free.

Re:mobile phone?

[50m31sl4sh.]

WTF does "Please take note that sign-up occurs via mobile phone at the moment" mean?

This means that you enter your mobile number on registration page and receive text message with activation code.

Re:mobile phone?

[Anonymous Coward]

It probably means the obvious.

1) Google wants to ensure as closely as possible that individuals aren't monopolizing/abusing gmail addresses, and 2) Google wants to be able to tie your email and instant message communication records to your commercial (real name, credit card, address, etc.) records.

This is a logical step for a public corporation whose main commercial assets include valuable, detailed information about people's interests.

Google may claim to "do no evil," but you know that saying: if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...

Re:mobile phone?

[justforaday]

Replying to myself, but it's easier than figuring out which of you I should reply to. Thanks for the answers. I kind of figured that's what it was, but I just wanted to make sure. Next question: Anyone else a little concerned now that Google has the ability to begin making a cell-phone directory of users?

Re:mobile phone?

[0110011001110101]

I call bullsh*t... how does requiring a mobile phone help anything spam related? I can sign-up with my mobile phone for 1 account, and then, if history is any indication, Google will grant me hundreds of invites within a week or so, and I can send them all to myself and sign up hundreds of accounts... hell I still have hundreds of invites left... TO THE SPAM CAVE!!

Re:mobile phone?

[lordsid]

i call bullshit. there are several other ways they could have used to make sure spammers weren't signing up. google just wants people's cellphone numbers. i don't know why, but there is some other nefarious reason they want people to register via mobile cell.

Re:mobile phone?

[jspectre]

shrug. don't like it? don't sign up. not like anyone is forcing you to. i'm sure you can sign up right now for a hotmail account and MS doesn't want your cell phone number.

Re:mobile phone?

[dthrall]

If you company uses commercial software to filter websites, its true that you may not be able to access the website directly.

However, this might just be the trick for you. I know that this works at the company I'm at. Here's how it goes:

1. Go to Google's translator page (or alta vista's babelfish). http://www.google.com/language_tools/
2. Select Chinese to English (ensures that none of the words on a page will actually be translated) on "Translate a web page"
3. ??? 4. Access (probably without the images, depending on the blocking software)

So, basically Google's servers access the content, do the translation, and feed it to you through their site's url. Again, this may or may not work. It all just depends on your company. I should also note that you should be careful, because this may be a terminable offense at your employer.

Re:mobile phone?

[drsquare]

That's ridiculous. How does stopping people getting an account prevent spam? Unless gmail only allows mail from other people, spammers are probably capable of sending mail from other mail services.

And allowing sign-up by mobile? I'm unimpressed, even other e-mail services without Google's billions have managed the simple functionality of ALLOWING SIGN UP ON THE WEBSITE. Maybe after a crack team of PHDs work on the problem for a few years Google might have that as well. Just like the first basic web mail services had decades ago.

I don't see how Google has so many fanboys whilst they contiuously take the piss out of the users. Making them jump through a hundred times more hoops than anywhere else, for a service which isn't really much better.

Re:mobile phone?

[dthrall]

It seems that I made the mistake of adding the / onto the end of the tag in an attempt to follow XML syntax made my URL invalid

http://www.google.com/language_tools

Re:mobile phone?

[mzwaterski]

It stops robots from signing up thousands of gmail accounts and using them to SPAM. Google couldn't keep up fast enough: think Hotmail and Yahoo before image verification. Google has simply taken it to the next level. This doesn't directly stop SPAM to gmail subscribers, its stops SPAM to all email users in general.

If you believe that your public phone number is too much information to give google, then just have a friend sign you up. This is an added feature, not an added restriction. Before you couldn't sign up at all, now you can sign up if you have a phone. Doesn't really seem like anything to lose sleep over.

Re:mobile phone?

[mostlyalmighty]

No one is holding a gun to your head. If you don't like it then don't sign up. Those of use who do don't really mind.

Re:mobile phone?

[bhtooefr]

As the URL to be translated is passed using GET on just about every translation service, some filtering software (*cough*8e6 R3000*cough*) can read that.

Also, some other filtering software (*cough*WebSense Enterprise*cough*) blocks GLT and Babelfish as "Proxy Avoidance".

Try again?

Re:mobile phone?

[ucahg]

Yes, but at that point if they find an account spamming, they have instant access to all your other accounts too, thanks to the invitations being sent from an original account.

They can still track it and shut it down easily enough, I would think. Smart of them, they may have solved the spam problem, from a mail carrier's point of view. They haven't kept spam from my inbox yet though. Come on Google, do I honestly need to write filters to stop subjects like "Man f***ing hot blonde"?

Re:mobile phone?

[TheRaven64]

The nice thing about Google Mail/Talk is that they use open protocols, SMTP and XMPP respectively. If you don't like their T&Cs, you can still communicate with people who do. I choose to run my own SMTP and XMPP server, and I can use both email and IM to communicate with Google customers.

Microsoft use SMTP for Hotmail because they arrived late at the email party and everyone was already using SMTP. For IM, however, they use a proprietary protocol and the only way I can talk to their customers without using their client is to use a gateway (or a client) written based on documentation created by reverse engineering their protocol.

Re:mobile phone?

[amrittuladhar]

subjects like "Man f***ing hot blonde"?

That's spam?

Re:mobile phone?

[Anonymous Coward]

our users have been very happy with the small amount of spam they've received in their Gmail accounts

fnord?

Re:mobile phone?

[BackInIraq]

i'm sure you can sign up right now for a hotmail account and MS doesn't want your cell phone number.

No, they just want your soul.

Bastards didn't get mine, though...I signed up for my Hotmail account back before Microsoft.

Re:mobile phone?

[barney0075]

ask friend ... or get prepaid card.

Re:mobile phone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow... you really are pathetic. Get back on your meds and stop trolling.

Re:mobile phone?

[grungefade]

You could do that, or be pro-active and stop sending your email address to those sites that promise "Get 5 free pictures in your email every day!"

Heres an inside tip coming from a man of experience. They don't work, all I got was spam from then on.

But back on topic, it seems fishy that google is claiming that how they are handeling their signup is to combat people from using their service to send spam. Because Im sure they already have procedures in place that would stop/ban someone if they were to send so many emails within a time period. So by having an email address tied to a mobile phone number dosent reduce spam anymore.

If you'd ask me, I think its for another agenda. Maybe something they are planning in the future, or maybe to have even more verification that the person using the email is actually who they say they are. Getting rid of anonymity. And by this, they increase the value of the logs & data they collect and possess.

Re:mobile phone?

[Anonymous Coward]

i don't have friends. i'm a geek.

Re:mobile phone?

[Baorc]

Yeah stop signing up at porn sites with your gmail address.

Re:mobile phone?

[ucahg]

Regarding your first point, I have not sent my email addresses to any such unsavoury websites. Frankly, I'm not interesting in receiving porn in my e-mail.. ever.. and I wish that gmail has some "smart filters" built in, where I could say 'Block all porn. Period.' and they could go to town with their filters and probably successfully detect most of the messages in question. Those who do want to receive their "5 pictures a day" or whatever it be, just don't enable the filter. I'd rather do this than have to make ten of my own filters, and make new ones all the time.

This seems to make sense to me at least.

And I also disagree with the thrust of your second post that its not important to verify that bots aren't signing up. If bots can sign up, for spam or otherwise, it's not a good thing. Google seems to have nailed a workable system (between invites and this mobile method) that verifies beyond a reasonable degree of doubt that the person signing up is indeed human.

I'm not a google fanboy, but I'm not a hater either, and I think this system makes sense.

Re:mobile phone?

[prell]

Doesn't really seem like anything to lose sleep over.

Google.. cell phone.. SMS.. privacy.. GMail.. Stallman.. NEWMANIUM!!

Re:mobile phone?

[databyss]

I have 8e6 R3000 and work and yes it does block that too.

Although babelfish is open for me to use.

Re:mobile phone?

[drsquare]

I should have known that posting against Google would get me modded down on this site, even when I'm posting facts, whilst the posts disagreeing with me are modded up to +4/5, even when they're wrong. I don't want to get banned from posting again for going against the hivemind, perhaps Slashdot should set up a Room 101 for reducation? Then you wouldn't even need a moderation system as everyone would be following the party line.

I need some more karma so I'll post this:

Google is great! Forget everything I said! Making you beg for invites or give away your phone number is much better than just signing up normally! Google is great! They invented webmail and search engines! All hail Google! I love Google! I hate Microsoft and Yahoo because they compete with Google! Google is not evil, everyone else is evil! I wish I could sleep with the Google founders! Or marry them! Google! Google! Google! Google! Google! Google! Google! Google! Google! Google! Google! Google! Google! Google! Google!!!!!!!!

Re:mobile phone?

[jetmarc]

> US mobile phones

Can you read me now?

Re:mobile phone?

[fbjon]

Electronic spam is spelled in lowercase. SPAM, on the other hand, refers to the trademarked food and something entirely different.

Re:mobile phone?

[Anonymous Coward]

try http://www.vischeck.com/vischeck/

Re:mobile phone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you'll know 100 sites which offer invites for free...

Re:mobile phone?

[mancontr]

Not really. They released, a log time ago, some official documentation. It was valid until MSNP8, which added someting like a ping which can't been replyed without a string reverse-engineered. You can read more here.

Re:mobile phone?

[Anonymous Coward]

To be honest, my gut tells me that the gmail saturation has already hit peak (everyone and their brother who wants a gmail account already has a gmail account). Unless they're planning to force everyone who already has an account provide cell phone numbers, they'll never be able to make a conclusive cellphone directory.

Re:mobile phone?

[schnoid]

No, your soul has been officially transferred over... its hiding somewhere in your Terms of Service/Privacy Statement.

Yay

[PunkOfLinux]

Too bad i've already sent invites out to everyone I know. Anyone still want one of my 50 invites?

Gmail is a great service though. It really is very well planned, with features that one would expect from google.

Re:Yay

[Jesrad]

Yes please :) -> (my /. name)@free.fr

Re:Yay

[SlightlyMiffed]

Oh go on then...
gmail at miffed dot com

Cheers!

Re:Yay

[ContemporaryInsanity]

Yesh Pleashe

ContemporaryInsanity at Yahoo dot co dot uk

If you'd be so kind...

Great!

[mwvdlee]

Now if only I could find a good reason to actually want GMail.

Re:Great!

[GauteL]

1. Extremely quick
2. Very simple, unobtrusive interface
3. Extensive search features
4. Very large storage space

For a Webmailsystem from a commercial operator it is extremely good imho.

Re:Great!

[joshdick]

5. excellent spam filtering

I can't remember the last time GMail missed a spam.

Re:Great!

[mwvdlee]

1. Extremely quick
Quicker than Thunderbird or Outlook?

2. Very simple, unobtrusive interface
Simpler than Thunderbird or Outlook?

3. Extensive search features
Better than Thunderbird or Outlook?

4. Very large storage space
I already keep every mail that's not spam or duped in the replies, it's not nearly 2TB yet.

Plus; it's not backed up! If keeping e-mails is important, don't you think it should be backed up?

Re:Great!

[joshdick]

2. Undoubtedly better than Outlook.

3. Yes. This is Google we're talking about.

I do think my e-mail should be backed up, and I trust the good folks at Google to do that for me.

Moving from one computer to another constantly, it's a must that I have a webmail account that I can use anywhere, and for that, GMail is simply the best.

Re:Great!

[rbarreira]

Quicker than Thunderbird or Outlook?

Depends on the speed of your computer and internet connection.

Simpler than Thunderbird or Outlook?

Sure.

Better than Thunderbird or Outlook?

Much better! It's as if you were searching the web with google!

I already keep every mail that's not spam or duped in the replies, it's not nearly 2TB yet.

It's not TB, it's GB.

Plus; it's not backed up! If keeping e-mails is important, don't you think it should be backed up?

Google employs redundant storage. I've heard that data is stored at least 3.5 times, but I'm not going to search for a source for this right now...

Re:Great!

[mwvdlee]

Now that might be a nice feature!

I get about 1000 spams (no typo) per hour, and about 98% of it gets stopped by SpamAssassin, a virus scanner, blacklists and a Bayessian filter on my server, this still leaves a few hundred spams each day.

How does gmails' anti-spam system work anyway?

Re:Great!

[jamesshuang]

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=3&url=htt p%3A//gmail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py%3Fans wer%3D13273&ei=Q8gNQ72TD6iY-gG3p6GTBQ Why not gmail IN thunderbird? BTW, comparing gmail to Outlook is PITIFUL... :-p

Re:Great!

[Evangelion]

Quicker than Thunderbird or Outlook?

Outlook.pst | 1,970,129 KB | Office Data File

Yes. And that's not taking into account startup time for the application should it ever exit uncleanly (yay, "Recovering Mailboxes").

Simpler than Thunderbird or Outlook?

Umm, yes.

Better than Thunderbird or Outlook?

Ehh, so-so. They get the job done. Certainly the search interface is easier and faster than what Outlook provides.

I already keep every mail that's not spam or duped in the replies, it's not nearly 2TB yet.

You mean 2G. And for personal mail, it should be fine for a decade or two.

Plus; it's not backed up! If keeping e-mails is important, don't you think it should be backed up?

???

As opposed to keeping it in a mail file your local hard drive?

Re:Great!

[BlackCobra43]

Quicker than Thunderbird or Outlook?

Yes.

Simpler than Thunderbird or Outlook?

Yes.

Better than Thunderbird or Outlook?

Indeed.

That was easy. Any other questions?

Re:Great!

[Richard_at_work]

Let me add another point to that list: convenience. You see, I cant take my Thunderbird or Outlook install everywhere - sure I can leave the mail on an IMAP server but that still presents problems when i want to quickly check my email from a friends house, or when Im on holiday. With Gmail I can have the best of both worlds, a webmail interface AND pop3 access to that email, so I can use Thunderbird or Outlook as well.

Re:Great!

[newrisejohn]

Or, if you have a web hosting account from someone like Dreamhost, you get a webmail frontend to your IMAP email account AND it's backed up.

Oh, and you get a website and SQL databases and all that too.

Re:Great!

[sgant]

Quicker than Thunderbird or Outlook?
Well, considering I use Thunderbird with Gmail through Gmail's free POP3 access, this is a moot point.

Quicker than Thunderbird or Outlook?
See above.

Better than Thunderbird or Outlook?
Again with the see above.

I already keep every mail that's not spam or duped in the replies, it's not nearly 2TB yet. Plus; it's not backed up! If keeping e-mails is important, don't you think it should be backed up?
Yes, but is it stored off-site? A fire raged through my in-laws house destroying the computers AND the back-ups. Everything gone. They're Gmail stuff is still there though.

Reason I use Gmail is that it's my permanent Email from now on. If I change ISP's as I have in the past, don't have to worry about setting up a new email, don't have to worry about setting up Thunderbird etc etc. I can access the account anywhere securely.

Re:Great!

[Trashman]

2. Very simple, unobtrusive interface
Simpler than Thunderbird or Outlook?

Um, to add to this You can use Tbird or Outlook (or any other pop mail client to read your gmail)

Instructions for doing this are here

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

You really want a GMail account. Trust me. It's a status symbol thing. It makes one harken back to the days of old when having an aol email address proclaimed to the world that you were l33t!

Re:Great!

[drsquare]

The interface is unobstrusive, I'll give you that. But the rest of the reasons aren't that great.

It's very slow. Opening it up takes ages. It just says 'loading' in the top of the screen. If you're in another tab, the gmail tab doesn't have the swirling thing to show it's loading, so you don't know whether it's actually loaded or not.

When it actually loads (after around 10-20 seconds), the interface isn't reliable. Sometimes when you click on an email the whole thing just freezes. When you click on a link in an e-mail, TWO tabs come up, one with the link, one back to your inbox. And the focussed tab is your inbox, not the link.

The size isn't much use. Other providers have similar size. Can't say I've ever filled it past 500kB so I couldn't care less about that.

I don't use search features, I store e-mails in relevant folders. Gmail doesn't even have folders, just 'labels', which means they're not neatly stored. It also doesn't tell you how many e-mails you've got in each 'label'. For instance if you put messages from person 'x' into label 'y', It just says 'y' at the side of the screen, it doesn't actually tell you how many are in there. It only shows unread mails. I thought people raved about Google's interfaces? They're worse than others.

As far as I'm aware there's no custom filters you can put on incoming mail like you could do with a proper e-mail client.

I'm afraid the conclusion is that gmail is an average webmail service with excellent marketing.

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

5. Ads.
6. You become statistics for marketeers (yes, Google DOES collect statistics about what you write, and DOES sell statistics to other companies).
7. Gives authorities a fast way to scan for your opinions (yes, Google DOES comply with government requests for information).

But of course the Google droids don't agree. Google is great and do nooo evil.

Re:Great!

[yasth]

And it costs money (granted not as much if you use the discount97 code deal, which also negates this guy's ref code, still not a fantastic deal but better).

Oh and most web interfaces lack some of the nicer features.

Of course were one really determined well there are VPS providers.

Re:Great!

[slimak]

How do you manage to get 1000 spams/hour? That is far more impressive than getting none if you ask me (but I guess you didn't).

Re:Great!

[LiquidCoooled]

3. Yes. This is Google we're talking about.

Actually, you can't just generically say google searches are automatically good.

I have been unimpressed by the searching functionality inside their maps tool.

Whenever I enter a place name to goto it fails horribly and tries to list business locations within the displayed area. A lot of the time I end up back on my old mapping site until I find the location and then drill down from a country view to where I am looking for.

Other map software finds addresses and locations using single keywords MUCH better than google.

Try going onto maps.google.com and entering "Hollywood" to see the effect. I do note however it is getting better and can now finally find my hometown at the first attempt.

Other search problems I have noticed were bugs in gmail, but those have been fixed now, so all is good again.

Re:Great!

[Tim Browse]

Curious...what browser/OS do you use? My experience of GMail has been much better.

Very occasionally I've had GMail be slow on me, or the servers have been down a couple of times. But mostly it's faster than using Thunderbird. Can't remember GMail ever locking up.

For me, Thunderbird is a dog of an app, with some nice features. I'm starting to wonder why I still use it, except as a local backup for my email.

Re:Great!

[yasth]

Eh it isn't that amazing. It is decent, but the number of false positives is scary on any comercial email even things like conferences notifications that I want.

But setup your mail to bounce a copy to gmail for a bit and see what happens.

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Try going onto maps.google.com and entering "Hollywood" to see the effect. I do note however it is getting better and can now finally find my hometown at the first attempt.

Seems like decent behavior to me, it finds things with "Hollywood" in their names, nearest the center of the view. "Hollywood" by itself isn't enough info to go on. I live in CA near the big Hollywood, but have a friend that lives in Hollywood, FL. Try "Hollywood, CA" next time.

Re:Great!

[TurdTapper]

It's very slow. Opening it up takes ages. It just says 'loading' in the top of the screen. If you're in another tab, the gmail tab doesn't have the swirling thing to show it's loading, so you don't know whether it's actually loaded or not. I don't know where you get that it's slow. I see the 'loading' text for 1 maybe 2 seconds and I'm in. I've used it on both IE and Firefox. Perhaps there is something wrong on your system? And I've never had it open two tabs on me.

Re:Great!

[smithcl8]

Uh, I hope you're on Office 2003 with the newer Outlook Data File. Otherwise, when that PST hits 2 Gigs, you're toast.

Just warning you before it happens.

Re:Great!

[SnoopJeDi]

You know you can forward things from your gmail to another email account, right? RIGHT?!

That's what I do, I use gmail as a secondary, and have all of the email piped into my primary email, which I then check through thunderbird. Now I have 2x spam filterage (plus my own custom filters on each account), backup 1gb in case of email overflow (which is ALSO backed up to my harddrive when I read it, crazy innit?!)

Trump that sucka.

Re:Great!

[eno2001]

That why you gotta run your own mail server mah boy!!! Us "old folks" got sick of having other people get things wrong, so we all run mail servers at home. I have 500 Gigs of storage for my mail and 500 gigs of backup. It's the only way to go. Then you can choose your own web mail interface or mail client (Outlook sucks). However, there are times when you need a light web mail client, and GMail is THE lightest and most full featured I've seen of the commercial providers. So if you HAVE to use web mail that you don't run yourself, use GMail!

Re:Great!

[maxwell demon]

The other question is of course: How large is the danger of non-spam mail being classified as spam.

I can write a very easy spam filter which will catch 100% of all spam, guaranteed. Downside is, it will also mark 100% legitimate messages as spam.

Re:Great!

[TheGavster]

1. As fast or faster than portable thunderbird over USB1.1. Obviously not faster than binary apps (though really really close for being a web app)

2. The only thing Thunderbird/Outlook have on GMail is having the Reply/Forward buttons not on a submenu.

3. Yes. Much better. Search would be Google's "core competancy", or, as normal people say it, "what they're good at".

4. 2GB is big when you're talking small text objects. A moderately used email account probably won't use it up, so you might as well call it 'enough' in the same way a couple gigs free on local disk is 'enough' for Outlook to keep things.

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

That about sums it up for anybody with a clue about email. I would like more hotmale users to switch over to GMail, I've been looking for an excuse to blacklist hotmail for years.

It's pet-peeve time:

WTF do google even let their users send html email? Can't they save that bullshit for AOL and hotmail!

Re:Great!

[jolar]

Don't forget that you can have all your mail wherever you have a web browser, too.

Using an e-mail client kind of precludes you from doing this, most of the time.

Re:Great!

[TrueKonrads]

Search better than Thunderbird or Outlook? Much better! It's as if you were searching the web with google! I disagree! I want my wildcard searches. Not everybody remembers in which tense the keyword sought for is specified in mail.

Re:Great!

[mwvdlee]

Easy: Have a reasonably well-visited site which list about 20 different e-mail addresses which are all forwarded to one address.

1000 is actually on the conservative side but I've replaced the e-mail links with a form (also no email in the HTML) and haven't thoroughly checked since.

When I had forward-all, I got a lot more. Now everything except about 50 e-mail addresses are forwarded.

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus you can access it everywhere. My ISP for example will only let me check my e-mail if the connection to their pop servers originates on the their lines.

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we using the same Gmail? It takes less than a second to go from 'Loading' to a full display on all connections I've tried it on (slowest is 128K broadband)

Never had a freeze (when the server is down, which hasn't happened for a few months, and at longest lasted ~5 minutes, I've had a box pop up saying the server is busy, try again later).

Never had extra tabs appearing - when I click on a link, I get a fresh window for the link (with focus), the email window doesn't change.

For custom filters, see the settings link at the top (cryptic, I know...). You can even receive mail as label+user@gmail.com, and it will automatically put it in the specified label.

I've used Mozilla & FireFox in Linux and Windows, and IE in Windows, and haven't noticed any inconsistancies between OSs / browsers.

Are you using lynx or something?

Re:Great!

[SolidGround]

3. Yes. Much better. Search would be Google's "core competancy", or, as normal people say it, "what they're good at".

I don't know how you keep track of your email, but trying to search GMail is like taking a step back 20 years. I have a number of 'pinned' search folders in my email client, among others 'flagged for follow-up', 'unread' and 'unanswered within the past 7 days' that I simply can not live without.

When I search email it's almost always by date, whether or not it was sent to me directly or Cc'ed, by tag or by part of an attachment's name when I don't remember who sent it or when but I remember the filename and others. None of that is possible with GMail.

For mom-and-pop's email needs it might be adequate, but that's about all of it. Webmail simply does not even begin to compare with the functionality of a modern desktop email client, especially if you have to deal with a bunch of different email account.

Re:Great!

[Kesh]

I don't use search features, I store e-mails in relevant folders. Gmail doesn't even have folders, just 'labels', which means they're not neatly stored. It also doesn't tell you how many e-mails you've got in each 'label'. For instance if you put messages from person 'x' into label 'y', It just says 'y' at the side of the screen, it doesn't actually tell you how many are in there. It only shows unread mails. I thought people raved about Google's interfaces? They're worse than others.

Curious. How often do you need to know how many total messages are in a folder? Especially at a glance? And it does show how many unread ones, as you said, which I would think is far more relevant.

As far as I'm aware there's no custom filters you can put on incoming mail like you could do with a proper e-mail client.

Er, yes, there are. Right at the top of the screen, next to the "Search the Web" button. Once you've specified the criteria and click "next," you can then do any number of things to the email.

The most common use is to apply a Label and then Archive the mail, which acts the same as shunting the mail into a folder in a traditional email app... except you can give your messages multiple Labels, so they show up in multiple "folders" at the same time.

Thus, I can have two Labels: "Game Company X" and "Receipts," and I can set up a Filter/Label combination that tags all my incoming receipts for purchases from Game Company X, so that they show up in both "folders". While normal newsletters and product support emails only get flagged "Game Company X," and receipts from other companies only get flagged "Receipts." And, say I purchased a download file from Game Company X, I could also have an "Attached Files" label, so that it gets Labeled both for having an attachment and for being from Game Company X. I can then see it in the Game Company X label, and in my general label for all the emails with attachments I've received to date.

I've found it quite flexible so far. If I didn't already have nearly half a gig of email archived on my hard drive, I'd switch to Gmail as my primary account. ;)

Re:Great!

[masonsas]

Speaking of backups, someone here might know the answer to this question: does Google provide any API for easily pulling down all of a user's messages, in order to create a local backup? While I realize that Google's backups are no doubt better than my own, I'm still leery of leaving emails on someone else's server. If I could write (or find) a simple little client to periodically pull down all of my mails from Google to back them up, I think that would be great. Does such a thing exist? Is it possible?

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

This wonderful API already exists and is quite available to you. Open up your favorite mail client, set it up to POP your mail from gmail leaving a copy on the server. All done.

If you're really looking for a 'simple little' client, try fetchmail.

Re:Great!

[I'm Troy McClure]

Have you ever tried using 'search*' ???

Re:Great!

[fbjon]

Better than M2 in Opera?

No.

Quicker than M2?

No.

Simpler that M2?

Perhaps, depending on what 'simple' happens to mean for you.

I think if you're already using M2, there's no point in using the web interface, because you already have the features. However, the storage space is great, and when you're not at a familiar computer, then the web interface won't leave you feeling crippled.

I mean, if I feel like sending an email while browsing, I press ctrl-e, type, then ctrl-shift-s, bombs away. On the other hand, the web-gmail is probably more obvious when you look at it.

Notice though, that with a real mail reader you can use several accounts in conjunction with gmail. No, forwarding to the gmail account is not the same thing. If gmail implemented that, it'd be a kick-ass whole lot better.

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a little tip: With the Tab Mix extension for Firefox (you're using FF for browsing right? :D), there's a neat option to show a progress bar on a tab so you can tell when a tab is done loading while you're in another tab. Very handy indeed.

Re:Great!

[LordoftheWoods]

Yes, this API is called POP3. Excepts its a protocol and not an API.

Re:Great!

[teknognome]

Actually, you can do almost all that with gmail.

Dates you can specify with 'before:' and/or 'after:'.
You can search based on to, from, cc, and bcc addresses (using those operators).
'filename:' searches for filename or extension.
'Flagged for followup' would just be a label. unread you can search for "is:unread".

"unanswered within the past 7 days" i'm not sure how to do. And one significant flaw is that gmail doesn't return partial matches (e.g. plurals when you search for singular).

Re:Great!

[GauteL]

What a ridiculous comparison. Please compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. Gmail is available ANYWHERE with a web browser. Thunderbird and Outlook both require setup. Note that Gmail also has POP-connection so you could actually use Outlook and Thunderbird to connect to it.

Gmail can be compared to Yahoo mail and Hotmail, both of which it destroys. Gmail is in my opinion the first webmail client to be considered acceptable by most technical people, something which says a lot.

And yes, the interface is simpler and the search features are better than Thunderbird and Outlook.

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Excepts its a protocol and not an API.

expressed in RPLSN (Revised Post-LINUX Slashdot Notation):

id Overloards = [LordoftheWoods(831099) @"Protocols and Interfaces = APIs ... conversely ... APIS = Protocols and Interfaces in the Darwin'ian Objective C universe of yesteryear and tomorrow."];
id ourObjectiveC = [Overloards new];
id IForOne = [ourObjectiveC welcome];

Re:Great!

[SolidGround]

Hmm. You can search for Cc specifically without it checking the To field?
It always seems to return all the matches whenever I've tried.

Thanks for the "is:unread" tip, but it would really only be useful if Gmail allowed you to save searches so you'd have to enter it just once.

Re:Great!

[teknognome]

Hmm. When i use "cc:" followed by my address, it just returns ones that were cc'ed to me, and not To ones also. True, not being able to save searches is abit of a disadvantage.

A New Feature

[voodoo_bluesman]

I just noticed that I'm now able to send email out with addresses other than my gmail account.

VERY cool from a business standpoint.

Re:A New Feature

[Anonymous Coward]

VERY cool from a -spamming- standpoint, you mean.

Re:A New Feature

[brajesh]

Yeah! I guess Google added this recently.

Re:A New Feature

[Spad]

Click 'Next Step >>,' and then click 'Send Verification' to complete the process. Gmail will send a verification message to your other email address to confirm that you'd like to add it to your Gmail account. You'll need to click the link in that message, or enter the confirmation code in the 'Accounts' section of your Gmail account, to complete the process. Once you've verified that you'd like to add the address to your account, you can start sending messages using your custom 'From:' address.

Re:A New Feature

[Jonny_eh]

This is actually a huge help for me. My gmail address name is quite dumb, and I have my own email address at my own domain that I have forwarded to gmail. But when I respond, they see my stupid gmail account name. Now I can make it look like the mail is sent from my domain! Plus, I can also add my companies' email address and make it look like I'm sending mail from work!

Re:A New Feature

[eric0213]

Awesome except the sender is still the gmail account. Outlook shows the message coming from: "joe@gmail.com on behalf of Joe Nobody [joe@nobody.com]" I could already set the reply to address, I'm not sure what this really gains me.

Re:A New Feature

[Pepsiman]

That's odd, this feature isn't available in the "English (UK)" version of gmail.

Re:A New Feature

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm also based in the uk and havent got this option, I dont think I've ever inputted my location into gmail or any other google service though. I cant wait to get this working, I'll never have to use outlook to send mail from my work address again :D

Re:A New Feature

[Roguelazer]

I post this and I get modded offtopic. You post it and get +5 Interesting. Argh!

Re:A New Feature

[KillerDeathRobot]

Hmm, it doesn't show up that way to me. I sent myself an email and it shows up as the address I told it to send from.

Re:A New Feature

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really, it doesn't look all that cool when your email is received as:

smithy2005@gmail.com; on behalf of; John Smith [john@bigcompany.com]

Re:A New Feature

[eric0213]

Really? Maybe it's my version of Outlook (2003). But there's a header that's part of the message specifying what account sent it, and that's still the gmail account. Gmail just shows the

X-Gmail-Received: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Received: by 10.70.124.6 with HTTP; Thu, 25 Aug 2005 08:25:25 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 10:25:25 -0500
From: Joe Nobody <joe@nobody.com>
Sender: joe@gmail.com
To: Joe Nobody <joe@nobody.com>
Subject: Hello World
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Disposition: inline

This is a test

Re:A New Feature

[eric0213]

Got a little trigger happy with the submit button...

...Gmail just shows the "From" address but other clents (I've only looked at Outlook 2003) are more forthcoming.

Re:A New Feature

[EternityInterface]

This business would of appretiated it:

Return-Path:
Original-Recipient:
Received: from pne-smtpin3-sn1.fre.skanova.net (81.228.11.100) by pne-ms6.vip.skanova.net (7.2.060.1)
                id 42ACD58D01032D7A for 08.53031910@telia.com; Mon, 15 Aug 2005 04:59:26 +0200
Received: from smtpgate2.pacific.net.sg (203.120.90.28) by pne-smtpin3-sn1.fre.skanova.net (7.2.060.1)
                id 42B93757010A21FE for 08.53031910@telia.com; Mon, 15 Aug 2005 04:59:26 +0200
Received: (qmail 17387 invoked from network); 15 Aug 2005 02:59:22 -0000
Received: from maxwell2.pacific.net.sg (203.120.90.192)
    by smtpgate2.pacific.net.sg with SMTP; 15 Aug 2005 02:59:22 -0000
Received: from [192.168.2.111] ([210.24.127.237])
                    by maxwell2.pacific.net.sg with SMTP
                    id
                    for ; Mon, 15 Aug 2005 10:59:21 +0800
Message-ID:
Reply-To: "goodair4u"
From: "goodair4u"
To:
Subject: No more clean air?
Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 10:59:08 +0000
Organization: sender
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0034_01C221EC.6C64F7B 0"
X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook, Build 10.0.2616
X-MimeOLE: Produced by Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165

Dear friends

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What kind of sickness we can encounter? The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome?

Who could be affected next?

If you can't even foresee, how to prevent it?

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Re:A New Feature

[mattstorer]

Yes, it is very cool, but you'll find that the Sender: tag in the email header still has the originating GMail address, even if the From: tag doesn't.

In other words, don't rely on this feature to hide the real source of email you send, anyone smart enough to look at the headers will know the truth:

X-Gmail-Received: 92ffbb318a086f769eb85c1ef1d3b1787fb82e02
Delivere d-To: XXXXXX@XXXXXX.net
Received: by 10.54.28.52 with SMTP id b52cs8926wrb;
Thu, 25 Aug 2005 07:59:44 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.54.56.47 with SMTP id e47mr1688682wra;
Thu, 25 Aug 2005 07:59:41 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.54.124.10 with HTTP; Thu, 25 Aug 2005 07:59:41 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <49aa23805082507594a42249e@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 10:59:41 -0400
From: Matt Storer <XXXXXX@XXXXXX.net>
Sender: REALADDRESS@gmail.com
To: RECIPIENT@gmail.com
Subject: test
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Disposition: inline

-Matt

Re:A New Feature

[KillerDeathRobot]

I tested with Thunderbird, so that's probably the difference.

Re:A New Feature

[I'm Troy McClure]

They've had the ability to change the "from" field for ages!!!!

Not yet, it isn't

[GauteL]

It is still clearly marked "Beta" and no links to registration is found on the gmail.com website.

Re:Not yet, it isn't

[Fishstick]

don't know about a link on gmail.com (I already have an account so it seems it redirects to google.com/accounts when I try to get to the main page, but

this link: Create a Google Account - Gmail does show up on that page.

But yeah, it does still say beta.

Re:Not yet, it isn't

[BRonsk]

So when slashdot post old news, everyone screams that these aren't news. And when slashdot post 'advanced news' (that will be real news in the future), now people scream these aren't effective yet?

Jeez...

Re:Not yet, it isn't

[Anonymous Coward]

...no links to registration is found on the gmail.com website.

In the lower-right corner of gmail.com is a blue box with a 16-point link "Sign up for Gmail using your mobile phone." At least here. If you're not seeing it, perhaps it varies from location to location or country to country?

Re:Not yet, it isn't

[Anonymous Coward]

I think one can create google account at

https://www.google.com/accounts/ and use it for several google services. This has been available for long time now.

Re:Not yet, it isn't

[Ciaran_H]

The link only shows up if you're in the US. I know, because I couldn't see it either, but when I switched to using a proxy in the US and then refreshed, the link showed up.

Huh?

[Richard_at_work]

Gmail is out of beta is it? News to me, still says 'beta' in the logo and nowhere in the blog entry does it say Gmails out of beta, just that you can sign up for it without an invite in the US.

Re:Huh?

[cduffy]

It didn't say it was out of beta, it said it was "open to everyone". RTFP.

Re:Huh?

[Richard_at_work]

Nope, they just changed the post, it origionally said Gmail was out of Beta. You see this is the type of confusion editors promote when they make POST PUBLICATION edits without marking that they have done so. If someone had checked the blog and gmail.com before the post was put live, they could have caught it then, but they waited until it was pointed out in the comments, and now you have 5 or 6 comments that are seemingly meaningless because of a silent editorial change.

Re:Huh?

[NewStarRising]

Usual Slashdot 'editor' skills.
Google article has its title changed (to "Better reflect the facts" or "Due to misinterpretations in the levels of accuracy" or "no-one checked the article.").
1TB DVD recorder article still sys it is a 1TB DVD recorder.

"If someone had checked the blog and gmail.com before the post was put live" - you mean the journaists and editors doing their job?
1) You must be new here.
2) Slashdot: News for no-one. Stuff thats Wrong.
3) Only old people complain about innacurate titles.
4) Imagine a cluster of these editors (no need to imagine - check out the nearest bar)
5) Slashcode is shit and still doesn;t work with Firefox.
6) In Soviet Russia Editors actually do their job.
7) ???
8) Profit.

I bet I missed something about hot grits down someones pants.

Re:Huh?

[tod_miller]

Richard_at_work (517087)
NewStarRising (580196) said: "1) You must be new here."

Check his uid! Anyway, yes, the 1TB dvd recorder title was far worse. Gmail will always be in beta, until Duke Nukem Forever comes out.

Re:Huh?

[DJStealth]

At least the current title "GMail sign-ups via mobile" is correct. If it said "GMail open to everyone" in the title (like it actually does say in the caption of the article), that would be wrong, as it's only open to those with access to a mobile phone that can receive text messaging and are in the US.

It's like we now have the ability to invite mobile phone users, that's all.

Also, does anyone think that part of the reason they're doing this is to collect mobile phone #'s?

Re:Huh?

[NewStarRising]

Duke Nukem! Knew I'd missed one! Thanks!!

8) GMail will be in Beta until DNF is released (Courtesy of tod_miller)
9) Netcraft confirms /. Editors Know arse from elbow. Pictures on page 7

Re:Huh?

[EternityInterface]

Results 1 - 10 of about 6,150 for inurl:slashdot.org google beta. (0.03 seconds)

News results for inurl:slashdot.org google beta - View today's top stories
        GMail Out Of Beta - Slashdot - 3 hours ago

Aha...

[irn_bru]

So they want your mobile phone number as well

**Strokes chin...**

Re:Aha...

[biglig2]

Well, of course. You know why they're hiring so many big brains that start-ups are having trouble starting up? Because they're trying to figure out a way to get a DNA sample over the internet, that's why!

Open to everyone?

[kevin_conaway]

...is open to everyone...Please take note that sign-up occurs via mobile phone at the moment, and only U.S. citizens can register for now.

So its not open to everyone..yet?

Anyone know the reasoning behind this? Previously, I could invite my friends from France or Swaziland and they could sign up no problem. Why not let them register now? And without using a phone ?!

Re:Open to everyone?

[BRonsk]

Previously, I could invite my friends from France or Swaziland and they could sign up no problem

Don't worry, you still can. Second hint: Don't blindly believe what you read on slashdot. GMail is still in Beta.

Re:Open to everyone?

[HyoImowano]

The SMS activation is only available to US citizens because they can only text to US phone numbers, you can still invite anyone.

Re:Open to everyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think I've ever seen a more obvious case of "Didn't RTFA"

Does this worry anyone...

[dynemo]

...that Google is now going to start to associate a Gmail account with their mobile number? This can be abused...

Re:Does this worry anyone...

[youknowmewell]

So can cars, computers, airplanes, etc. Are you suggesting we forget about using anything that might possibly have a chance of being abused? Seriously, the paranoid people around here on /. need to return to reality. Do you people enjoy living in fear of everything and everybody around you?

Re:Does this worry anyone...

[dynemo]

Its not that I am paranoid; however, I prefer to keep certain aspects of my life private. I wouldn't necessarily say that there are paranoid people on /. because everybody wears tin foil hats, I would say that most /. readers are in tune with current privacy and data issues and how irresponsible organizations are at protecting consumer data.

Re:Does this worry anyone...

[youknowmewell]

This has nothing to do with 'irresponsible' organizations. You weren't suggesting that Google may lose user data like banks have been recently, you were suggesting that Google would malevolently abuse the information given to them for their own gain, without any evidence to suggest this could be true except your gut feeling that 'this could be abused...'. Paranoia.

Re:Does this worry anyone...

[dynemo]

I still wouldn't call the feeling paranoia, I would call it lack of trust. I don't trust what they would do with that data. Do I mean that the company will purposely abuse the information? Not necessarily; someone within the organization may have the ability to compromise the data.

mobile phones?

[grasshoppa]

Please take note that sign-up occurs via mobile phone at the moment

Let me be the first to say, huh?

Is this odd to anybody else?

Re:mobile phones?

[teslar]

Is this odd to anybody else?

Yeah.
Although I guess the idea is to stop spammers from signing up a million gmail accounts or whatever. It's still weird - the invite system did a good job at this too.

At any rate, I'm glad I've got my gmail account already (even though I'm not using it :) )

Re:mobile phones?

[Evan Meakyl]

not really. Let's say you are a spammer; you need a lot of mails accounts.
If you need to pay just a little per account, this will be less interesting for you and so gmails accounts can stay clean. (It has the same goal as the invitations gmail used to use)

Re:mobile phones?

[Neon Spiral Injector]

The invite system is still there. This is just antoher way to sign up for U.S. residents that have mobile phones on the supported networks, yet no friends with Gmail to invite them.

Re:mobile phones?

[metalmaniac1759]

RTFA!

Why use mobile phones? It's a way to help us verify that an account is being created by a real person, and that one person isn't creating thousands of accounts. We want to keep our system as spam-free as possible, and making sure accounts are used by real people is one way to do that.

Nandz.

Re:mobile phones?

[garcia]

Dodge, Dive, Dip, Duck, and Dodge.

Re:mobile phones?

[Andrewkov]

I think the real reason might be to promote their VOIP/Google Talk system.

Anyway, I don't feel like giving Google my cell phone number. They already have enough info about me in cyberspace, let alone linking me to my real life identity.

Re:mobile phones?

[hswerdfe]

er....I RTFA and I thought it was strange.
as I don't have a mobile, and I am a real person.
could they not just setup some jpg verification system/IP logger like everybody else.
then luddites like me would be able to use this new fangled email thing

Re:mobile phones?

[Anonymous Coward]

When did captchas suddenly lost their power ? I can't see their's on the list of broken ones and it does seem to have all properties required from a strong captcha.

Google accumulates too much cross-referencable personal information if you ask me. It is your next Big Brother or a franchise of one.

Say you searched for something like 'nuclear bomb howto'. Via proxy mind you. Having your cell phone at hand it becomes possible to pick you up on terrorism charges in next 10 minutes. It's an exgagerated example, but think about.

To possess all this information and withstand a temptation not to 'process' it - this requires a lot of respect for individual privacy and moral strength. Google can claim 'make no evil' all they want, but I just don't believe them anymore.

Re:mobile phones?

[OmegaBlac]

could they not just setup some jpg verification system/IP logger like everybody else.

They already do just that (the jpg verification). Check out the create account link https://www.google.com/accounts/SmsMailSignup1/. They require both your mobile phone number and jpg verification for step one of account creation.

Re:mobile phones?

[synx]

Those are easily defeatable - spammers will get a class C just to sign up for accounts, or use zombie computers, etc. The captcha (jpeg verification you talk about) is also defeatable, no matter how hard it is. The bottom line is its a cruel world out there, and I think this is an interesting and novel way to do the turing test.

Just get an invite from someone you know, or use a invite spooler service.

Re:mobile phones?

[hosecoat]

i dont even have a mobile phone.

Re:mobile phones?

[bill_kress]

A slashdot article this week (yesterday?) said that the JPG stuff was, in general, haxored.

Fingerprints anyone?

Re:mobile phones?

[hswerdfe]

I already have one
I never use it
the don't provide pine access..:)

Re:mobile phones?

[Castar]

I've been puzzled about this - Presumably, with 50 invites a day, the "invite only" thing is only meaningful as a way to reduce throwaway accounts. But it's not that hard to make throwaway accounts on another system, then invite that address to Gmail - I've done this once myself, and I'd think it would only add another step to the process for bots.

Of course, that assumes that you really need a GMail account, and that a regular Hotmail account isn't good enough.

Is there something else I'm missing?

Logo still says beta

[WillDraven]

And this has been going on since at least when google talk launched and i decided to get a gmail account.

Pocket Full o' Spam

[CleverNickedName]

Please take note that sign-up occurs via mobile phone at the moment

Alarm bells are ringing... Why would Google want mobile numbers? More direct advertising? Relevant, SMS Spam straight to your pocket?

Glad I got it in beta.

Re:Pocket Full o' Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

That's one way of looking at it.

The official reason is that if they send it per mobile, they can ensure that spammers don't make hundreds of dummy accounts expressly for spamming purposes.

That's and interesting if somewhat pessimistic interpretation though.

What a nice way to collect personal information!

[Anonymous Coward]

Is'nt it?

Way to go mother FBI ;)

beta!!!

[StarvingSE]

It still says beta on the logo!!!! Boo this man!!! Boooooooooooooo!!!!

Re:beta!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

noob!
everything google releases in beta! its like their universal excuse for lack of features while they slowly improove on it, so you can count on one thing, and that is features, I dont know when but you'll get them

Re:beta!!!

[joshdick]

Do you mean Booooooooo-urns?

Google officially evil

[Henry V .009]

Give Google your phone number to get free email? Whoa, if Microsoft tried this, they'd have a mob with pitchforks and torches descending on Redmond.

Re:Google officially evil

[joshdick]

Yeah, but seeing as how they are very different companies, there's no double standard, as you imply.

Re:Google officially evil

[Jeff DeMaagd]

From a comment from a person on another forum, it looks to be misinformation from that "news" source.

Said person managed to sign up without having to text message them from a mobile phone.

Re:Google officially evil

[MindStalker]

You can opt to not have the mobile phone number stored. And if they did sell it then you could sue them. Their current claim is that they are doing this to limit the amount of gmail accounts a person can activate. Of course you still can use the traditional invite system, so it seems silly to me.

Re:Google officially evil

[SimilarityEngine]

Of course you still can use the traditional invite system...

I think someone further up pointed out that the invite systen is all well and good, if you have a friend with gmail. This opens the door for many more people, while making a reasonable attempt to ensure that real humans are requesting the accounts.

Re:Google officially evil

[Xeth]

So, you're saying that if a guy you've worked with for years asked for your phone number, you'd treat him just like a known criminal?

I don't know about you, but how I treat poeple depends on how they've treated me in the past. Google hasn't done anything particularly evil. Microsoft has. We have reason to suspect the latter, but much less to suspect the former.

Re:Google officially evil

[shish]

Pray tell, *how* is requesting a phone number evil?

Lots of people are saying that google are evil because they allow people to, at their own discretion, give up some personal info. They aren't demanding it, and I know of no reason that anoyone would be forced to sign up to any of their services, so what's the problem?

Even for those of us who do use their services - where's the link between people telling google their interests for the sake of targeted advertising, and said people being in any way harmed?

Re:Google officially evil

[shayne321]

I have to agree with you 100%.. I think everyone up in arms about google having your mobile number is a bit silly. If you buy a book from amazon.com you have to give them much more info than your mobile phone number - at a minimum you must give them your credit card number and a valid shipping address. Even if you do not save the credit card to your account, you have no guarantee that they do not keep the number linked to your account behind the scenes. This information is infinitely more dangerous than a mobile phone number, but most people trust them with it because they have proven to be a reputable company. How is google different?

Re:Google officially evil

[shayne321]

Microsoft does do something similar to this.. If you run MSN Messenger they encourage you to link your mobile number with your MSN account so you can receive messages when not connected to the service. Where is the angry mob with pitchforks?

Re:Google officially evil

[Shelle]

The credit card number is not required. Amazon.com accepts payment by check as well. I order from them all the time, and all the personal information I've ever given them is an email, name and shipping address.

Re:Google officially evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Selling personal information including searches to the Israeli govt is not bad?

Re:Google officially evil

[Apathetic1]

Give Google your phone number...

...or just find someone who has invites. As far as I know, everybody who has a GMail account gets 50 a day.

Re:Google officially evil

[Anonymous Coward]

...email, name and shipping address. ...and this is less information than a mobile phone number how?

no longer compelling?

[Dink Paisy]

The most visible feature of GMail is the extra storage, but with Hotmail, Yahoo and others offering more storage now, will many people who haven't already switched to GMail want to? Acquiring a new email address is a pretty heavy operation, since you have to inform everyone who has the old one (well, everyone that you still want to communicate with via email...) about the new one. I have a Hotmail account, and despite the search features (that most people won't even bother learning about) I didn't switch when I got GMail invites, just because it would be more effort than it is worth.

My personal opinion is that Google waited to long to release this service to the general public, and they have lost their edge in web mail.

Re:no longer compelling?

[arudloff]

The most visible feature of GMail is the extra storage

I think it's safe to say that 99.9% of the people who use GMail will tell you it's the interface, not the storage.

Re:no longer compelling?

[joshdick]

GMail has much more than large storage. As has been pointed out elsewhere, it has a clean interface and excellent spam filtering.

If the switch to a different e-mail address worries you, just have your mail forwarded to your GMail account and slowly phase out the old one.

Re:no longer compelling?

[emotionus]

Just to echo - its the interface that makes you switch. Gmail has by far the best interface. I would kill to have a version I could run on my pocketpc as a native application and not as a webpage (pocket IE lacks certain support features for gmail, so alot of the nice parts of the interface don't work).

Re:no longer compelling?

[justforaday]

I work for a journal that sells PDF copies of our articles to customers. I still get bounced messages from Hotmail accounts saying that our 1.5-2MB attachments exceed their per message limit, even though it was supposedly bumped up to 10MB over a year ago...

Re:no longer compelling?

[bhtooefr]

Very good point.

I have a friend that I tried to switch over to GMail, but there were two reasons that she didn't.

Reason one was that she liked the Hotmail domain (WTF?)

Reason two? Hotmail went to 250MB storage. They've also extended the deadlines for checking your account, last I've heard.

(And had I been more upfront that it was Google, she'd have run from me as if I were holding a dead badger... I swear, if she ever finds google-watch, she'll go NUTS... what I don't get, though, is that she doesn't trust Google, yet she trusts MS...)

Re:no longer compelling?

[DNS-and-BIND]

I thought it was the fact that Gmail was a free email provider that provides pop3 and outgoing mail servers. I don't know about you, but I never see the web interface. I just have a bunch of Gmail accounts that I use for various purposes.

Re:no longer compelling?

[bradbeattie]

I know not many people have access to a forwarding account, but it's a must-have for me. I have one email address that forwards to whatever back-end I'm using (at the moment its Gmail). What's that, a better email service is out there? I'll switch without having to inform my contact list. Seamless.

Re:no longer compelling?

[limber]

"despite the search features I didn't switch"

Actually it's *because* of the search features that I haven't switched. Gmail doesn't allow partial string matches in searches. So if you search for the word 'vacation' and your e-mail contains 'vacations', it doesn't find the e-mail. Very annoying. Especially in the context of google's noted expertise in search.

Re:no longer compelling?

[aristotle-dude]

Hotmail? I only have 25MB. Are you using some pay service?

Re:no longer compelling?

[re-Verse]

I'd say that the most visable feature is interface, not storage. I thought that webmail was webmail was webmail until i started using gmail - I'm not that easily impressed, but its design blew me away - the threaded messages especially. The extra space is great, and i love that it keeps grownig.. but really - the first thing i think about when i think about Gmail is its incredibly well thought out interface.

Not to nitpick, but the way you say they have "lost their edge" in email for waiting so long time come in - well if they waited too long - they'd not have an edge to lose, would they? I'd say they are making huge leaps forward in it - since more and more of the people i send mail to, are using gmail adresses.

Re:no longer compelling?

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. I came for the storage, stayed for the interface.

Re:no longer compelling?

[SilentReallySilentUs]

It is interesting that I sent "Ask Slashdot" posting yesterday about "What is the future of Hotmail". That posting got rejected, but we got to discuss a lot about it today. I think it is worth a wait and see what hotmail does for you. I am hoping that Bill Gate wakes up to all this news and sends his force to revive hotmail. Yahoo is making improvements already. If one has the desire to provide good features to his users, one always can without the need to hire rocket engineers. While working on http://www.collaze.com/ any feature, however radical it may be, can be added after doing some research and experiments with AJAX/DHTML and back-end processing.

Re:no longer compelling?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use hotmail for junk e-mail, and spam. So when i signed my car loans, house loans, register for websites and forum access etc... i always use hotmail. My friends and family get my gmail address. I can send nice sized files through Gmail (dont know the exact limit), but with hotmail, sending limits are very small per attachment. Now days with photoshop experts, attachments can easily reach 20MB's per PSD.

Also, even though they bumped the limit of hotmail boxes to 250 mb's, its usually at 90% even though i dont use it, and delete the spam every day!

Re:no longer compelling?

[alnjmshntr]

Well I also like Gmail Drive, it's kindof a neat feature though it's not supported by Google.

Re:no longer compelling?

[CrazyTalk]

Guess I'm the 0.1%. I use Gmail for the storage, not the interface. Personally, I think the web search-engine type interface is horrible for email. Call me crazy, but I like my Outlook and Entourage folders. I do like the 2GB+ storage capacity, though, and the ability to access my account from anywhere, so I auto-forward all of my regular email to Gmail and also use it for archiving files, etc.

Re:no longer compelling?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just forward mail from your existing accounts to gmail. You can even make gmail use your existing email address as your "from" address. Shouldn't cause any pain to switch at all.

Better interface
More storage
Better spam filtering
No pain

If you actually prefer hotmail for some reason stick with them, otherwise switching to gmail is trivial.

Re:no longer compelling?

[mbbac]

It's the storage. Other interfaces are better.

Re:no longer compelling?

[Neoncow]

What do outlook and entourage folders do that labels can't? I'm curious not attacking.

Re:no longer compelling?

[hobbit]

Friends don't let friends use Hotmail.

Re:no longer compelling?

[Frogbert]

Exactly. I used to be happy with Hotmail for a long time before I switched to Gmail. I could deal with the ads on hotmail because I had an adblock extension, but the final straw was that god damned Today tab. Every time I logged in I got this fucking Today tab and I'd have to click inbox to see my email. I don't even know what the hell the Today tab is meant to do, it was a constant annoyance of mine. I'd log into hotmail, to get my mail and here would be this god damned TODAY tab fucking winking at me. I hated that thing.

Sorry I got carried away.

To sum up:
Gmail doesn't have a today tab.

Re:no longer compelling?

[Anonymous Coward]

Theres no reason you carn't use your dodgy dodgy mac email client with gmail by enabeling pop3.

Re:no longer compelling?

[flacco]

what I don't get, though, is that she doesn't trust Google, yet she trusts MS...

next time she's blowing you, feel along the top of her head for horns.

Re:no longer compelling?

[xedicate]

but I like my Outlook and Entourage folders

You do know that you can apply labels, achieve mails, and call pretend the labels were folders, right?

I personally find the label functions much more efficient than folders, for instance, now I can put all those drunk photos my cousins sent me into the "Family" "Album" and "Black Mail Material" 'folders' at the same time without wasting space by making multiple copies on the email and to put into different folders ;)

Re:no longer compelling?

[mbbac]

And that just makes my point. It's the storage, not the interface. And POP is for lamers. IMAP is the proper protocol and Gmail doesn't support it.

Stills says beta

[kuiken]

Still says beta under every Gmail logo.
still have invites.
So they added the phone thingy a few days ago ... nothing realy changed

A Mobile Phone to sign up?

[hungrygrue]

This has to be the strangest hardware requirements I've ever heard of. Does anyone know of a way to get around that in order to recieve the text message?

Re:A Mobile Phone to sign up?

[hungrygrue]

Nevermind, invitations still work.

Re:A Mobile Phone to sign up?

[jaavaaguru]

BT land lines in the UK can do SMS messaging. No mobile required.

Re:A Mobile Phone to sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know of a way to get around that in order to recieve the text message?

Many spammers are wondering the same thing.

Re:A Mobile Phone to sign up?

[mlk]

It could be just as I have a shit phone (it is a BT jobbie), but you don't use your home phone number, but a service phone number, and you have to put the target phone number in #'s.

Orkut.....

[idiotnot]

Google's social networking project, sadly, I don't think will ever get out of beta.

Re:Orkut.....

[Tim Browse]

Or out of Brazil.

Misleading post!

[francisew]

As serveral people have pointed out, Gmail is still in beta, they have just opened the sign-up model slightly.

GMAIL NOT out of beta

[Chanc_Gorkon]

I am on the gmail site now and it's not out of beta. Not yet. I bet it will be in a few months though. This IS the first time anyoen who goes to the site can register and for now only via the SMS text message. If you ask me, it's a ingenious way to implement a captcha. Still has issue with handicap users (unless one has a phone that can text to speech the SMS). This will only prevent spam for a short time. All the spammer needs is a pocket pc phone and a program that can read the SMS, and go to the web page and authenticate it. Easy peasy and all they have to use is a smartphone.

Re:GMAIL NOT out of beta

[tomstdenis]

Ingenious my ass. CBV [callback verification] was COMMON back in the 80s as a method of user account verification [e.g. prevent people from making multiple accounts].

Of course back then it wasn't spam it was time. You had to limit users to [say] 30-60 mins per day online so that others could use it. So you limit them to one account per phone number.

Tom

Re:GMAIL NOT out of beta

[ignavusincognitus]

No need for a pocket PC even. A $15 USB pc-cellphone connectivity cable is enough.

RE: GMAIL NOT out of beta

[paithuk]

All the spammer needs is a pocket pc phone and a program that can read the SMS, and go to the web page and authenticate it. Easy peasy and all they have to use is a smartphone.

Since Google will inevitably store it, they would no longer allow other users to register with the same phone number. The purpose is not really that of a Turing test, but instead a way of limiting the demands on their resources.

Re:GMAIL NOT out of beta

[Frett2]

when you go to sign up it tells you:

* Phone numbers are also stored to manage the number of accounts created per phone.

so, that should prevent some abuse by spammers

Re: GMAIL NOT out of beta

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Anyone who THINKS captcha's are a true Turing is well, not right! :D Did we not just have the article about PWNctha(sp)?? Captcha is just a way to make sure you have a human on the other side. Some humans can barely pass that sometimes with especially messed up captcha images or if your blind.

Re:GMAIL NOT out of beta

[jurt1235]

And google has a lot of usefull mobile numbers as a result. So they can do targeted advertising on those.

Re:GMAIL NOT out of beta

[Tim Browse]

All you have to do to circumvent GMail's verification is not hang up the internet when you request an account, then play a dial tone to the web site, and it sends you the code straight to your web browser!

Re:GMAIL NOT out of beta

[karnal]

....

wow.

That's the most screwed up thing I think I've ever read. And yes, I know you were attempting to be funny.

Re: GMAIL NOT out of beta

[DMoylan]

and since spammers are such law abiding citizens they won't use stolen mobile phones to create a disposable account for spamming?

49 invitations left on the wall

[jurt1235]

jurt1235 at xs4all.nl

Does sign-up by mobile phone prevent spam?

[yeremein]

Google says they're sending invitation codes by SMS to prevent spammers from obtaining Gmail accounts.

I call shenanigans. What good is a Gmail account in comparison to a zombie?

Re:Does sign-up by mobile phone prevent spam?

[rantdepot]

Probably because all emails generated within the gmail.com domain are considered trustworthy. Spammers getting gmail accounts would make life a bit tougher for the filters they have in place...

Re:Does sign-up by mobile phone prevent spam?

[ranson]

> Google says they're sending invitation codes
> by SMS to prevent spammers from obtaining Gmail
> accounts.
> I call shenanigans. What good is a Gmail
>account in comparison to a zombie?

I agree this is utter bullshit. A spammer just has to get one friend to innocently send him a gmail invite and he can make an unlimited number of gmail accounts from the ~50 invites that each new account gets (which seems to now be replenishing daily). Until they end the invites model and go to strictly mobile-based registrations, there's not a chance in hell of protecting gmail from spammer subs.

Re:Does sign-up by mobile phone prevent spam?

[maxwell demon]

But then, being at the source, they'd have much more information in order to detect spam. Not to mention that they could just limit the number of recipients per day to, say, 50 (i.e. you could have an unlimited number of mails to the same person, but you cannot mail to more than 50 different persons on the same day).
This would make gmail accounts completely worthless for spammers, while not interfering with normal use (you don't usually write to 50 different persons at the same day; and if you do, you'll probably use a mailing list, so from what google is concerned, there's just one recipient).

Re:Does sign-up by mobile phone prevent spam?

[Stormy Henderson]

That's the beauty of the invitation system.

Nice Guy Bob innocently invites Spammer Jim via a GMail spool site. Spammer Jim creates 50 sub-accounts for his spam operation, and 50 more under each of them. Now he has 2500 accounts.

Spammer Jim starts sending spam. Google gets thousands of spam complaints regarding 800 of Spammer Jim's sub-accounts. A simple view of the invitation tree shows that the 800 accounts were invited from 22 of Jim's top-level accounts. Jim is obviously involved in spam, since he spawned 22 spammers. Delete Jim and his entire tree from Gmail. Problem solved. As for Nice Guy Bob, he only invited 1 spammer, and is clearly an innocent user.

They undoubtedly have various algorithms to monitor the tree and find the problem branches. They'll need to take into account a power-user who has invited hundreds or thousands of users, accidently including 18 spammers, but who is still a good branch. Whereas someone else who has sent only 3 invites, but all 3 to spammers, is a bad branch.

Has anyone ever been terminated for inviting too many spammers?

Mobiles and US only

[Zouden]

For all those saying "huh?"
From the Google blog:
Why use mobile phones? It's a way to help us verify that an account is being created by a real person, and that one person isn't creating thousands of accounts. We want to keep our system as spam-free as possible, and making sure accounts are used by real people is one way to do that.
Right now, sign-ups only work with U.S. mobile phone numbers, but we're eager to support others.

Honestly, it would have been useful to have that in the /. writeup...

wow...

[thegoogler]

they make the assumption that everyone who would want a gmail account already has a cell phone and sms?

probably just cut a huge chunk of potential users out there..

Re:wow...

[defkkon]

probably just cut a huge chunk of potential users out there..

Not really, no. Prior to this, you could only get invites from other GMail users. At least now people can get invites through their cellphone in addition to that. Its not as open as something like Hotmail, but its still adding people who can sign up.

I'm actually glad to see they didn't just open it up. This allows more people to sign up (and I'm sorry, but a huge portion of people interested in a Gmail account WILL have a cellphone with SMS), yet doesn't allow for all the spammers to get a hold of one.

Very Clever Google!

[fizz]

What if they had a diffrent purpose for this obscure signup procedure? Thats alot of valid cell phone numbers they are collecting. Who knows, we might be getting ads texted to us based on who we are talking to, or whats being talked about.. LOL

Re:Very Clever Google!

[rbarreira]

LOL OMFG!!!one!! No, that's illegal and will not happen ;)

Re:Very Clever Google!

[NewStarRising]

" illegal " and "will not happen" are two VERY different things.
Are you trying to suggest that a Corporation would never do anything illegal? Or just that Google never would?
Or just, coincidentally, both are true?

Re:Very Clever Google!

[rbarreira]

Do you really think google would turn to the spamming business? That's what I'm trying to suggest.

Re:Very Clever Google!

[NewStarRising]

Doesn't GMail already put spam into your emails?
I have never used (or been invited to use ... *sniff* ...) a gmail account, but seem to remember news about them reading your mail and putting adverts in them?

Re:Very Clever Google!

[rbarreira]

No, they don't put advters in your email. They DISPLAY targeted ads exactly like google web search does, based on the content of the mails you receive. The mail messages themselves are totally unaltered. Besides, this analysis is completely automatic so your privacy isn't breached.

And of course, the mail messages you send don't carry the ads with them.

Re:Very Clever Google!

[NewStarRising]

"They DISPLAY targeted ads exactly like google web search does, based on the content of the mails you receive. The mail messages themselves are totally unaltered"
OK, that helps. Thanks.

"this analysis is completely automatic so your privacy isn't breached."
Is any of this info stored? If google keep a database of who they advertised to, and what keywords they hit, (in private emails) then privacy IS breached.

Not saying they DO keep this info, just that I don;t know if they do or not.

Re:Very Clever Google!

[yasth]

There is a difference between illegal and "illegal". Very few companies will be so brazen and open as to publicly and wihout question break a statute. I mean spaming peoples cell phones is fairly clearly in breach, now if google wanted to be EVIL what they could do is change the EULA and give 30 days to opt out of sms mail notifications with an ad or something.

In general though, well some pretty bad companies have large phone number databases and a lot of those are going to be cell phones, and no big spamming. It is is just a little too open, corporate evil is behind doors.

Re:Very Clever Google!

[rbarreira]

By the way, I've sent you an invite to gmail ;) Tell me if you get it, since I don't know if I used the correct address.

Re:Very Clever Google!

[rbarreira]

I think their privacy policy says that they don't do that.

What is up their sleeve?

[putko]

People say the voip stuff is not so featureful. Does google have something up their sleeves? Or is this just a way to tweak M$?

Also, how do you pronounce GMail? gu-male? GM-ail?

Re:What is up their sleeve?

[joshdick]

It rhymes with e-mail.

GEE-ml

Re:What is up their sleeve?

[Anonymous Coward]

G. Mail.

Re:What is up their sleeve?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or in honour of your nickname, and the pr0n-obsessed Slashdot demographic:

Rhymes with she-male.

Re:What is up their sleeve?

[Iloinen Lohikrme]

Gaymail

It's so easy to remember: "My mail adress is something at gaymail dot com"

The bonus thing is that you can get lot of attention when announcing that very loudly at parties or in a presentation. Of course the minus point is that you can get lot's wrong kind of attention... like "Hi ya! Billy Bob and me just thought if you would like to go make sandwiches"... Yikes!

But maybe that is the ultimate goal of Google. You know they are from California... they use big G-extensively... maybe they just wait for the right moment and change their brand identity...

Gay Search
Gay Mail
Gay Talk

And then start selling everything branded with big G. They would rule the gay world!

God, I think I have kind of some compulsion going on! Yikes!

There is a new account page working

[Nutshell_TA]

You don't need invitations anymore! now everyone can get one by simply signing in here: https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount Enjoy!

Not that Google is evil now, but...

[typical]

Not that Google is evil now, but their ability to get *really* evil if they ever go evil has been steadily increasing...

One notable hole in Google's research lineup has been privacy. If all Google wants is aggregate data, why no clever solutions to provide the individual with guarantees that Google can't get useful individual data but can get useful aggregate data?

Re:Not that Google is evil now, but...

[joshdick]

There is a guarantee, and it's their privacy policy. RTFPP.

Re:Not that Google is evil now, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're putting too much faith in TFPP. In case you haven't noticed, almost every company's "privacy policy" on the web, in legal terms, says essentially "we won't disclose the information we collect about you unless we want to disclose it."

Google's policy is no exception.

Here's an example (from http://mail.google.com/mail/help/privacy.html):

As a standard email protocol, when you send an email from your Gmail account, Gmail includes your email address and user name in the header of the email. Beyond this, we do not disclose your personally identifying information to third parties unless we believe we are required to do so by law or have a good faith belief that such access, preservation or disclosure is reasonably necessary to (a) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or governmental request, (b) enforce the Gmail Terms of Use, including investigation of potential violations thereof, (c) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues (including, without limitation, the filtering of spam), (d) respond to user support requests, or (e) protect the rights, property or safety of Google, its users and the public.

Read through that. It tells you, literally, that Google may provide your personally identifiable information to any government agent, upon request (with no mention of subpoena requirements).

Then you have this:

We reserve the right to transfer your personal information in the event of a transfer of ownership of Google, such as acquisition by or merger with another company. In such an event, Google will notify you before information is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

In other words, if Google is acquired by or merged with another company, anything in the privacy policy can be changed. All they need to do is notify you that they're changing it.

So, you see, the "privacy" policy really doesn't mean much of anything. You shouldn't base your judgement on it, but on Google's actions.

Re:Not that Google is evil now, but...

[chialea]

>One notable hole in Google's research lineup has been privacy.

They've hired at least one theory/crypto person that I know. I don't know what he's working on, but it's at least concievable that it's privacy-related. I think it's mostly that Google isn't that public about their research. Perhaps they'll be publishing more in the future.

Lea

Um...

[datacaliber]

My topic title keeps alternating between "GMail Sign-Ups Via Mobile" and "Gmail out of Beta". Is it just me?

Consider me nuts...

[Anonymous Coward]

but wanting my mobile number is insane. Google, in my estimation, is not only a profitable corporate company, but with their recent hiring of top secret cleared engineers from the governemnt, I think they could be a part of echelon. Laugh all you want. Tell me I have a tinfoil hat all you want. What better way for the government to be able to spy on people without the legality of a wiretap, or breakin to look at your computer. Now they don't have to. Google is becoming far more powerful than even Microsoft. Microsoft isn't hording near the personal information as Google is collecting from people.
There are a number of articles from various sources on why people should fear Google froma privcy standpoint.
Read this for a little background info:
Google Watch

Re:Consider me nuts...

[rbarreira]

but with their recent hiring of top secret cleared engineers from the governemnt

Can you give a source for this?

Re:Consider me nuts...

[jim_v2000]

"Google is becoming far more powerful than even Microsoft. Microsoft isn't hording near the personal information as Google is collecting from people." Just what info do you think Google is gathering about me? I have a gmail account...so now they have my first/last name and my email address. Just like every spam company out there who trashed my last email account. And access to my emails...who cares? It's the same no matter what email service you use...unless you host your own server. But in that case, you still may be sending so someone on a "Free" email service.

Re:Consider me nuts...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here ya go...

http://www.google-watch.org/jobad.html

Oh, and before I forget, go look at some of Google's job ads for jobs with Google. Some of them require top secret clearances. Very few companies, even serious R&D companies with money to lose require clearances. Usually, only government-related jobs (read contracting with the feds) requires a DOD or GSA clearance.

Re:Consider me nuts...

[Momoru]

And access to my emails...who cares? It's the same no matter what email service you use...unless you host your own server.

No...regular internet companies don't save any of your mail. Especially once you download it off your POP3 server. Google is the only one that ENCOURAGES you not to delete it....it's the only one whose servers READ your email to give you targeted ads. Because of your Google cookie, Google in theory knows exactly what you search for, what you shop for, who you IM, and your entire email records. I don't think Google actually cares, but the GP was pointing out that if you are suddenly suspected of being a terrorist under the patriot act or whatever, the Gov can find out your entire life from one court order to google. Microsoft, Apple, etc... know nothing about your personal life.

Re:Consider me nuts...

[orkysoft]

Yes, then they would find out that all your email contacts seemingly have nothing to do with terrorism, so you and your contacts must be really hiding it well, right?

Not that I do agree that if Google were to decide to become "evil", they'd be able to get to a running start with the information they could be collecting right now (I don't know if they actually do collect it).

Anyway, I've read the page about signing up with a mobile phone, and they state that even if you don't choose to associate your number to your account, they'll still keep the number, to keep track of how many accounts are created for each number.

Now, the paranoid among you might get your panties all in a twist about this, but there is actually a perfectly legitimate explanation for this: they use the numbers as hash/db keys, i.e.:

phone number | # of accounts
555-1234 | 1
555-2345 | 1
555-3456 | 2
555-4567 | 1

As you can see, the numbers aren't associated with any specific accounts, only with the number of accounts created for each number.

Of course, this is no guarantee. They might actually have a super-secret table associating the numbers with the accounts anyway, but we can't see whether or not that is true.

I think the "computers READ your email to give you targeted advertising!" hysteria way overblown. It's a computer program that picks out some words in your emails, and picks some adverts that match those words. Who cares that some computer program "knows" your emails (that aren't that private, since you let some company store them for you)? It's a (probably pretty simple) program, not a person!

Re:Consider me nuts...

[Momoru]

Um, I would hope the associate the number with your account, otherwise if i register 10 gmail accounts with my phone number, the next person to get my phone number is completely screwed? And actually they specifically say they associate it with your account...if you go into your Google account you can see the number, and remove it if your paranoid. By default they keep the number in your profile, thus most people will leave it there.

Also i agree the "the program can read your email" is a little hysteric, but Google has to keep logs of it's Adsense....don't you think it logs the source of the clicks to prevent abuse? So it must know that a click on such and such ad came from so and so's email account (otherwise, i just thought of a new way to defraud competitors, just write an email to myself with some keywords and click away their budget). So they can probably tell if they wanted to that the contents in your email are mostly about goat sex or whatever because there have been so many targeted clicks for goat farms from your email account.

Re:Consider me nuts...

[wasted time]

[Google] wanting my mobile number is insane.

Why is this insane? Anyone you call or text-message knows your number and very well may keep it indefinitely. All privacy paranoia aside; maybe Google is working on an interface for simplified text-messaging that links all your contacts from your email, IM, and mobile phone accounts. They are becoming heavy in communications apps, so maybe they want to track usage patterns of the Gmail users, who sign up by mobile phone, to see if there are any significant differences compared to their standard online-only users. Maybe they are using the numbers to track which mobile providers are most popular with their own users. Maybe they are using the numbers to simply keep track of how many accounts the average user opens. There are likely many, many more reasons that we're just not smart enough to think of, but they are.

I doubt very seriously they want your number to sell to telemarketers or track where you eat dinner on Friday night. What I don't doubt is that there is at least one very easy way to prevent them from knowing anything about you.

Re:Consider me nuts...

[jc42]

No...regular internet companies don't save any of your mail.

Unless, of course, some government agency tells them to. And, in the US, they must keep that fact secret from you.

Also, note that setting up your own mail server (if your ISP doesn't block the email ports, as many do) doesn't protect you. If your IP connection is through a single ISP, they can quite easily collect all packets to or from you with a given TCP port number, and assemble the messages at their leisure. Or the government agency can do so. Or an employee of a competitor who has bribed the right person at your ISP.

The only thing really protecting you is that no ISP wants to buy the storage that it would take to do this for all customers. They'd be bankrupt in a month if they tried it. But under threat from your government, or reward from your competitor, they just might find the resources to save the packets to/from a few select customers.

The only real way to get privacy of course, is end-to-end encryption. But both ends have to have a motive to do this.

I have occasionally wondered how many governments are getting curious about the fact that much traffic to/from unix-type machines now uses ssh/ssl. The main reason, of course, is so that you can send passwords without giving them away to anyone with a network sniffer. Telnet, rlogin and ftp have been mostly supplanted by ssh and scp for this reason. But it turns out that it's usually just as easy to encrypt an entire conversation, rather than just the passwords. And then you don't slip up and accidentally send a password in the clear.

Still, it's rather naive to underestimate the "chance" that your email is being intercepted and cached by someone. Most isn't being saved anywhere. But it's not all that difficult to a motivated party, especially one who can use taxpayer money, to implement this. Unless your email is encrypted, you should always assume that random unknown people are reading it.

I've found some surprising old messages of mine simply by googling for my name or an old email address.

Re:Consider me nuts...

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless of course you happen to use, say, Windows:
http://www.microsuck.com/content/ms-hidden-files.s html

The they don't even need to court order MS, they jus t need to yank your hard drive.

Re:Consider me nuts...

[shellbeach]

Because of your Google cookie, Google in theory knows exactly what you search for, what you shop for, who you IM, and your entire email records.

Which is why I search through google.com.au, not google.com, and I block cookies set by google.com.au.

It shocks me a bit that google likes to promote things like search history as a feature! Scary stuff ... mind you, I still use Gmail so I guess I'm not that paranoid just yet :-)

Re:Consider me nuts...

[FirienFirien]

(Note to parent - this isn't directly aimed at you as an argument, you just had handy comments to reply to :)

if you are suddenly suspected of being a terrorist under the patriot act or whatever, the Gov can find out your entire life from one court order to google

Why do you seem to consider this a bad thing? Don't you want terrorists to get caught?

I agree with the thought that if a company handles personal info (contact details, browsing habits, etc etc) maliciously - either sending fleets of spam your way, or identity theft, or whatever - is a bad thing. Also if someone malicious accessed the google datastore on people, or accessed the google cookie and extracted information from it, then problems stem again from there.

Presenting the argument that google cookies may stop terrorists doesn't work. Even looking at it from a less strong point of view: If You Have Done A Bad Thing, The Rest Of Us Want You To Get Caught.

I doubt the govt or cia or authorities of that ilk care whether person X likes gambling, or is looking for a house in tuscany, or needs viagra supplements, or whatever. If it's not illegal, then why should they care?

IF google can stick to their public business plan - making finding things easier, trying to help with relevant ads without being intrusive - AND have security of information, then WHY do you, or anyone, care if the information exists?

Your comment of I don't think Google actually cares stands out from the crowd - hooray! Someone else who realises that among however many (tens of?) millions of people they might have information on, if you're not being malicious yourself, then the good guys are on your side.

Re:Consider me nuts...

[Momoru]

Why do you seem to consider this a bad thing? Don't you want terrorists to get caught?

hehe, yes actually I do trust the government, and also have nothing to hide, so I do use Gmail too, but I can see why there is concern. It's like the Patriot Act Library card thing everyone is so up in arms about...who cares who can see what Library books I take out? Until there is a documented case of abuse by the gov. One time a took a class that involved a discussion of civil liberties, and people were talking about how the grocery store "discount cards" they all require these days track your shopping history. And this one person was like "my friend was a drug dealer and they noticed he bought hundreds of rolling papers and they totally arrested him!" And I'm like...ok, so tell me when they caught someone who WASNT breaking the law...

You are all sheepole...

[Z-Knight]

or lemmings or whatever you want to call it. Geez, can we stop with the Google love fest.

Ever since Goolge had its IPO, I can't seem to trust this company. Personally, I will never sign up for any Google product....though I do use the search engine. I hate the fact that they want/have so much control over various services ... their practice of "Do no evil" is dying...I personally believe they are trying to assimilate us all!

Re:You are all sheepole...

[Anonymous Coward]

You sounded convincing until you mentioned that Star Trek BS.

privacy

[michalf]

oh GREAT! now they also want to know my MOBILE NUMBER?

michal

OH NO!

[museumpeace]

I was planning on using my 150 GMAIL invitations as christmas presents! Now they won't be very valuable.

THE PHONE NUMBER IS NOT FOR ASSOCIATION

[HyoImowano]

They use the phone number to use SMS for signing up to make sure it's REAL PEOPLE activating accounts, they're nto sending spam to your phone. /. Mindset:

E-Mail = SPAM
E-Mail + Phone = PHONE SPAM OMFG

At /., we reed um reel gud.

google blows

[SparafucileMan]

so, to get a gmail account, i must now own a cellphone? what if I don't?

o, let me guess, can i buy a cellphone plan from google yet?

"cut down on spam"? yeah, bullshit reason if i ever saw one, especially with international customers still able to sign up normally.

google is really starting to throw its weight around these days...

Re:google blows

[everphilski]

Find a friend with a cellphone to sign you up. Or PM me, I'll invite you. Invites still work, nothing changed, they just added another way to get stuff done. And it does cut down on spam- the first time they find a spammer, they can see who invited him, and bam, the spam chain is broken. Bitching on /. doesn't get anything done.

Of course, bitching about google must give you some weird sense of fulfillment...

-everphilski-

Re:google blows

[specialbrad]

The cell phone move makes perfect sense. It still sets up GMail to be kind of exclusive in the fact that its not rediculously easy to get. They're just trying to protect their service from being a haven for spammers. One cell phone, one account. What else could you use like this? It may be wierd, but it makes sense to me. Back in the day I could (and did) make several hotmail accounts when I didn't want to be traced or I wanted to harass someone. GMail is making their services pure by using this verification scheme, which is refreshing. Please. Propose an alternative.

Re:google blows

[grey259]

Wow, you people just love to complain. If you don't have a cellular phone or aren't willing to receive a text message, and don't know someone who does have a phone and is willing to receive a text message for you, and don't happen to know ANYONE who already has a GMail account, and have no access to the hundreds of web forums where you can find random strangers who are practically begging to give away their invites, then yes, I guess you are pretty screwed. Of course, to read this you would have to pass about 5 posts where people are offering invites. But yeah, go ahead and complain about how unfair it is of Google to make it so difficult for you to sign up for this free service.

What part of "Don't be evil" is this?

[Isao]

So Google has all of Usenet under their (practical) control (as the only source I know of with the full archive), they have a lock on geek email, they dominate retain (non-corporate) 'net ads, and are the premier aggregator of 'net data for their wildly popular search engine. Oh, and they have killer mapping tools.

Now they want to keep and store mobile numbers. I understand why they're doing it, but couldn't another approach be used to limit account generation? (linking to a valid, non-GMail account for example) Their privacy policy is Ok so far, but they don't actually have to follow it (how would we know?) and they can change it at any time. (Recall Disney's purchase of that kids web service.)

I'm a middle-of-the-road /. user in terms of paranoia, but I hear that box of Reynolds a-calling.

RE: What part of "Don't be evil" is this?

[paithuk]

Now they want to keep and store mobile numbers. I understand why they're doing it, but couldn't another approach be used to limit account generation? (linking to a valid, non-GMail account for example)

So your proposed technique would allow a spammer to register, by providing a valid email account on his own mail server? The phone network is a good choice on Google's part, but not a new idea.

Re: What part of "Don't be evil" is this?

[Isao]

I didn't want this to be a thread on proposed alternatives (after all, THEY'RE the ones with lots of bright people and $4B US in the bank). There's a substantial amount of trust going on in this new transaction. Being inflammatory, perhaps the new slogan should be "Don't be Evil, but plan for it."

The catch is it's such a tempting offer - they've implemented a really good webmail service here. The addition of rewriting your "From" address is just perfect. I'm just glad I already had my account before this new requirement, or I'd be reluctant to get it.

Re: What part of "Don't be evil" is this?

[defkkon]

just glad I already had my account before this new requirement, or I'd be reluctant to get it.

This seems to be a real source of confusion for people - giving them your cellphone number isn't a requirement. Its a second option. You don't need to use your cellphone to get an account. Just get one of the many people who have an account to send you an invite.

A lot of people seem to think that they're replacing the invitation method with this new cellphone method. They're not - its just another option.

interface isn't compelling until you've used it

[Dink Paisy]

I know that the interface is superior, but someone who hasn't used it isn't going to see the interface. The most visible feature to someone who is considering switching is the storage.

In my own case, I usually read Hotmail with Outlook on my laptop, so the interface isn't that big a deal. I guess that was another reason for my sticking with what I've got.

Re:interface isn't compelling until you've used it

[Lewisham]

I switched from all email clients to Gmail a year ago, and I've never looked back.

Conversation view is marvellous. I am not talking about threading, I'm talking about about conversations. Seeing what I said, seeing what they said in response, hiding the quoted text... Searching email is also a pleasure. Why standard email clients show you a relevant snippet of text when you search for something when GMail has been doing it for at least a year just defies reasonable explanation. If I search for an email from a professor about a certain project, I don't want to sift through the text of five emails, I want to know which one I want. GMail shows you quickly.

Email - conversations - intelligent search = Dark Ages.

You really haven't used GMail, or you would understand this too. It's a moment of realisation, when you see your disjointed email world come together, is when you see it. It takes about a week, otherwise it's just like every other webmail app, just prettier.

Oh, and Google doesn't need to advertise anything. Word of mouth will do it for them.

Re:interface isn't compelling until you've used it

[KillerDeathRobot]

I used to read Hotmail in Thunderbird using third party applications to get it to work, but then MS put in a captcha which made this no longer possible. THAT'S why I switched.

Once I switched it became apparent that not only does Gmail have more storage and a better interface, but it is incredibly less evil than Hotmail. You can set it to forward to other accounts, you can use it for POP mail instead of the web interface if you like, etc, etc.

Re:interface isn't compelling until you've used it

[aaqubed]

I definitely have to agree. The best part of Gmail is being able to find anything in O(1) time. You can set up filters to make your labels act as folders, or you can use the labels as simply labels. I hated web-based mail before Gmail, and now I would never want to even POP my Gmail, simply because of the conversation view.

Of course Gmail's rivals have increased their amount of space, but they still aren't as good as Gmail itself.

not likely

[xmodem_and_rommon]

no i don't think so. I think that most likely it would be pretty similar to the response google is getting.

I want them to do more...

[Lumpy]

I really want google to do something like MSN direct. that watch was really cool and I was happy to pay $50.00 a year to get im messages on it as well as the other info and calendar data.

Problem is that MSN sucks. they changed their protocols so my home automation system can no longer send IM's to my watch from it's linux server. Also they have not been attracting any more FM broadcast stations to carry their data signal so there has been no expansion in coverage. coupled with the fact that their biggest watch maker fossil has dropped them, things look bleak for this really neat idea.

Google has the chutzpa to do it right, and hell I'm tickled to pay for the service as well as many others seem to be.

Re:I want them to do more...

[maggard]

I really want google to do something like MSN direct. that watch was really cool and I was happy to pay $50.00 a year to get im messages on it as well as the other info and calendar data.

Honey, I don't wanna break it to you hard, but that is called a "Pager".

They've been around 30 years, are cheaper, offer more services, and better coverage then MSN Direct. Integration is easy, just send email to it.

If you've already moved into the '90's world of the "Cellphone" (they're gonna be popular!) look up something called "SMS". Via it you can not only get messages but send them, and can even SMS Google.

Sorry, but in a world with pagers at the low end and cellphones at the higher ends MSN Direct was just a stoopid idea that died a deserved death.

Re:I want them to do more...

[Anonymous Coward]

really where is that pager that can fit on my wrist? or that cellphone for that matter? do you really have that little of a clue?

the watch idea rocked and actually still does, it is not dead, the service still is alive an well and you can still buy the watches from many many places.

let's see, in a meeting crackberry's are now banned I still get email notifications from the outlook server.. your "cellphone" fails at that point and that pager you speak of, where is it's integration with the outlook calendar and displaying my reminders? Oh wait it's clipped ot my ass and not effortless to check that quiet reminder.

Beeper is not cheaper not even in the service portion, and the watch I have I can wear with a tux as it looks quite elegant.

oh BTW mister obvious... I have a treo 650, and guess what I get more use out of the messages I get on my wrist, than have to reach and grab the phone, activate it and then read the message. I can discreetly read the IM from my daughter in that meeting without being one of those assesthat whip out their phone or check their crackberry every 5 minutes when it vibrates the whole table.

Maybe if you had even a tiny glimmer of a clue as to what you were talking about you might have something smart to say, but It's obvious to everyone that you know absolutely nothing at all, let alone anything about msn direct devices.

so what did you look at a fossil watch ad for 30 seconds before you posted your replay to lumpy?

BTW, there are hacks in the alpha stage to do what lumpy wants in php and perl... they just are not published widely yet, you have to dig in spot message forums for them.

Why Google needs a mobile phone number

[KingSkippus]

In my reply a little further down, I pointed out Google's rationale for wanting a mobile phone number.

Why use mobile phones? It's a way to help us verify that an account is being created by a real person, and that one person isn't creating thousands of accounts. We want to keep our system as spam-free as possible, and making sure accounts are used by real people is one way to do that.

If you still don't buy it, that's fine, but that's what's going through their head.

I can kinda sorta see their point. What they don't want is a machine mass registering for new accounts from their registration site, and this effectively keeps that from happening.

However, in defense of the other repliers, I think that asking for people's cell phone numbers is a bit over the line. I wish they had just used something like word verification instead.

Re:Why Google needs a mobile phone number

[bhtooefr]

Actually, there's a Captcha in there, too.

So, cell phone number + a Captcha, and then you'll get an SMS with an invite code.

In other words...

[everphilski]

...they have the same policy as every other ISP/Webmail company out there. Good to know. Next critic please.

-everphilski-

Re:In other words...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you even read the thread? User "joshdick" claimed that Google's privacy policy guaranteed they wouldn't abuse personal information. I explained that Google's privacy policy was as meaningless as every other one on the web. Do you understand that this refutes joshdick's post?

Re:In other words...

[everphilski]

Yup. Just as meaningless as every other ISP / Webmail provider. Gotcha. Next critic, please.

-everphilski-

Re:In other words...

[monkeydo]

Not mine. Running your own mail server and being your own webmail povider means that you get to be responsible for your own privacy.

Re:In other words...

[Anonymous Coward]

In one ear, out the other.

The are making a database of phone numbers.....

[old_skul]

This is just plain scary. This is *Google* we're talking about here. Imagine a search engine where you can search on someone's name, and get not only a valid email address but a valid phone number too!

I love Google as much as the next guy but please - privacy!

Google earth + mobile = teh win?

[Netsensei]

So they want our mobile numbers? I'm guessing that they are going to try to triangulate our positions. So they can put your position in Google Earth. Can you picture all those red dots in Google Earth? Can you picture the accompanying tooltips?

"CowboyNeal is currently in Club Blue Oyster and has unchecked mail"

Re:Google earth + mobile = teh win?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't cell phones already required to provide location data to 911? The technology is already there.

Re:Google earth + mobile = teh win?

[Saeru]

That's just scary.... really. :S

Can't anyone RTFA??

[Se7enLC]

Instead of everyone saying "Huh? The logo says Beta..." and "OMFG, why does google want my phone number?", why don't you READ their FAQs?

One of the reasons we are offering this new way to sign up for Gmail is to help protect our users and combat abuse. Spam and abuse protection are two things we take very seriously, and our users have been very happy with the small amount of spam they've received in their Gmail accounts. We take many measures to ensure that spammers have a difficult time sending their spam messages, getting these messages delivered, or even obtaining a Gmail account (spammers will often use many different accounts to send spam). Sending invitation codes to mobile phones via SMS is one way to address this, as the number of accounts per phone number can be limited.

Granted, it's not the best idea, but it's a good a way as any to stop spammers. Not that spammers couldn't just find an invite any time they wanted, though. (Anybody want one? I have a couple hundred)

Slashdotted...

[MojoRilla]

I didn't think a major company like google would let themselves be slashdotted, but they did.

I just got this message from gmail...

Server Error

Gmail is temporarily unavailable. Cross your fingers and try again in a few minutes. We're sorry for the inconvenience.

Re:Slashdotted...

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt if it's the /. effect!

I've had this happen to me before on one of my GMail accounts but not the others. Try signing in on the secure server - it has always worked for me(https://gmail.google.com/.

The longest time I saw this error page for was about 2 days, and that was only using my work pc. GMail worked fine for all accounts from home. Its probably a local cacheing problem, but the secure server at least offers a workaround for this frustration.

GOOGLE ACCOUNTS

[lunar_legacy]

Why should somebody wants an invitaion by mobile when you can get one here?! https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount

The initial services available with your Google account are:

• Google Alerts - Receive news and search results via email
• Froogle Shopping List - Shop smarter with wishlists of your favorite products
• Gmail - A Google approach to email
• Google Groups - Create mailing lists and discussion groups
• Personalized Search - Get the search results most relevant to you
• Google in Your Language - Volunteer to translate Google's services into various languages
• Google Answers - Ask a question, set a price, get an answer
• Google Web APIs - A tool for software developers to query Google automatically

Re:GOOGLE ACCOUNTS

[stu42j]

Yeah, that's what I thought. I got an account when they opened it up in March.

Who is everyone?

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

Gmail (known as Google Mail for legal reasons in some areas) is finally open to everyone

AND

Please take note that sign-up occurs via mobile phone at the moment, and only U.S. citizens can register for now.

Is this some new and US-centric use of 'everyone' that I am not yet aware of, or does _anyone_ else in the states see an apparent contradiction?

Re:Who is everyone?

[sp3c1alK]

We do. We just don't fucking care.

registration url - us only

[FonkiE]

https://www.google.com/accounts/SmsMailSignup1

It is *not* only for U.S. citizens

[jhkoh]

only U.S. citizens can register for now

That is a *wild* overstatement. You only need a U.S. cell phone number, not citizenship.

Re:It is *not* only for U.S. citizens

[sodul]

"only U.S. citizens can register for now"

That is a *wild* overstatement. You only need a U.S. cell phone number, not citizenship.

Well I guess he assumes that if you live in the US that means you're a citizen. I don't have any numbers but they are a lot of non citizens "residents", like the permanent residents (Green Card holders), the temporary residents (Visa like H1-B), or illegal residents.

Also with Google's system even a tourist can go to a GSM provider and get a Pay-as-you-go sim card to get a US cell phone number.

They are trying to limit spamers on GMail, but what about the "us-citizens" that don't have a cell phone (think someone in a remote place with a satellite internet connection).

Me too - dmn you AOL

[druxton]

dmruxton
at
myrealbox
com

No, Wait!

[aquatone282]

I still have 48 invites to go!

Re:No, Wait!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bloody Hell .

It isn't bad enough to have a slashdot posting Google news everyday , know we have a slashdot story advertising people to sign up for Google services.

Its getting worse, for F**k sake google does not own slashdot , Do moderators check stories before they post them ?

Much faster then outlook

[LouSir]

Not only is the gmail search faster but the google outlook search that google desktop installs into outlook is about 10x faster then the built in outlook search. Lousir

If M$ tried this, I'd get spammed for sure.

[crovira]

The screen would get covered with pop-up windows, without close buttons, for 'embarassing' products to treat mortifying conditions that don't get discussed in mixed company.

And then my computer would wipe the hard drive, with Clippy animatedly saying 'You wanted to wipe that hard drive and all your work? Well here we go. Digital 'sepuku!'", and then, after shredding all my files and pounding my data into the floor, reboot into a RSOD or BSOD.

That why I use slackware and OS X.

Absolutely Everyone!!!

[strider44]

. . . Gmail (known as Google Mail for legal reasons in some areas) is finally open to everyone . . . only U.S. citizens can register . . .

Theory of the Day

[TheRaven64]

GMail accounts can also be used for Google Talk. Google Talk supports voice chat. I wonder if they are planning on partnering with some of the mobile telephone companies to allow mobile 'phones to work as endpoints for Google Talk conversations (or even provide an SMSIM gateway - there are a couple for XMPP but they require you to have some way of sending SMS, which costs money). This would be much easier to do in the US where you need to pay to receive mobile 'phone calls, since the cost to Google would be relatively low.

Re:Theory of the Day

[salimma]

I wonder how they implement their voice chat, actually. If they release the specs as an extension to the standard XMPP protocol it would be awesome.

Re:Theory of the Day

[debiansid]

I wonder if they are planning on partnering with some of the mobile telephone companies to allow mobile 'phones to work as endpoints for Google Talk conversations

This could probably be the headline for the next Google article on RumourDot er.. Slashdot.

Google & "Beta"

[TrentL]

I don't know if Google ever stops calling things "beta". Google News has been out for almost 3 years, and it's still called "beta".

Re:Google & "Beta"

[wasted time]

I think of Beta as just part of the name by now. Sort of like Windows 98.

now for an offtopic observation of your sig:
--
BoingBoing.net. It's like reading tommorow's Slashdot today!

Always curious, I took a look. Honestly, I fail to see the connection.
Some headlines:

0 Avoid commuter-cooties by bringing your own transit strap
0 American obesity skyrockets, 73% obese or overweight by 2008
0 World-killing disaster photoshopping contest
0 Alleged subway wanker caught on cameraphone, Flickr
0 Beautiful gay merit badge patches for sale
0 Christy Canyon and other XXX autobio writers in Vanity Fair

Oh wait, here it is, hidden all the way at the bottom.

0 Stormtrooper at Star Wars con mistaken for armed robber

GMail WAP?

[artemis67]

A more important question... When will GMail support WAP?

I just got a Motorola e815, and right out of the box it has bookmarks for Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, and a few others, but no GMail. Browsing to GMail allows me to log in before giving me an error message.

Re:GMail WAP?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that there is a php script that will convert it to wap, google for "gmail mobile".

Can you say one more for me too?

[XSforMe]

I want to check it out too:

jme at cimex dot com dot mx

Accessible?

[tepples]

So now you have to be neither blind (can't read Captcha) nor deaf (can't talk on a mobile phone therefore can't justify paying a mobile phone's monthly fee) in order to get an invite without already being a regular on geek boards such as this one.

Re:Accessible?

['nother poster]

You can still be deaf. The phone is used for a text message with the invite text.

Re:Accessible?

[bhtooefr]

Actually, there are Baudot terminals (read: TTY devices, which the deaf use to talk on the phone) available for cell phones.

So, a deaf person COULD probably justify a cell phone bill.

Re:Accessible?

[fbjon]

Such a person is very likely to have someone to help with the initial obstacle.

Re:Accessible?

[staed]

At least here in Sweden a LOT of deaf people have cell phones just for the text messages. So being able to justify having a cell phone doesn't seem so hard.

It's true...

[BlackCobra43]

The rest of the world doesn't count, we're all holograms designed solely for America's enjoyment.

Re:It's true...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right! Now go get me a hamburger!!!

..duck

[Ominous Coward]

...then it's probably your mom!

Enough already

[Anonymous Coward]

This is too much.

Of course, others have said this a number of times before me ...

Trying not to exaggerate here, I estimate, on average, 2 Google stories on slashdot every day.

No other company gets this much (gushing) free press from slashdot.

Instead of the usual follow-up posts that remarks such as mine attract, how about we discuss:

Why?

This is costing slashdot its meaningful readership and patronage. And it shows - judging from the nose-dive in meaningful discussions about technology here since this Google plague has taken hold. We ought to discuss *why* slashdot's news service has become a vent for this company's propaganda. Sure, GMail sign up on a mobile phone is great (and indeed worthy of posting). But the sheer over-representation of Another Tech Company is overwhelmingly disproportionate. For slashdot's sake (and the integrity of independent news), let's resolve this!

Is someone on the take?

Can only US citizens own a mobile?

[huwtj]

I'm confused as to how "sign-ups only work with U.S. mobile phone numbers" became "only U.S. citizens can register for now". Do you have to prove you're a US citizen to buy a mobile phone in the US now?!

Re:Can only US citizens own a mobile?

[reiggin]

"You silly Quebecians... you cannot have access to our celly phones with our outrageous regulatory fees and unreal overage charges. Now go away before I taunt you a second time!"

Mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

It is funny!

Relationship mapping

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the big things people seem to be missing is that Google is able to do relationship mapping. From your invites and your email traffic, they know whom you know and communicate with. And that can now be correlated with your cell phone number if you sign up using that (or other email address, if you got an invitation that way). They are gaining a lot of power - and it is a publicly held company with some vague notion of "Do no Evil" that the geeks seem to quote a lot. At least, so far they haven't done any big evils, but corporations can live forever and forever is a long time. The founders, however, can retire, will get old and die and the next ones may not be as commited to the original founders' values. Consider that carefully before you commit too much to thhem.

-SRR

Any IMAP Service with Thunderbird beats gmail

[mnemonic_]

For the most part, simplicity and storage abilities are the same for Tbird+IMAP and Gmail. Spam filtering quality is about the same, assuming you've already accrued a significant amount for Tbird's Bayesian spam detection. Thunderbird's a bit faster assuming a decent computer. Configuring filters in Tbird is much faster and more powerful though than in Gmail. Tbird has better mail sorting abilities, letting you group messages by date into collapsable lists (press g), "Today", "Two weeks ago" etc.

Gmail is definitely the best web-based emaill solution. But if you're already on Thunderbird with a decent IMAP service (like that any university provides), I don't see any reason to switch.

Google is the 50 cent of the tech world

[Anonymous Coward]

except he knows when the world's gotten enough of him. That's why he waited so long before releasing his second album.

There's a method to the madness..

[mnemonic_]

From the Gmail: Help Center:

One of the reasons we are offering this new way to sign up for Gmail is to help protect our users and combat abuse. Spam and abuse protection are two things we take very seriously, and our users have been very happy with the small amount of spam they've received in their Gmail accounts. We take many measures to ensure that spammers have a difficult time sending their spam messages, getting these messages delivered, or even obtaining a Gmail account (spammers will often use many different accounts to send spam). Sending invitation codes to mobile phones via SMS is one way to address this, as the number of accounts per phone number can be limited.

So, relying on cellphones and invitations works better than captchas.

Google IS part of Echelon

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is up to no good. I don't trust them and never will. I don't use any service they offer. Google hires guys from the governement with top secret clearances. KeyHole is a CIA-sponsored company. Google is actively trying to get more people with government clearances. Normal companies are not like this. Unless you are dealing with the federal government, no one needs a DOD clearance. There are other, lesser clearances for R&D work. What's next? A mandatory chip in my wrist in order to eat and get medical attention.

Gmail now most expensive "Free" service

[Momoru]

Just joking...though this would cost me $.05 cents a pop in text messaging to sign up. A small cost to pay for a decent free email service. It does keep people who do not have cell phones from getting free email (yes those people exist, and are probably one of the people that NEED free email the most). And I worry about them storing mobile phone numbers by default (they say you can remove them manually). It would just really suck if someone hacked google and got a bunch of mobile numbers, but all in all a novel way to stop spammers.

Re:Gmail now most expensive "Free" service

[defkkon]

Just joking...though this would cost me $.05 cents a pop in text messaging to sign up

Unless your cellphone company charges you to receive sms messages, it actually doesn't cost you anything.

Usually, it costs you 5 or 10 cents to send a text message with your phone, but I believe that most companies allow you to recieve them for free.

Re:Gmail now most expensive "Free" service

[Momoru]

My cell phone company charges me $.05 for incoming too :(. My old cell phone company Sprint did the same. I always thought it would a nice evil revenge to sign someone's cellphone email address up to a mailing list.

Re:Gmail now most expensive "Free" service

[defkkon]

My cell phone company [t-mobile.com] charges me $.05 for incoming too

I stand corrected! I had no idea. I live in Ontario, where our major companies are Bell and Rogers. Neither of them charge for incoming messages, so that concept was foreign to me. :)

Re:Gmail now most expensive "Free" service

[yEvb0]

Even if you don't have a phone, a friend with a phone can still receive the registration code for you; it doesn't have to remain linked to the phone used, I don't believe. >It does keep people who do not have cell phones from getting free email (yes those people exist, and are probably one of the people that NEED free email the most)

Re:Gmail now most expensive "Free" service

[brownpau]

Welcome to America, where mobile companies are misanthropic enough to charge for calls and messages received!

Re:Gmail now most expensive "Free" service

[Trick]

Lots of carriers charge to receive SMS.

Verizon charges a dime a message:

http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/mobileoptions/t xt.jsp?action=textMessaging

Cingular charges a nickel, I believe. Their site's "under maintenance" right now, so no link.

It's probably more common to charge to receive SMS than not to.

Re:Gmail now most expensive "Free" service

[CerealFan]

Cingular charges US$0.10 for messages sent and received. (source)

If you were grandfathered-in with AT&T however, incoming messages are free. (source)

Re:Gmail now most expensive "Free" service

[otherniceman]

If I RT the FA correctly the text message is a one off verification, not everytime you sign in, though they are offering other services, such as password recovery via text as well.

Re:Gmail now most expensive "Free" service

[Anonymous Coward]

Last I checked (a year or two ago), Fido also charges for incoming as well - but I don't use sms, so I haven't noticed any pricing changes.

Nope

[goldspider]

That's not accurate. I have a Google account (but not Gmail) and wasn't able to use my Google login to create a Gmail account. ...unless I'm just doing something wrong.

Where is the USA border ?

[BlueMan0025]

Never trust what they say, you can sign-up with a canadian cell phone number.

Re:Where is the USA border ?

[dsb3]

Never trust what they say. Citizenship has no bearing on the possession (or use) of a US-centric mobile telephone.

Re:Where is the USA border ?

[Rude Turnip]

Yeah, only because we secretly made you the 52nd* state last night in anticipation of this new service from Google!

Notes:

* England.

There is an easier way to make a database of numbe

[Anonymous Coward]

000-000-0000
000-000-0001
000-000-0002

You get the idea

FYI

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, for those of you wondering why you would use a phone number to sign up for a webmail accoount.

New Google Theme Song

[ejbvanc]

In the wake of recent releases of Google Desktop 2.0 Beta and Google Talk 1.0 Beta, Gmail now is finally open to everyone. Other exciting rumors suggest that Google may even try to compete with Internet Explorer by producing a product called GBroswer. Other Google features include Maps, Blogger, Hello, iGoogle, Google Earth, and Picasa. Now it appears they've produced a new Google Theme Song.

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN

[grasshoppa]

I think I got the other two interesting mods just because of you.

I guess, in a weird sort of way, I should thank you.

you don't need an invite at all

[cjasonm]

If you sign up for a Google account, it comes with GMail. All you need is a valid email address to confirm with. All this fuss is silly considering that such an easy backdoor exists.

https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount/

Re:you don't need an invite at all

[martin_the_geek]

It doesn't work... when you go to the gmail link it asks for an invitation code.

Google Mail - Gmail trademark problem

[callipygian-showsyst]

known as Google Mail for legal reasons in some areas

I heard that the reason is that Ghirardelli (the chocolate company) owns the trademark for gmail!

Anyway, now that it's public, I can't be Mr. Popular anymore by handing out gmail invites. Guess I'll have to try another tactic!

Mod parent up and down

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody help me out here... I would love to use one of my mod points on this post but I'm torn between -1 Troll and +1 Funny!

Only US citizens can sign up now?

[cjh79]

So only US citizens are allowed to have cell phones in the US?

Re:Only US citizens can sign up now?

[joelsanda]

So only US citizens are allowed to have cell phones in the US?

Homeland Security took care of the rest ;-)

true

[cjasonm]

mod parent up. i don't understand the fuss either.

Calling everything "Beta"

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Google call everything "beta" so they have a crutch to deflect criticism?

Well someone has to sign up...

[Anonymous Coward]

jenny@gmail.com
867-5309

mobile gmail, or mobile registration?

[jotux]

So is this registration simply for a gmail account, or for a gmail account that is mobile?

Mine is still 2MB.

[Poromenos1]

My hotmail account still has 2 MB of storage space and I guess even less for attachments. I think they only offered more space to people from the U.S. I don't use hotmail anyway, if I wanted to see what X teen celebrity did yesterday and advice for my sex life from MSN I'd read the tabloids.

Re:Mine is still 2MB.

[Echnin]

My hotmail account was upgraded. Haven't regularly used it in 5 years though.

I switched from Hotmail to Gmail, it's not hard

[snowwrestler]

Just move all your contacts from Hotmail to Gmail. Then keep both accounts open and check them, but originate all new messages from within GMail. Within a couple months everyone will have your GMail account in their contacts due to replies.

I still keep and check my Hotmail account every so often, just in case some old friend got in touch or something. But mostly I'm on GMail now.

Whatever

[Anonymous Coward]

They are harvesting cell phone numbers and correlating them with the rest of personal information from gmail, groups, searches and orkut.

Take you head out of your ass, step back and have look at the whole picture.

Gmail "Conversations"

[Neoncow]

6 people, 200+ emails in a conversation, at work with no MSN policy.
(Communicating with friends)

For some of us, Gmail has made email compelling again.

My hotmail is still 2MB

[Anonymous Coward]

My hotmail is still 2MB. I think it is only larger for those in USA.

Google CANNOT be trusted

[Anonymous Coward]

Read this...

http://www.google-watch.org/

People who don't want to sign up...

[SilentReallySilentUs]

Can simply wait for hotmail and yahoo(well, it is pretty good already) to wake up and introduce smooth AJAX and WYSYIG interface, add more memory, clean up their advertising and spam filters. For a company like Microsoft with billions in cash, it should not be a big deal. So, my guess is if one waits for about 6 months, one does not have to abandon his 9 year old Hotmail account.. Is Microsoft listening? Providing a good interface is a matter of willingness to think about the user and innovate rather than hire rocket scientists. I recently worked on http://www.collaze.com/ and found that any feature I want to give to the user can indeed be implemented in DHTML/Javascript, if you are passionate enough to research and experiment.

GMail WAP??

[TheSync]

So where is GMail's WAP? It is kind of sad that I can use Yahoo Mail via WAP, but not GMail.

I realize there are WAP gateways to GMail one could set up on your own server, but why can't they just offer it natively???

Google Passport

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey how come no one is railing against the oppresive Google regime for forcing users of one app (Google Talk) to have a Google Mail account? When MS did this with passport/hotmail/etc. we all had hunger strikes etc? I likes the google talk but no likey forcing me to sign up for services i don't want. [ya i know one could sign up for gmail and ignore the account but it's the "evil"ness of it]

Another reason for mobile numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to me that apart from preventing spam, another important reason for having peoples phone numbers would be to somehow synergise with googles new skype-like voip offering. If the username of each google/gmail/googlechat customer is associated with a mobile, it might make it much more likely for a google version of skypeout to become popular?

Only US citizens?

[Larry Lightbulb]

So how are they checking that? Can't be SSN [you don't have to have one if you're a citizen, and you can - legally- get one without being a citizen]. Do you have to fax your passport or birth certificate?

Captchas work fine

[Anonymous Coward]

Collecting cell phone numbers is plain intrusive.

those google folks are busy!

[Shamon]

How do they keep up w/ all these releases releases?!

Works on Canadian-based phones too

[max.capacity]

Works for Canadian phone numbers. I just tried it using a phone in the 416 area code (Toronto, Ontario, Canada).

The article's summary is wrong too..."and only U.S. citizens can register for now" - I'm in Canada and not a US Citizen. Besides, does having a US-based mobile number make you a citizen?

By the way, the link to the sign up page is here: https://www.google.com/accounts/SmsMailSignup1

US Citizens ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean residents ?

Re:US Citizens ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to scan and email your passport to them to activate now.

Google-Talk forums

[Anonymous Coward]

Google Talk forums have popped up over at http://hutd.net/gt if anyone is interested in them.

Works in Canada

[hchaput]

I just signed up with a Canadian mobile phone, so the whole "US Only" thing isn't strictly true.

Re:Works in Canada

[marcushnk]

uh.. isn't Canada an annexed state of America anyway?

(just kidding :-P )

It depends upon your gateway

[vivekg]

In my university they have US based gateway so when I login into gmail it shows links to registration on front page; but at home my gateway is local so it does show me 50 invitation inside the account as well as info to this new feature.

Re:Only?

[Flamsmark]

it's the only one whose servers READ your email no. if you read most of the privacy policies from say hotmail or yahoo, they say that they're able to do that too. gmail is the only one which was upfront about the fact that they did from the launch.

Personal Data

[johnrob]

This is an obvious attempt to gain personal data. By knowing your mobile number, they will know your area code and also be able to link your google account to anything done via google sms. They've been saying all along, they want to make search more personal.

ActiveX

[wiredlogic]

When is there going to be a Gmail that doesn't require ActiveX under IE? If they can make it work under Firefox and Opera that why the blasted ActiveX requirement? You can't even get around their detection with a spoofed useragent.

Re:ActiveX

[kindbud]

Gmail uses an ActiveX control to give IE the functionality it is missing, but which Firefox and Opera are not: standards-compliant DHTML and CSS support.

On those modern browsers, and you don't need any plugins to use Gmail. But IE is quite old. You would also need a plugin to use Gmail with Mosaic, or Spyglass. Get a modern browser, problem solved.

This will work in Japan

[Gnpatton]

They could finalize this as the solution to avoid bots, except everyone doesn't have a cell phone. However, I can easily see this as being a solution for Japan. Anyone who bothers to use email does so by their mobile phone. "Then why get gmail?" Well, some people like having more than one email account.

U.S. citizens != everyone

[arrowman]

U.S. citizens != everyone

according to the faq, you do

[mako1138]

Of course, it might be out of date, but...

2. Does creating a Google Account give me a Gmail account?

Unfortunately not. Gmail is currently in a limited release, so you need to get invited by another Gmail user in order to sign up. If you're interested in Gmail, you may want to check the About Gmail page periodically for updates. If, on the other hand, you already have a Gmail account, you can use your Gmail username and password to sign in to your Google Account.

http://www.google.com/help/faq_accounts.html

Only US Citizens?

[jeffChuck]

I believe that should be rephrased as "only those with US mobile telephones." I'm pretty sure that Google does not care about immigration status.

mobile is part of Web 2.0

[Digital Buddha]

it's all about distribution of applications. they need your number NOT for verification, but for future distribution. The mobile number is more immediate and more accessible to more people today than any other. (170m mobile vs 120m web user in US)

So when will Google OS 0.1 Beta be released??

[Cutting_Crew]

nm

Is this why gmail is as shitty as hotmail now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Today gmail starting acting like shitty old hotmail (server unavailable, try back later -- which is, cynically speaking, the main hotmail interface).

Is it because of these new services?

Numbers change

[mbbac]

What happens when your telephone number changes and it is used for a password reset?

Use HTML version

[Anonymous Coward]

You could always use the "basic HTML view" of GMail. Read here:

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answe r=15046

OTOH, what is wrong with using a newer browser?

great?

[wumpus188]

mobile sms to sign up?

how this prevent spammers from using fake From: sdbfmnb@gmail.com address anyway?

call me paranoid but it looks fishy to me...

um

[Run4yourlives]

pretty much all plugins for IE are active x based... it's the way MS does it.

The real mystery: WHO is buying invites on ebay

[Anonymous Coward]

a few days ago, I don't know what I was thinking, but I searched ebay for gmail... and there is still plenty of invites to sale :-s

SMS payments targeted at PayPal

[Newton IV]

I guess this is first step towards phone/SMS based payment system, directly tagreted at PayPal.

Too late, buddy

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't you read their latest TOS? They also bought the grandfather clause and burned it. Then buried it. Then dug it up and burned it again.

In a nutshell, your soul is automatically transferred without your consent. Have a nice day, and thank you for (not) choosing Microsoft!

SMS + Gmail + Alerts

[Gavin86]

The sentence that really caught my eye in that entry was the following:

We're also working on some new mobile features that will make your Google account more useful and secure, such as SMS alerts and password recovery.

I was imagining Google turning your phone into a Gmail pager: Mobile alerts when you have new mail, when specific news topics have new entries, or maybe even when someone attempts to call you on Google Talk while AFK. ..at least, just a thought.

schizophrenic

[Anonymous Coward]

glad to see you agree with yourself. we've heard from me and myself, how about I?

Consider prepaid

[Anonymous Coward]

My cell phone company (the same company as yours) gives me incoming SMS messages for free. I use a prepaid account.

Um why?

[sl4shd0rk]

I still don't get all the hype about gmail. Buy a 120G hard drive, and put a web server on it - you'll find it way more useful, and fun.

no invitation required

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to Google.com and search for "gmail". At the top of the results list is a link to "Get Gmail". It feeds you a cookie or tracks your IP so that the link only works once. It also appears to not work with IE. I used that link to get my account because no one likes me enough to invite me.

i can see it from Aus!

[nandito]

I can access gmail with my phone and am in Australia! :P but then again i have an opera web browser phone..i think what gmail for small devices is just gmail without ajax ;)

Then don't use IE. Simple.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are concerned about ActiveX, then you wouldn't be using IE in the first place. You can access GMail with virtually any browser these days, even Netscape Navigator 3.0, if you so choose.

Mod this at least as high as the parent

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that the parent is NOT correct.

gewg_