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Google Opens Gmail To All
Reader Russian Art Buyer lets us know that GMail is now open for all ("Google Mail" in the UK). The service is no longer by invitation only. This welcome page shows an ever-increasing amount of storage available per user, currently about 2,815 MB.
...and I don't see any way to sign up other than the "use your mobile" promotion that they've had going for a while. There's no link from TFA either.
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If I try to go to gmail.com, I get the old URL (the one with <mpl=m_wsad and no way to sign up) but the link in the summary (with <mpl=m_blanco ) has a sign up form. Interesting. This with clearing my cache first to be sure that it isn't a browser caching issue.
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Check again - they seem to have removed the requirement to receive the text message...
Maybe you should read the FAQ: "Can I sign up without the invitation code? Or without a mobile phone? 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 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. updated 2/7/2007" Show me where someone can signup without a code or a cell phone to receive a code...
I do have both except I pay for the Enhanced account at Fastmail. GMail doesn't compare in terms of features, with Fastmail offering full Sieve scripting, I've got my domain hosted and sieve lets me do pretty much everything I ever wanted to do with email. It's also great for managing spam.
Fastmail lets me use webDAV to access my file storage, and I just love IMAP/IDLE support. With Fastcheck installed that monitors my mailbox with IDLE, the notification often pops up before I get it on my Blackberry (PUSH-based), something Exchange has never managed to do at work.
I get loads of spam in my GMail even though I've never given it to anyone, which I think speaks for itself. 1 or 2 spams a week with Fastmail and I've had it for 8+ years.
I haven't read the CNN article linked here, but I did read the article on my Wii last night. The long and short of it is that signup is geographically limited. Just about everyone not in North America is now able to sign up without going through the text message routine. The Google spokepeople have promised that North America will follow "soon".
Hope that clarifies things.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
That article is 2.5 years old.... There is no link at Gmail allowing a free signup without a cell phone.
m obile&answer=22245&hl=en
This is what Gmail says about signing up currently:
Can I sign up without the invitation code? Or without a mobile phone?
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?ctx=
Google is actually "not being evil" here, by making it easy to extract your email.
Just go to "settings"->"forwarding and pop" and select "Enable POP for all mail (even mail that's already been downloaded)". You can then download a copy of all the mail to your computer using a normal email client (You can choose to keep a copy on gmail). You can also get all mail automatically forwarded to an outside email address.
That makes it easy to switch email provider; I used it the other day to download a copy of all my email, just in case. It seems to me that Google has chosen not to lock in users, but to simply try retain customers by being better. Which is the way it should be, and which makes me more comfortable relying on google services in the future.
Regards, Thue
i'll be the first to admit that i am a pretty serious google fanboy and i haven't used a fastmail account so proceed with caution.
i have two public access unix accounts, one on SDF and one on hobbiton (hobbiton stopped being public access like 6 years ago). two years ago there was a sudden astronomical increase in the amount of spam that i was getting on both accounts. both systems had not yet set up greylisting or some other anti-spam measures and so i was worried that i would have to abandon an email address that i have had for almost 10 years.
i got a gmail invite from a friend and set up my new account, and gmail has an option where you can choose to send mail as another account and make that the default method for sending mail, so i set up my gmail account to send as the two unix accounts and then added the gmail address to a .forward for each shell account.
so now i use gmail as the central store for all of my email. now that both shell accounts have graylisting and other spam filtering i take advantage of that PLUS gmail's ability to bucket spam, so i have not seen a spam email in something like 6 months. i could go back to the old way (i look really oldschool using ssh to check my mail with pine) but i have become so lazy and spoiled thanks to gmail that there is no real reason to go back.
so, if you want to keep your old address and switch to gmail, it is possible, provided your old provider has some means for you to forward your mail.
sarcasm:
-noun
1. harsh or bitter derision or irony.
But if you're signing up for a gmail account you're already trading a certain amount of privacy away anyway.
Give it a day or so, and you should see the non-invitation link.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
And at the very same time, Yahoo Mail Beta has blocked Linux users. Maybe it's time to switch.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=37 520
Per a user on the "Gmail Users" Google Groups, this may be only for certain non-United States locations. When I connect to Gmail from my home in the USA, I only get the SMS screen, but when I connect through my office (through a company proxy that hits the Internet in France) I get the non-invitation screen.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
I'm guessing the GP is referring to the fact that gmail scans your emails to display ads. And if you stay logged in, they track your searches. And if you log into gtalk, it (optionally) records your conversation. I'm sure I'm missing some stuff.
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
Actually, when I bought my new laptop, I set up POP with Gmail and Outlook. I had well over a gig of mail in my Gmail mailbox. You're right when you say it will just download to an arbitrary spot and stop, but the next time you open Outlook up, it will resume the process. I wasn't very stressed about it, so I didn't hurry up the process, but just opening Outlook once or twice daily had my Gmail box downloaded in a week or so.
Don't worry about your sent items. Mail that I send out is downloaded into my Outlook inbox. I then have a rule move it into the sent items folder.
By the way: It's Google Mail in germany too because some other company holds the rights on a "G-Mail" brand.