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.

Comments

Just checked...

[nathan s]

...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.

annnd checked again...

[nathan s]

If I try to go to gmail.com, I get the old URL (the one with &ltmpl=m_wsad and no way to sign up) but the link in the summary (with &ltmpl=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.

Re:Fastmail

[Nimloth]

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.

Re:Not really

[AKAImBatman]

Gmail still requires either an invation or the ability to receive text messages.

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.

Re:Playing the same game MS played

[thue]

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 love gmail

[teh_chrizzle]

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.

Re:Not really

[montyzooooma]

But if you're signing up for a gmail account you're already trading a certain amount of privacy away anyway.

Re:Not really

[jbarr]

Maybe you should read the FAQ...

Their FAQ pages have not been updated yet. As with almost all previous Gmail enhancementsit takes time to roll things out globally. When I navigate to Gmail.com using IE7 or Firefox, I see a nice "Sign up for Gmail" panel with a link that takes you right to a signup screen--no invitation is necessary. (Now, I'm using a company proxy that hits the Internet in Europe, so YMMV depending on your location.)

Give it a day or so, and you should see the non-invitation link.

Re:Not really

[jbarr]

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.