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

Capacity drop?

[Short Circuit]

I wonder if we'll see a drop in storage capacity with the increased number of users.

Also, my GMail account still says I only have 73 invites left. If it's open, why don't they drop the limited number of invites?

Playing the same game MS played

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

First get all the data of the users into its servers, relatively easily, cheaply and painlessly. Like Word5' importing WordPerfect or Excel importing Lotus123 without any hitch. Once all the data is safely collected MS increased the switching costs and made it nearly impossible to get back to the competitors. Till date it keeps changing file formats, macro language, APIS, look and feel and tries enshrine even the bugs in Word5 as the new "standard" "open" document format!!!

In the case of Google, it will find increasing the switching costs to get out of gmail not very easy. Reason are:

1. It uses a simple browser as its interface and it does not have the same level of control over http protocols and XML protocols MS enjoyed over Windows platform.

2. Users have become more aware of these issues. The resurgence of OpenOffice and fandom of Firefox shows that.

3. Google says its motto is "dont do evil" and atleast part of its fan base is taking it at face value.

Overall, IMHO, if google wrests significant portion of the data from the clutches of MS and shows how advantageous it could be for companies and users to keep their data in a format with eye on the switching costs it would benefit the consumers.