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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.
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?
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...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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Now if only they would add IMAP support and improve security, they might have a chance of being successful with Google for Domains.
Throw the bums out!
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.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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.
And this is different from other large applications like, say, Vista how?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
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.
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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=
They have incentive to police spammers that use gmail accounts -- volume reduction. If every spammer that uses a gmail account sends enough e-mail to fill a full 2GB (in the Sent folder), that also nets 2 GB on the receiving end -- removing the spammer's account can reduce storage requirements by up to 4GB per spammer removed.
They also will get a very nice benefit to closing spammer accounts -- their sent folders are 100% spam. What better way to see what tricks spammers are using than have 2GB of sent spam in one easy location? They can easily see what percentage of that spam folder was then in turn delivered as non-spam and how many users read it and marked it as not-spam.
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!
This may be a little off topic, but maybe many others here will benefit from discussing this same concern. I love Gmail, but there is a problem I see that's been slowly nagging me:
I use Gmail to read the messages off my work/academic Pine accounts, and it has rapidly become my main way to check email because it has a great feature set, and Gmail doesn't pull some of the stupid tricks that other free email services do. I also use it to send messages (i.e. the "from:" field pretending as if it is one of the other work/school accounts I have), and rapidly I'm accumulating email on my Gmail account that now doesn't exist elsewhere.
However, sometime in the far off future, Gmail may decide not to work one day, or there may be a new technology to replace it. We can't know for sure. So I would like to be able to have a backup of that mail just in case. As much as I trust Gmail and like Google, I need some way to keep my mail on my own, because if it were all lost, it would be awful.
Couldn't they offer a service, for some reasonable amount of $$, where they would burn my entire Gmailbox onto a DVD and send it to me? With the size of my mailbox, POP downloading is becoming impossible, and this would also be a great way to give users some peace of mind.
or has anyone else felt this worry, and come up with an interesting/workable solution??
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!
My biggest gripe is Gmail doesn't work with tabs. When using webmail, I open email into tabs I want to read, and by the time I've finished clicking say 5 or so emails, they have finished loading into my browser and I can switch tabs to view them. Gmail doesn't allow tabbed browsing. Also I find Gmail's interface a bit clunky and limiting, much like Microsoft's products are.
marked "Sign up for Google Mail"
http://mail.google.com/mail/signup Which local telephone companies in the United States allow land-line customers to receive SMS? Or do I have to sign up for a 24-month mobile phone contract at $30 per month?