With 1GB of storage and a good search function, a lot of people are never going to delete anything they recieve. Add the spam factor and that'll fill up pretty damned quickly

This has the potential for massive abuse, but I really, really want to continue believing that Goolge is a truly ethical company. So far they've done a fine job of catering to pay customers (advertisers, et al.) and regular Joes/Janes.

The number of users who will actually use that much storage is very small. I have a large email volume, plus SPAM, which I save (but filter into another folder with spamassassin). My email archive goes all the way back to 1997 and is still not much larger than 1GB. Even with SPAM, I think most users will take months or even years to reach a 150-200MB, much less 1GB.

And of course, it's very likely that Google will aggressively filter SPAM in the same way that Yahoo! or the others do.

Im sure many geeks will just love the google.com domain and use it for average everyday stuff, not really ever pushing the 1GB limit. I would be alot more concerned about bandwidth on a system like this.

I went to Register.com and did a WHOIS look up on "www.gmail.com" yesterday and then again today and I find it all very... uh, INTERESTING! Yesterday, it was registered to a run-of-the-mill guy somewhere in the U.S. The website was registered waaaaaaay back in 1995 (pre-Google) and was set to expire in mid-August of 2004. Yesterday, I would have said this whole Gmail-thing is a hoax and they simply rented this guy's website for a day to make it more realistic... but, now it says Google owns it and they've secured it through mid-August 2006. Maybe they're serious about this after all(???). What's important is this guy (I sure wish I had copied down his name and contact info). He had the URL "Gmail.com" and if he sold it Google so they can go through with the Gmail e-mail plan, they guy could be an instant millionaire by now. I sure would sock it to Google for all it's worth if they want the highly desirable URL "Gmail.com" and I owned it! lol

My first question was why is google doing this? Then the answer came to me....money. I predict google will develop an anti-spam process by using this service as a testing ground. They could then sell this technology. With the google name behind it, people will pay attention!!!

This is all speculation but to me it seems reasonable.

I really like yahoo's mail service. The spam blocking is exceptional and the disposable email address feature a life saver. It makes me more entrenched though. It'd take a lot of coaxing to get my friends to update their email addresses, I'd probably need a year to make the transition.

But with 1GB of space and good email searching (a weak spot with yahoo) I'd switch for sure.

It's not Microsoft that's the target, it's Yahoo. Yahoo is their biggest competitor, and they are going for Yahoo's crown jewels, their premium users who pay for the email service.

Two subjects seem to be missing from everything I have read so far.

1) It is every user's responsibility to maintain (monitor, edit, & delete) any information they accept and/or store, particularly if they don't own the storage medium. Otherwise they're their own worst enemy.

2) No one is forcing anyone to accept or use Gmail. Granted Google's offer is very attractive, but I don't have to use it.

The reality is Google has just scared the pants off the GREEDY media mongers.

Have a pleasant day.

If anyone believes that webmail or any mail besides encrypted emails is secure you are seriously kidding you're self. If you are worried about security, simply don't get an online email account.

As opposed to who's privacy policy? Yahoo? Hotmail? Online privacy policies are largely unenforceable so they're meaningless in the first place. TrustE certified? Yea, right... that company is like the fox guarding the henhouse. There is NO privacy policy anywhere on the net that has much legal ground unless it pertains to kids under the age of 12.

i wouldn't touch this service with a 10-foot pole given google's lack of a serious privacy policy. i didn't notice any statement regarding privacy in the announcement. but the privacy policy for the whole site includes, "Google may decide to change this Privacy Policy from time to time." also, do you know what google *really* does with those cookies?

talk about a profiler's goldmine. don't tell me any of you believe google (a for-profit company) wouldn't scan every last email for "marketing" reasons?

I do not know exactly how the system will work, but there is enormous potential for abuse. Actually, just personal storage of large amounts of data is probably the least of the concerns. One could imagine a warez or porn distribution system based on small requests to a controlling site that then uses mail fowarding to deliver the content (thus pushing the bulk of the storage and bandwidth costs onto gmail).

Reasoning: It's too damn good an idea to waste on a joke.

Is there anyone here who wouldn't switch to being whoever@gmail.com? A clean interface, non-intrusive adds, nigh unlimited storage, from a brand you trust.

Their ad system would read my mail? That's fine by me. Free webmail accounts are hardly secure now, are they? Encrypt if you need privacy.

If it's still there tomorrow we'll know.

After thinking about this all yesterday, I have come to the conclusion that Google is introducing Gmail (i.e. it is not a joke). However, I am also convinced that the timing and style of the announcement was specifically designed to maximize discussion. Very clever!

The Gmail site says, about spam:

What about spam?

Google is committed to keeping unwanted messages out of your inbox. Gmail includes a sophisticated spam filter that we're continuing to improve. The Report Spam link in Gmail is a way for users to help with this effort. It removes spam from the inbox and sends valuable data to the Gmail team working on spam blocking.

Their spam system may be easy. Think of how many times Nigerian scam emails have been sent, to how many millions of people. No actual mailing list or legit promotion has that level of repetition. the sheer *volume* of nearly identical spam becomes the easiest way to flag it as spam.

Giving away 1Gb is the perfect way to attract warez, and affiliated nasty stuff.

My concern is that such a wealth of storage is going to be abused by pirates.

Those of you who are familar with AOL back in the early days found their large capacity email to be a haven for piracy. Large file attachments that once initially uploaded, could be forwarded and shared with hundreds of people in seconds, once recieved, it could be forwarded again to yet even more people. All without the delay of re-uploading, nor even having to download the complete file.

I hope that Google has something up their sleave to preemptively nullify this problem before it starts. I used to make entertainment software for PC's and eventually had to disolve the S-Corp due to dwindling sales lost to piracy. The above mentioned method the result of...

Possible solutions would be to limit the size of attachments. Possible disallow forwarding attachments greater than 50MB. Dunno, just hope this is just paranoia talking and not an omen commanded by my Rice Krispies.

Yes, Gmail is real:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4641298/

Google spokesman David Krane, reached Wednesday night, admitted that the "color and personality" of the press release -- which is dated "April 1 UTC" and includes phrases such as "millions of M&Ms later, Gmail was born" -- "was indeed in the spirit of April 1" but said that Gmail was a serious product.

"We are beginning to test a free e-mail service," Krane told MSNBC.com.

Gmail has caused a lot of raised eyebrows. If it's fake, it fooled me good. I gave them my e-mail address yesterday hoping it was true