There’s been a story going around lately that Google is starting up it’s own free web service. Some the info is suspicious. E.g., 1 gigabyte free space.
The site also goes live on April 1st. Ahem. So I went to gmail today, they say it’s not quite ready but asks for your email. Double ahem.
I smell a rat, does anybody have the real lowdown on this?
Don’t know about g-mail, but this job at google is pretty fishy 
I dunno. This article is dated April 2 (odd in and of itself) but states the catch is that the emails will carry ads with them. If it’s a joke, it’s not a funny one, so it may be real.
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/040331/315958_1.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4641298/
http://www.vnunet.com/News/1153994
The story is certainly spreading alright…
no adds no pop-ups…heres info about the beta version…
That’s no banner or pop-up ads. The catch (and the reason they’ll give you such a huge file space) is that they scan your email automatically and insert highly targeted text ads into your (presumably incoming) emails. I don’t care. I love Google and I hate constantly being at the limit of my storage capacity on Yahoo! Mail. As long as the ads are clearly marked and reasonably non-intrusive, I’m next in line. I can hardly wait, in fact. Google always includes lots of neat little extras in what they do, so it will probably be fun to play with as well as highly practical and convenient.
Oh, yeah, they’re officially launching it today, but in typical low-key Google fashion. It’s still in beta and it’s a limited roll-out for only a few invited users. (How they choose who to invite, I have no idea!) There is no indication of when it will be available for open registeration.
Google says it’s 100% legit, unlike the job offer.
I really hope this is true, and as has been said, it’s not a funny joke if it’s supposed to be an April Fools prank. I gave them my spam catcher address to be notified if they’ll let me transfer. Goodbye hotmail/MS!! [Shakes dust off feet]
I don’t think they’ll be inserting ads directly into your email. More than likely they will be displaying text ads on the top or side the screen while you read your email, and these ads will be tied to certain keywords found in your emails. They do the same with their search engine, tying ads to your search query. I’m curious if they’ll scan just the subject lines or the entire text of the messages.
People might get worried about a company scanning their email for keywords, but every service provider has had the oportunity to do so. Remeber back in the 90’s when email was first catching on with the masses and we were told to treat it like postcards, not sealed letters. Even though its unlikely due to volume, somebody along the line might read you mail.
Not only that. Spam filters already “read” your mails. Of course this is relatively shallow processing but nothing else is likely to be used for selecting ads.
We will have to see whether the ads in the final service will be annoying, but there is so far little additional harm to privacy.
Then again, let’s assume that the entire thing is real… Look at all the free publicity it got. TechTv even aired a newstory on Gmail, in a string of newsstories where you where asked to pick which was the april fools story.
What’s odd about that? It is April second in Australia, where that comes from. You’ve got to remember that the US runs late compared to most of the world - and almost a day late compared to Australia & New Zealand.
Slackers
DancingFool
Well, It’s April 2 in the US and they’re still hyping this.
I don’t see the attraction to web based e-mail in the first place. Now we’re going to have ADS inserted into our web based e-mail? Why go through all the trouble? Aren’t you already paying for service with a provider that includes email services?
Hip me daddy-o.
Erm, no, actually, I’m not. I’m a student who uses the internet service provided by my school. The school provides email service, but its crappy. Two years ago, I got my internet access only at work, and they didn’t provide email. Before that, I got my internet service from my undergrad school, which also provided email, but it was extremely unreliable and changed adresses on my every few months when they changed servers! Even if I had used my accademic email, I would have had to change accounts twice since then.
I do pay a small fee for dial-up service at home that I suppose could provide email as well, but unlike web based email, I can’t check it from work or when I go visit my parents in an area that doesn’t have dial-up through that provider.
Why wouldn’t I want free web-based email?
Why should it be in any way surprising that a huge company is capable of offering a free GB of storage? Even at end-user costs, my recent hard drive cost about 55 pence per GB. Google can no doubt manage it at a fraction of that.
Because it’s about 100 times larger than what most free e-mail services offer.
Not that I doubt the announcement (at least not anymore) but it still seems amazing.
http://gmail.google.com
Heh heh…check out the page now. They could just be messing with the people who think this is a joke, but at the bottom of the page is a link that says “Happy Birthday April!” (April 1st could be considered the day of April’s birth.) The link takes you to a tribute page with a picture of a couple. The woman, presumably, is April. She’s Asian, too. (Maybe she’s April Foo?)
And they disabled View Source in IE on the gmail page! That’s bizarre!
I have no problem seeing the source. I think you just experienced the common glitch being discussed in another thread.
Close! I was experiencing this behavior described by sigSEGV.