# Google Mail - will you use it?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-mail-will-you-use-it/237826
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [April 2, 2004, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-mail-will-you-use-it/237826 "2004-04-02T01:37:35Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Patty\_O\_Furniture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patty_O_Furniture)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2004, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-mail-will-you-use-it/237826/1 "2004-04-02T01:37:35Z")
[Google Email](http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/34983.html).
Storage capacity may be around **1 GIG** :eek:
But don’t drop your hotmail just yet. Google will use [AdSense](http://www.about-adsense.com/what-is-adsense.html) to poke around your email for keywords, and then plant related ads into a sidebar that will be seen by the recipient.
1GB is great, but I’m not sure if I like the idea of Google nosing through my messages in order to annoy my email recipients with commercials.
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### Author:  [@Ephemera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ephemera)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2004, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-mail-will-you-use-it/237826/2 "2004-04-02T02:37:43Z")
Sure. It’s free and offers a ton more storage space so why not?
I’ll probably use it for non-correspondence email though. Solves the problem of the adbar.
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### Author:  [@Jayn\_Newell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jayn_Newell)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2004, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-mail-will-you-use-it/237826/3 "2004-04-02T02:44:08Z")
Nope. One, I don’t like the idea of them reading my e-mails in any shape or form. Two, I currently have no troubles filing letters. Three, I don’t need the extra inbox space. I’m managing quite well with the 2mb that Hotmail gives me.
If I could have that much space for my _website_, however…
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### Author:  [@yosemite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yosemite)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2004, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-mail-will-you-use-it/237826/4 "2004-04-02T02:50:26Z")
I think that’s an April Fools joke, isn’t it?
If it isn’t, I’m still not using it.
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### Author:  [@cheddarsnax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cheddarsnax)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2004, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-mail-will-you-use-it/237826/5 "2004-04-02T02:57:02Z")
No. I don’t need that much storage - all my current archived messages take up about 2MB, and I delete most incoming mail. I receive more junk mail than anything else, and almost all of it is caught by filters. Besides, I love my email address. Who wouldn’t want the domain [mail2stalin.com](http://mail2stalin.com)?
**yosemitebabe** : I don’t think so. They’ve said in interviews that Gmail is real. [Here’s](http://www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job.html) Google’s April Fools joke.
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### Author:  [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2004, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-mail-will-you-use-it/237826/6 "2004-04-02T02:57:27Z")
[Not an April Fool’s joke](http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040401/wr_nm/tech_google_dc_9). The Job offers on the moon were, but this is not. Several people thought it was a joke, however.
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### Author:  [@ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2004, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-mail-will-you-use-it/237826/7 "2004-04-02T03:19:10Z")
The only entity “reading” your mail would be Google’s algorithms. While they’re quite slick, they are light years away from being advanced enough to elbow eachother and point and laugh at your daily list-serv of leather midget porn.
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### Author:  [@Duderdude2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duderdude2)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2004, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-mail-will-you-use-it/237826/8 "2004-04-02T06:54:03Z")
> [@honeydewgrrl](#):
>
> The only entity “reading” your mail would be Google’s algorithms. While they’re quite slick, they are light years away from being advanced enough to elbow eachother and point and laugh at your daily list-serv of leather midget porn.
Hahaha, nice.
Good point though, I truely don’t care if Google’s bots are “reading” my mail. First, I have nothing to hide, and second, it doesn’t matter one bi anyways, because their bots don’t give a rat’s ass of what’s in the e-mail.
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### Author:  [@clayton\_e](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clayton_e)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2004, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-mail-will-you-use-it/237826/9 "2004-04-02T07:07:58Z")
No, they don’t read, point, and laugh. But they’re one step closer to it. I know sending an e-mail is like sending a post card, but this just blatently says “We can look at your e-mail content and we will, to an extent.” Before an e-mail at least appeared to be secure and involving only the sender and the recipient (even though it really wasn’t that secure).
Its just like saying we can open your snail mail, read it with a super advanced computer that doesn’t give a crap that you’re fetiches (had to look up the plural of that…) include raspberries and duct tape, then put ads for recipies and cordless drills into your mail.
I for one wouldn’t want anything going through my main in any way.
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### Author:  [@clayton\_e](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clayton_e)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2004, 7:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-mail-will-you-use-it/237826/10 "2004-04-02T07:10:35Z")
Oh, though I fully intend on using one as free storage for large files so I can access them from wherever.
😃
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### Author:  [@caphis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/caphis)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2004, 7:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-mail-will-you-use-it/237826/11 "2004-04-02T07:30:03Z")
I’m amazed it didn’t turn out to be a hoax. Damn right I’ll use it.
I really couldn’t care less who reads my e-mail, as long as I get to read it, too. Anything I e-mail has got to be astoundingly boring to anyone else. If not, more power to them. 😃
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### Author:  [@caphis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/caphis)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2004, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-mail-will-you-use-it/237826/12 "2004-04-02T07:31:51Z")
> [@Attrayant](#):
>
> 1GB is great, but I’m not sure if I like the idea of Google nosing through my messages in order to annoy my email recipients with commercials.
Wait wait, back up-- I’m pretty sure they mean that YOU, the recipient, will be seeing ads related to your e-mail. Yes, extremely sure.
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### Author:  [@BlackKnight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlackKnight)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2004, 7:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-mail-will-you-use-it/237826/13 "2004-04-02T07:42:36Z")
> [@Jayn\_Newell](#):
>
> Nope. One, I don’t like the idea of them reading my e-mails in any shape or form.\*, however…
I’m curious why it doesn’t bother you that Hotmail reads your emails.
(How do you think they determine whether an email is likely spam or not?)
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### Author:  [@nikjohns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nikjohns)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2004, 8:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-mail-will-you-use-it/237826/14 "2004-04-02T08:45:11Z")
> [@clayton\_e](#):
>
> Oh, though I fully intend on using one as free storage for large files so I can access them from wherever.
>
> 😃
They stated that there’d be a 10MB limit on each file.
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### Author:  [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2004, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-mail-will-you-use-it/237826/15 "2004-04-02T11:38:57Z")
I am considering it for one of my [efax.com](http://efax.com) mailboxes (fax to email service). This way a large fax won’t bump me over my storage limit and I can have an online archive of the faxes I get. Also the faxes are file attachments in a graphics format, so I don’t think google’s spiders would be able to read them.
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### Author:  [@Low\_Key\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Low_Key_1)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2004, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-mail-will-you-use-it/237826/16 "2004-04-02T12:20:19Z")
If this 1GB mailbox thing is really true, I’ll definately look into getting it. Although, I have no idea why I would ever need 1GB of space for my emails. Being able to send 10Mb files will be nice though… I would have been happy with anything above 10Mb free storage space because I am starting to get a little bit irritated with having to constantly delete my e-mails from my Hotmail account because it’s out of space…
As for it reading my e-mails. So what? At least they’re honest about it and its not like I have secret correspondance with people over e-mail. “hey, how are you? I’m fine…etc…”. Not very secret stuff…
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### Author:  [@noname](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/noname)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2004, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-mail-will-you-use-it/237826/17 "2004-04-02T21:10:29Z")
1 GB is enticing. As for google reading my mail, its ok. its them reading my spam thats bothering me. the algorithm wont know its spam, and i will be in undated withads about finding singles in my area and…
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### Author:  [@ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2004, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-mail-will-you-use-it/237826/18 "2004-04-02T22:28:01Z")
> [@noname](#):
>
> 1 GB is enticing. As for google reading my mail, its ok. its them reading my spam thats bothering me. the algorithm wont know its spam, and i will be in undated withads about finding singles in my area and…
From the [gmail.com](http://gmail.com) [FAQ](http://gmail.google.com/gmail/help/about.html) :
> [@](#):
>
> 1. 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.
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### Author:  [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)
#### Post date: [April 2, 2004, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-mail-will-you-use-it/237826/19 "2004-04-02T23:02:58Z")
If it reads outgoing mail and attaches an ad, I would be sorely tempted to open an account just to send everyone an email that said “Fuck Google.”
Let’s see their algorithms assign an ad to that. 😃
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### Author:  [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)
#### Post date: [April 3, 2004, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-mail-will-you-use-it/237826/20 "2004-04-03T00:22:47Z")
I don’t think I’ll be bothering - I don’t need the space, and don’t really like the ad insertion idea.
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