Google to offer 1 gig of free e-mail.. whoa!!!

[Harkoliar]

just saw this on cnn

Google to offer 1 gig of free e-mail Wednesday, March 31, 2004 Posted: 10:13 PM EST (0313 GMT) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Story Tools -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RELATED • Google Gmail YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS Google Yahoo! Incorporated Microsoft Corporation or Create your own Manage alerts | What is this? MOUNTAIN VIEW, California (AP) -- Search engine Google Inc. announced Wednesday it will launch a free, Web-based e-mail service to compete against popular services from rivals Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft Corp. Google's service, called "Gmail," will include a built-in search function that will let people search every e-mail they've ever sent or received. According to company executives, users will be able to type in keywords to sort e-mails or find old missives. And it will come with 1 gigabyte of free storage - more than 100 times what some popular rivals offer and enough to hold 500,000 pages of e-mail. The service is being offered to invited users, and will be available to everyone in a few weeks, the company said. Officials at Yahoo and Microsoft's Hotmail division declined to comment on Google's entry into a new category. But analysts said that Google -- whose technology is behind nearly four out of every five Web searches -- could shake up the free e-mail market. Yahoo dominates the niche, with 52.6 million unique users per month in the United States, according to a February survey by online research firm comScore Media Metrix. Hotmail is next, with 45.4 million users. AOL has 40.2 million paying users. To finance the service, Google will display advertising links tied to the topics discussed within the e-mails. For instance, an e-mail inquiring about an upcoming concert might include an ad from a ticket agency. Industry analyst David Ferris said Gmail is a logical extension of the world's most popular search engine. But he said Google may run into trouble if it tries to charge for e-mail eventually. Rivals have kept stripped versions of e-mail free and asked users to pay annual fees up to $30 or more for extra storage and spam protection. "I know that companies offering free e-mail are very frustrated because the consumer expects it will stay free -- they simply will not pay any money for them," said Ferris, president of San Francisco-based Ferris Research. "Although there's a clear tendency for these free services to offer for-fee extensions, users are very resistant to taking them up. The level of adoption is very disappointing."

any takers? .

[Link]

While it does sound interesting, I don't see any reason to switch from my Hotmail account to this 'Gmail'.

[johnny]

Now why would i wanna store all the crap i find in my mailbox every day ?

[Kakero]

Yeah right, 1 gig of free storage my ... . It would also mean I would find 1 gig of spam in my mailbox.

[Nerull]

Exactly. I saw the report about this on CNN, and before they even got to the bad part I asked "what's the catch?" Then I heard about them essentially monitoring the email to figure out which advertisers to spam you with...oops, I mean put links out there for you to click, then I knew it was definitely not a good deal. I've finally gotten my hotmail down to 2 spams a day (from 10+ before I could get the damn filtering to work right). Why would I want to go with a company that already announces up front that they are going to use a "nicer" version of spamming?

[Zero Alpha]

Originally posted by Nerull: Why would I want to go with a company that already announces up front that they are going to use a "nicer" version of spamming?

online storage course YAY

unfortunatly, its so unlikely and since its april 1st i doubt its true

that wouldve been sweet tho

[Vaskez]

Hmmmm it's probably true about google starting an email service but not sure about the 1 gig storage. If they had 50 million users like yahoo mail....not sure if they have 50 million gigs lol! I'm guessing even if it is true, probably only the first 1000 users will get 1 gig of storage or something to encourage uptake.

LOL I find it funny that they are surprised that people are unwilling to pay for email services. Why should they pay when they have been free for so long? However, on a related note, there is one instance in which I'd accept paying for emails.

I recently read an article about an idea to charge per email sent but only after, say, the first 250 in a month. This means that most people will pay nothing but spammers who send millions of emails at a time, will end up paying loads, so will be discouraged, hahaha! I like this idea AS LONG as the limit before paying starts is quite high. 1000 emails a month or something.

[Ronn_Bman]

They are going to offer the 2 gig of webspace with their new email account, but it's for 1,000 trial users according to The Screen Savers on TechTV.

[Yorick]

You can't get free hotmail accounts anymore can you? I use hotmail, AND Yahoo. may as well try and get a gmail.

[andrewas]

You can last I heard, but they display this screen which implies you have to pay and hide the link to the free version somewhere. Nsty, but what do you expect from M$?