Google to offer free e-mail service with 1 GB of storage space (1 Viewer)

[ThomasC]

CNN (AP) Article

Press Release

 

[ThomasC]

This reeks of an good April Fools joke. Either the AP is in on it too, or they're just nimrods.

 

[Diallo B]

agreed, thomas! it is the first thing i thought.

 

[Christ Reynolds]

i agree thomas. however, i'm looking for another free email service to try out, they couldnt possibly be worse than hotmail () and yahoo has been slipping lately as far as spam protection. i used to get LESS 'spiced ham' in my inbox when i didnt use their filter...

CJ

 

[NickSo]

Though the 1GB may be a fool, i think their new Gmail service might be real... just using April Fools Day to get some exposure... Good marketing IMHO, check out all the tech news sites reporting on the story

 

[Christ Reynolds]

it is real, at least the gmail. i remember reading about it coming out soon. if they happened to give everyone 1 gb of space (we all know the probability of this happening), it would mean the end of the gmail service prematurely. it was a good idea to say they were giving everyone 1 gb instead of 100 mb or so. the 100 mb is a size that some people may even fill up with attachments and such, but 1 gb is way over the top.

CJ

 

[ThomasC]

I thought Hotmail had gotten better in the past few months.

 

[Christ Reynolds]

perhaps, i abandoned them over a year ago. i had this one email address that i ONLY gave to friends, and a year later i had over 500 junk messages in my inbox every day.

CJ

 

[Jordan_E]

I used to get a TON of unwanted email through my Hotmail account, but it has slowed considerably in the past few months.

 

[Mark Shannon]

Well I have my Hotmail to only send messages from those on my contact list to my inbox. All otehrs are sent to Junk Mail, where I review them for possible friends, then delete them.

 

[SethH]

Perhaps it is an April Fool's joke, but it may actually work. If you read up on it you'll find that they are trying to turn a profit on it by using scanning software on every e-mail that goes through the account, they will use this information to send you advertisements, but they insist it will not get out-of-control. For instance, if you send a friend an e-mail about a concert you are planning to attend you might get an Ad from TicketMaster.com or something similar. Will it work? Who knows, but other e-mail services like Yahoo! need to at least double their inbox size if they can't get the SPAM under control.

 

[Mike Lenthol]

Since majority of email is text they would compress it on the servers but limit to 1GB uncompressed. Compression rates of 100 to 1000+ times are achievable. Majority of free email accounts lay dormant, and the others are average users who will not tax the system at all. Google has the brains and the hardware to pull this off easily.

 

[Dave Poehlman]

Well, I love everything Google has turned out to date; image search, news, etc...

I'm excited to try the Gmail.

 

[Mark Shannon]

Gmail

 

[Ross Williams]

I'd drop Hotmail in a second for a Google account.

 

[perry web]

they do have computers scanning your email for key words so that they can customize their adds directly to you.
so as long as you do not mind the privacy invasion by google it is a great deal. I personally do not mind, as long as I know about it advance. it is free and if i do not want privacy invaded I wont use it. since i am not a terrorist, i have nothing to worry about.

http://www.drudgereport.com/flash.htm

 

[Jordan_E]

But what if you have a friend who continues to use the term "Da BOMB!" all the time?

 

[NickSo]

Any news that this was indeed an april fools joke??

 

[Christ Reynolds]

doesnt look like it. at first glance it certainly appears to be a hoax, but when you think about the compression ratios that google intends to use then it is entirely feasible. it will be a big hit too, think of all the people who will migrate over to google.

CJ

 

[Kirk Gunn]

From Drudge: Privacy advocates are concerned that there's one big flaw with Google Inc.'s free e-mail service: The company plans to read the messages.

Folks, there is no such thing as a free lunch. SOMEBODY's got to pay, and it is the advertisers. If they can't get your detailed info to use for targetting ads, why would they be doing this ?

I figured this one out about 5 seconds after I heard the service was legit. It gives people 1gb mailboxes for no cost except the inconvenience of thwarting the barrage of advertisements. Almost as brilliant as beer in a bottle !