[minya]

Anyone have a Gmail account?

... and want to give me an invite so I don't have to pay $25 for one on eBay?

I thought it'd be worth asking.

- Chris

 

[10068]

I want to know how they can afford giving 1 gig of storage...

Looks like a cool mail client though, i'll try it eventually.

 

[mtkversion]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...678897586&rd=1

Someones willing to pay $81 for an email account?

 

[10068]

That's humans for ya.

 

[Oddball]

That's a really early adoptor who's willing to pay. I was planning on getting Gmail when it became public, but I'm not so sure anymore. Is it only going to be open to invite or are they really going to go public eventually? I heard that Yahoo's going to offer something like 100 MB of storage this summer in order to compete with the 1 gig. The gig is still bigger, but I'm not so psyched about changing my email address.

 

[chadbang]

Well, I think the real advantage of being an early adopter is that you can probably land exactly the email address you want.


I want one too, Minya and was thinking of posing the same question! Maybe we'll get lucky.

I really like the search function idea, too. And a gig is extremely tempting. That's good new about Yahoo upping theirs to 100 megs! Now I can finally send people some movies and mp3s!

 

[gpalmer]

Just what I need to pay money to bew the target of directed Spam after their computers have picked through my mail and decided what they can sell me -> Ughhh!

 

[Sczervok]

The selected ads are kinda stupid... but hey, that's what you get for getting a gig for free. I suppose. I wouldn't mind at all if those ads were just banners.

 

[Hajime]

For $10 a month you can rent a remote server and use your own hard drive. That way you can have as much storage space as you want. I have 120 gigs of storage space.

 

[Sczervok]

Or you could have your own server and just have to pay for the domain name and the electric bills.

 

[wallijonn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sduibek I want to know how they can afford giving 1 gig of storage...

Because not everyone will use up all that space. I have 1 gig limits and rarely ever use more than 200KB. Why? Because I delete all the useless emails all the time.

If they don't provide anti-virus protection, PASS on the deal. If they do not provide SPAM protection, PASS also. That's why I went with fastmail for $20 a year.

 

[eric343]

I have a Gmail account, but I can't invite people (not a Google employee). It does provide spam filtering, though I don't see any sign of antivirus filtering.

The interface is excellent -- it has a whole slew of shortcut keys, and is much faster than a traditional HTML / link-based page (it appears to run in Java or similar, yet doesn't have the usual flaws of Java). If not for the fact that I use a local mail client to check mail via POP3 (in my opinion, this is still the best solution), my Gmail account would become my main one.

 

[v_1matst]

Google offering 1GB webmail accounts is great, even if they are going to scan your email to target advertising towards you (take a look on slashdot for more info regarding this topic).

Forget hosting your own server. Maybe you can set up your own qmail/sendmail/exim/whatever server and set up a web interface like SquirrelMail or something but your average joe blow can't/doesn't want to.

Also forget renting a colocated machine and doing the same thing. Whatever uptime they guarantee will be beaten by Google, guaranteed.

How can they afford it? Well, they're currently the largest search engine on the planet and are going to do an IPO very shortly. They have lot's of money coming in from advertisers, customers who license their search technology (software API, advanced indexing and hardware 'google boxes' for internal use) and not to mention that the $/GB ratio is getting smaller by the week (more space for your buck).

As a former UNIX Systems Admin now Software Developer, trust me when I tell you that Google is making a very smart move here and they will produce a quality -free- product when they are done with this test period.

Oh, and POP3 sucks... IMAP(S) all the way

 

[averydonovan]

If they don't offer POP3 access then I can skip on that. My Yahoo! account works fine, and I don't mind the $30 a year for POP3 access and 25MB of space. I rarely need more than 2MB of space on any day since I download my email to my computer. Plus I can access my Yahoo! account from any computer as well as any cellphone with WAP access. I haven't heard of Google planning to offer WAP access to Gmail accounts. And Yahoo! also offers other nifty features like being able to sync Palm OS devices to your Yahoo! calendar and address book.

 

[Stephonovich]

I wanted a Gmail account; but didn't get in the Beta. So I'm still stuck with Hotmail and it's suckiness. I will get a Gmail when it goes public; if nothing else, to have one

As soon as I get my webhosting straightened out, though, I'm switching to my stephonovich@-NOSPAM-stephonovich-online.com account (currently setup to forward to my Hotmail), and that has as much storage as I have left with my webhost. 18MB, I think, but at 10 cents per MB, it won't kill me to add another 100MB.

(-:Stephonovich