Posted on 03/31/2005 10:17:41 PM PST by Brian328i
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) - A year after unveiling a free e-mail service with a full gigabyte of storage, Google Inc. (GOOG) is doubling the capacity of each account and plans to keep bumping up the limit in the future.
Once the upgrade takes effect Friday, Gmail users will be able to store up to 2 gigabytes of e-mail and attachments for each account. Even more capacity will be made available after that as it becomes feasible, the company said.
"Our goal is to make sure storage is no longer an issue for Web mail users," said Marissa Mayer, Google's director of consumer Web products.
The announcement was made on the first anniversary of the Internet search engine's launch of Gmail, which surprised many users with its generous storage allotment and prompted rivals Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) to boost the capacity of their own free Web mail services.
Just last week, Yahoo Inc. said it would offer 1 gigabyte of storage to users of its free service. When Google introduced Gmail, Yahoo was providing just 4 megabytes of storage. Microsoft Corp.'s Hotmail now offers 250 megabytes, up from 2 megabytes at Gmail's launch.
Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are in a tight race to get their services on the world's computer desktops. In recent months, each has launched utilities to help people find information stored on a PC, block popup ads, conduct Internet searches and provide other features.
Mayer said Mountain View-based Google can offer so much capacity because of the way the company has set up its computer systems. She declined to provide any more detail.
But even after a year, Gmail remains available only to those who have been invited by existing users. In recent months, Google has made more invitations available, but it's still officially a beta - or test - offering.
Mayer declined to say when that status might change. The search company intends to always offer a free version, though she said fee-based options are a possibility.
BTW, if anyone wants an invite to GMail, let me know and I'll get one sent as soon as I can. :)
If your address gets on a spammer's list, it could fill up if you take a long weekend.
I once signed up for a discussion list and went away for a weekend. I had 1.5gb allocated to the address, and it was FULL when I got back.
Google is run by a bunch of left wing yocals. No thanks. Plus GMail, if I recall, actually "reads" your email so that it can plant advertising, etc messages to you based on what you are emailing about. No thanks.
I'm pretty happy with gmail. Makes life easy if you do a lot of traveling as I do. Agreed on capacity; I tend to delete newsletter-type crud and purely temporary "hey, let's go get some food" messages; BUT, I send myself a lot of articles that I want to save. 6 months after joining up I think I've used 3% of my alloted 1 gig capacity.
Great.
More chicks can now get more forwarded e-mails with semi-animated Holly Hobby figures about how beautiful life is and how icky men are.
Thanks, Google!
2. How do I sign up? When can I get a Gmail account?We're currently only offering Gmail as part of a preview release and limited test. We don't have details on when Gmail will be made more widely available, as that depends in part on the results of the test.
I have several email accounts, 2-hotmail, 1-for a website I do tech admin, 1-on a linux box of mine, and 2-gmail.
Anything I want to keep confidential/secure I send to my linux box, one gmail account is used for google alerts and the other is for signing up stuff. I use thunderbird to read my emails and so I get no ads. Not a big issue to me.
GMail is still in the "beta" phase, you need an invite. If you want freepmail me your email and I'll send an invite.
send me an invite
Use www.mailinator.com for signing up for stuff.
You just make up an email address like
JustAGoober@mailinator.com and when mail arrives at
their server for that email address the server creates
the account.... no password is needed to read the
email... it's wonderful for avoiding spam at your
regular email :-)
try it out at www.mailinator.com
I was invited, and I turned it down. Who wants to have their email tracked with ads that are specifically geared towards them? Ads that are based on words that are in your email. No thanks!
Gmail is great.. don't know why it's in "Beta" status...
Probably the first e-mail service I'd be willing to pay for if/once they start charging...
I like http://www.spamgourmet.com for a more long-term, more flexible implementation of the same idea, although unlike Mailinator, you have to have your own "real" email address.
Thanx for that link...
Looks like another great way to avoid spam :-)
7 months after joining up I've used 30% of my 1 Gigabyte, and I was beginning to wonder what would happen in another year when I reached the limit. Now I don't have to worry. I really appreciate Google doing this.
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