Google offers 1GB of free mail storage

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Julio Franco

Julio Franco

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Google has officially announced they are launching a beta program for their upcoming free mail service that should rival similar programs that Microsoft (Hotmail) and Yahoo have offered for a long time, the biggest and baddest of the search engines however claims it will offer a whole gigabyte of free storage... if that remains true, you can bet it will be huge (see our new poll).

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# Storage: Google believes people should be able to hold onto their mail forever. That's why Gmail comes with 1,000 megabytes (1 gigabyte) of free storage – more than 100 times what most other free webmail services offer.
 
That's a really thorough joke then (check out the further references) and it would be very brave of such a big player like Google to kid around.
 
I generally tend to think any news I read on April 1st is an april fools joke, besides, 1GB of free storage?? who needs that much space for mail? I guess this is to store all the spam you'll be getting.
 
there are two tv news stations in my area that are reporting about the google email, gmail. i am still skeptical about this news though.
 
OK guys here is the deal:

First:

Most major news services are reporting about gmail:

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/03/31/google.email.ap/index.html

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=4719226

http://www.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/01/technology/01google.html

HOWEVER, I am now 99% sure it is an April Foos joke.

If you go here:
http://www.google.com/gmail/help/about.html

Read the FAQs.
Check out this one:

"4. Is Gmail available in other languages?

During this testing period, the Gmail interface is only available in English. However, we're committed to making Gmail available to as many people in as many languages as possible. And Gmail accounts can already be used to read and send email in most languages (even Klingon)."

Klingon? WTF!?

Anyway, what interests me is the fact that all major news services have picked this up.
I mean how could they fall for this joke?
Aren't they supposed to do some research before they post the story?

Anyone has an opinion(s) on that?
 
You can look at it in two ways...

1) It's Aprils fools joke, however Google has already got LOTS and then LOTS more of free publicity for their upcoming GMail that is indeed an on-going project.

2) It's not a joke and Google can indeed handle it, and that's their formula for getting Hotmail and Yahoo users (etc) to switch to their mail service.
 
defently april fools.. i mean come on.. everyone would get that email, and they dont have a gig of space for everyone.
 
Originally posted by ---agissi---
defently april fools.. i mean come on.. everyone would get that email, and they dont have a gig of space for everyone.
Click to expand...
I am getting confused more and more.
I don't know what to think now! :confused:
 
They would have to have an absolutely giant server. Doesn't Hotmail have something like 2 million members. There's no way you could get 2 million gigs of HD space on one comp (or even several).
 
Originally posted by me(who else?)
They would have to have an absolutely giant server. Doesn't Hotmail have something like 2 million members. There's no way you could get 2 million gigs of HD space on one comp (or even several).
Click to expand...
With Network Attached Storage you can easily get serveral hundred terabytes of storage in a single 19" rack full of NAS servers...

And it's not like the averge user will use more than 50mb anyway...

If they do this they will calculate just like ISP's does; they have more customers than they have IP addresses but at any given point not all customers will be online so it is never a problem
 
The storage needed is pretty realistic.. How much does a GB of disk space cost? $1 maybe if you don't go for high end devices and don't buy it all at once. 2 million users, say over a year.. A one-time investment of $2M over 1 year is small change for a company like Google.

Besides, as already said, it will take a long time for any user to fill up her space unless she comes up with a clever scheme how to use it as webspace for midget porn so the initial storage needed will be relatively small. And since users will be "searching" through their mail the whole mailbox wouldn't have to be available immediately in one place. All you need is a relatively central index - the real content may be spread all over the world.

Furthermore, such a big mailbox would mean that users don't delete their mail (or at least Google can keep it around for "undeleting"). Imagine the data mining potential of having acess to the whole e-mail traffic of an impressive selection of people from all over the world. A goldmine. Of course there are privacy policies but surely noone would mind if Google indexed their mail archive to make seaching through it faster..

It's April 2nd in 10 minutes everywhere in the world and the gmail pages are still up at Google so.. The whole thing is not that impossible either.
 
It's still up & about claiming 1GB of storage...


But then again, so is the two headed ogre from Blizzard, so who knows...
 
This could be very interesting, but as several people on other forums have stated; to get relevent text ads for the side of your screen, they'd have to be looking at all that email you've amassed.
 
Well, it would be a good spam account, as you wouldn't have to worry too much about it going beyond your allotted storage capacity...

But I'd never use it as my primary email, but then again, I'd never use an ad based email as my primary...
 
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