GMail (Google Mail)

[George L]

What's funny is this simple April Fools joke drove MS and Yahoo stock down.

haven't read the whole thread... but it's good marketing strategy to announce such a product launch on Aprils fools hehe

anyway drive space is getting cheaper by the megabytes these days hehe

[Cloud Strife]

What's all this about?

https://gmail.google.com/gmail/html/april.html

One of the 'G' devs/devs women's birthday?

Hmmm... Starting to sound alittle suspect now... But why would they drag an April Fools day joke on for so long if it really is one??

[DWZ]

From what I know beta testers have already been chosen. I'm not sure where they got their list from, but as far as I know, the public were not given an opportunity to sign up.

Although I have not read Google's GMail terms and conditions nor privacy policy, it is my understanding that the Google mail service keeps no information about who you are, what emails you are reading nor sends you "targeted" emails/spam.

When you read an email, it simply scans it for keywords and then finds ads in the Google AdSense database. It's no different from when you type in something in the Google search box, or when you visit a website that uses Google AdSense banner ads on it.

This is highlighted in King's screenshot. You see in the email they talk about datacenters, and as you see on the side, the ads are regarding datacenters/hosting.

I personally have no problems with a computer program running a quick scan of my email for keywords then putting ads on the side of my screen. I would prefer small text ads on the side of the screen with ads of something I could quite possibly interested in rather then huge annoying flashing banners as you may see on Hotmail or Yahoo which has nothing to do with your interests.

EDIT: http://gmail.google.com/gmail/help/about.html#ads

[Kings]

Screenshot: http://www.shellen.com/gallery/gmail_expanded.gif (looks pretty good)

[ajaspers]

How did you get an account?

[Bema Jinn]

Hmm. looks too yahoo-ish for me.

[Chris Gwynne]

Hmm. looks too yahoo-ish for me.

Yahoo! Mail's GUI is totally different from GMail, how do you make that comparison?

[Cloud Strife]

haven't read the whole thread... but it's good marketing strategy to announce such a product launch on Aprils fools hehe

anyway drive space is getting cheaper by the megabytes these days hehe

Yeah, hotmail are way too stingy with the 2 or 3 Mb that they offer...You have to check your emails every day otherwise you might not recieve new ones if you exceed your storage. Thats why I switched to fusemail, but then they started charging now, so i'm accessing hotmail through POP3 using hotmail popper.

Cloud

[sabret00the]

they are but they're allowed to be, most people who buy a computer out the box, the first page they're taken to when they get online is msn.com/co.uk and from theri you're allowed mail, they exploit lazyness and do it really really well.

however as waynes been trying to stress whether they're crawling keywords or not we all know that they like to cache stuff. imo their just isn't no privacy and to target ads based on your private conversations is just wrong. to put it into context, imagine talking on an instant messenger, you mention the world "sex" and then some ads pop up saying "cheap condoms click here" another saying "viagra click here" and then another saying "hotels here" it's just not right.

[someuser190826]

I have signed up for more information, but would like to know if there is any other way of submitting my application for the GMAIL beta?

[ManagerJosh]

Finding someone who works for Google's GMail department

Now all Google needs is POP/SMTP access and they are gonna rule
I rather have only 500MB of account space and be able to use POP/SMTP

[Shining Arcanine]

haven't read the whole thread... but it's good marketing strategy to announce such a product launch on Aprils fools hehe

anyway drive space is getting cheaper by the megabytes these days hehe

It was announced on the 31st and from what I understand, Google has said it was coming before then.

[Chen]

It was announced on the 31st and from what I understand, Google has said it was coming before then.

Only a few hours before April 1st around the world... still a great timing. They probably didn't want to announce it on April 1st so people know it's not a joke, but how many actually knew exactly when it was announced?

[Floris]

TheRegister!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/36778.html

[Ksilebo]

I guess this would be useful as a backup mail account. Such as getting newsletters and signing up for websites and the like. No actual important use, thats what my dedicated server and ISP are for.