GMail - Google's 1gb free mail
 

April Fools or two fingers to Competition?

Google made a press release saying they are going to offer email services in competition with Yahoo et al.

Including:
1 gig of space (250 times more space in Yahoo)
Searchable Database - rather than filing system
Contextual Ads (ad words)

Now...
The press release looks like a piss take alright but if real this could be a stroke of genius....

They say they will filter all mail basedon content and allow you to 'search' your mail on themes base rather than having folder.
If they do that - they will be able to deliver sooo many Targeted Ads to users' browsers.

"Gmail makes using email faster and more efficient by eliminating the need to file messages into folders, and by automatically organizing individual emails into meaningful "conversations" that show messages in the context of all the replies sent in response to them. And it turns annoying spam e-mail messages into the equivalent of canned meat."

What do you think?

http://gmail.google.com
Press Release

+ most news sites

Re: GMail - Google's 1gb free mail
 

Well, an April Fool's joke should have some hint somewhere that your leg is being pulled. And aside from the 1 Gig (!) of free (!) storage per user, nothing on their FAQ page looks other than totally legit to me.

I guess we'll have to wait and see if it's all still up tomorrow. ;)

Google says "Gmail" is no joke, but lunar jobs are


Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

to be honest i think its legit

Its an awsome, cool stunt against their competitors if it is true!

MSN gets 33% of its traffic to Hotmail.msn.com - clearly they (g)are going out of their way to shaft their opposition by a long shot and massively expand their real estate for paid ads.

Assuming its true... it will be interesting to see how they get round the mail filtering/spidering which they propose as a means of serving Targeted Ads.
Impressive all the same :)

Damn! And I already sent in my resume.|sad|

It is real - it's a part of their new "personalize your search experience" program.
They now have a way for surfers to set up their own search preferences using a slider tool, which also will scan their email to look for their search preferences so that they will be presented with the best search results for that individual user

Imagine the problems trying to optimize now since every individual will get different search results based on their email and browser preferences

I read about it last week sometime on techtv. And then I saw it on techtv later :) I just hate anyone telling me what is spam and what isn't. I would rather decide for myself.

mail spam filters will be interesting - no folders at all !?

You'll still be able to optimise ok for google - even with the personalised results, its just relying more and more on Themes and linking patterns.

How do you think Yahoo & MSN will React to to this?

The Gmail beta site is at:
https://gmail.google.com

is it being publicized yet? I just typed it in