Google's Gmail To Offer 1GB E-mail Storage? 1082
tstoneman writes "Wow, according to the New York Times (free reg. req.), looks like Google is really trying to push the envelope by offering 1 GB free storage for e-mail users via a service called Gmail, still in the testing phase, so that users never need to change their e-mail address. In addition, they want to offer their searching capabilities so that users can search through their entire set of e-mail, I guess forever. CNET News also has more details." Update: 04/01 02:38 GMT by S : The Google site now has an official press release, naturally dated April 1st.
Wahooo (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wahooo (Score:5, Interesting)
Many a true word in jest. I do not know exactly how the system will work, but there is enormous potential for abuse. Actually, just personal storage of large amounts of data is probably the least of the concerns. One could imagine a warez or porn distribution system based on small requests to a controlling site that then uses mail fowarding to deliver the content (thus pushing the bulk of the storage and bandwidth costs onto gmail).
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wahooo (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wahooo (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wahooo (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wahooo (Score:5, Insightful)
It'll say a lot about the gullibility of the news media if this is indeed a joke...
Re:Wahooo (Score:5, Informative)
A quick whois shows that gmail.com is indeed registered under Google Inc.
The link in the press release http://gmail.google.com [google.com] doesn't work, but http://gmail.com [gmail.com] works. Also there is a Gmail FAQ [google.com] page.
Re:Wahooo (Score:5, Informative)
"'It's going to go down in history as one of the biggest pranks ever pulled,' wrote one message poster at Slashdot.org, which bills itself as a news provider for nerds."
Too bad they referred to you just as "one message poster" instead of LostCluster. I'd demand a correction.
Re:Wahooo (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wahooo (Score:4, Interesting)
Email from google (Score:5, Informative)
Hello,
Thank you for your feedback. Gmail uses completely automated
technology to give you search in your inbox, highly relevant ads, and
other useful information. Your comments will help us make improvements
to our email service and policies as Gmail evolves over the next
several months from a limited testing period to wider availability.
Sincerely,
The Gmail Team
Re:Wahooo (Score:4, Insightful)
Google is having problems. :( (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Wahooo (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wahooo (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Streamload does this (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Streamload does this (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Wahooo (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wahooo (Score:5, Interesting)
BTM
Re:Wahooo (Score:5, Funny)
In a corner office on Java Drive in Sunnyvale, CA, Dan Warmenhoven's head just exploded...
Re:Wahooo (Score:5, Interesting)
As soon as the service is out to the general public everyone on my contact list will be informed of my new email account.
Re:Wahooo (Score:5, Insightful)
We'll have guys writing p2p applications on top of this which let you automatically find the warez you need, then automatically trigger a forward from the mail account where the file is located. And the anonymity is so much easier because the files are being moved by someone else.
I'm going to take a guess (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you can anonymously browse other people's e-mail it's really not going to work. At best there would just be people advertising their accounts and people would have to manually (or submit a form) e-mail them a request.
At any rate, any system that attempts to whore out Google will be public and no doubt Google will squish such accounts pretty quickly and have no trouble getting the authorities to act on it. I had free anonymous FTP for awhile but since I have an obscure IP (more warez people fish popular IP ranges and don't bother to go to a web-site to see the big giant ad) I only had to report a couple people to their ISP for attempting to store warez on it.
I offer POP3 accounts with no storage limits but with a 15MB attachment limit and I expect e-mails to be pulled from the server. The idea of no storage limits is so that you don't go on vacation only to lose e-mails because your inbox got too full and so you can get large files back and forth easily. Not so you can use it as your own personal harddrive.
I think Google is really overselling this service and once it's all debugged they'll most likely offer something a bit more sane.
Or maybe their next goal is the best spam fighting engine on the planet and offering people insane amounts of space they'll never use is just a way to get people to drop everything else so they can start collecting more spam than AOL for analysis.
Until MyDoom came out and Cox blocked incomming port 25 on top of the already blocked outgoing port 25 I was running a spam can for that very purpose: get all the spam you can where you don't care and then use the info to preemptively block spam from your real inboxes.
Ben
Mail between Google accounts (Score:4, Insightful)
1000 GB == TB? (Score:5, Funny)
Hehe.
Re:1000 GB == TB? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually no, he's right. 1000Gb DOES == 1Tb. You probably have the decimal mutiples that hard drive manufacturers use mixed up with the binary multiples that everyone wishes they used. 1000 Gigabytes == 1 Terabyte. You're thinking of Mebibytes and Gibibytes. Try an RTFM here [nist.gov] and here [nist.gov].
woah (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:woah (Score:5, Funny)
And in unrelated news, Google has won a multi-billion dollar contract with NSA for its cooperation in setting up and maintaining an "information storage and retrieval facility" dedicated to national security and total information awareness purposes...
What day is it launching on? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What day is it launching on? (Score:3, Insightful)
--
No april fools jokes here. For real. [dealsites.net]
Re:What day is it launching on? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What day is it launching on? (Score:4, Informative)
Open the artcicle and press Ctrl or cmd f and search for the word gigabyte.
The article mentions maintaing email storage is as cost effective at $2 per gig.
The New York Times was an unwitting accomplice. The CNET article is very explicit in the claim though . . .cool.
Re:What day is it launching on? (Score:5, Interesting)
A radio station I know did that, by accident. They changed from top40 to disco one day (this was like 1993) for 12 hours. But then people started calling up with "Where's the disco?" and they had to change formats...
Re:What day is it launching on?-proof positive (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/gmail.html
Slashdotted - Google Cache is here (Score:5, Funny)
ok, I'll go mod myself down now....
Re:What day is it launching on? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is definitely not nearly as far off the deep-end as, say, PigeonRank [google.com], for example. It's not even really very funny. And it sounds a little outrageous, but not a lot. I'm 50-50 on the fence as the whether this is real or not. (It seems like it would be rare for NYTimes, Reuters, and CNet to all get suckered, for example.)
Gmail? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Gmail? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Gmail? (Score:5, Funny)
Google vs. spammers (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Google vs. spammers (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Google vs. spammers (Score:4, Funny)
Google is gettting ready, but for what? (Score:5, Insightful)
However, the email service sounds great. 1GB of space is incredible but I think I would like the ability to do a fast search through all of my stored email even more. Even though the article notes that 1GB per user will cost Google only about $2 to maintain (they didn't say if that was a annual cost or what), if they did get 100M users that would be pretty expensive! It makes you wonder if they don't have a tiered service in mind down the road. Of course, this will be "advertiser supported" so who knows how invasive that will or will not be when using their mail services.
Still, this all smacks of either "window dressing" for Wall Street, "war paint" for Microsoft, or, perhaps, both? Either way the users will be winners for a least a little while.
Happy Trails!
Erick
Re:Google is gettting ready, but for what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Google is gettting ready, but for what? (Score:5, Informative)
The number of users who will actually use that much storage is very small. I have a large email volume, plus SPAM, which I save (but filter into another folder with spamassassin). My email archive goes all the way back to 1997 and is still not much larger than 1GB. Even with SPAM, I think most users will take months or even years to reach a 150-200MB, much less 1GB.
And of course, it's very likely that Google will aggressively filter SPAM in the same way that Yahoo! or the others do.
Re:Google is gettting ready, but for what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Google is gettting ready, but for what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Google is gettting ready, but for what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Setting aside the posibilty that this is an April Fool's joke, (Although it does say March 31st on the story..) perhaps advertising is exactly what they're after. Instead of using disposable accounts, they make it so you never need to clean your mailbox again. That means you use Google as your mail client instead of whatever app you use. That means their ads are always up, etc.
I'm skeptical about this, really. But hey, it has the virtue of never having been tried. What kind of revenue can you get when you give somebody a low-cost service that makes them eyeball your site many times a day every day?
Re:Google is gettting ready, but for what? (Score:5, Insightful)
I resolved to purchase a domain and collect all mails to the domain (catch-all), leaning how bad that was, I now have only a few allowed. My main one get more spam every week and I know that one day I will have to leave it too, at least for another on the same domain.
Thinking that Google will be a permanent solution is a little short sighted, the only way you can assure a permanent address which you can control is to purchase a domain, and even then you may still have to move one day. (I'll gladly use my 1 GB though.)
Is this an April Fool's joke? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is this an April Fool's joke? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job.html [google.com]
cross your fingers (Score:3, Interesting)
1GB of Storage vs. Changing E-mail Address? (Score:5, Insightful)
It might allow you to keep many more e-mails than possible with yahoo or hotmail, but how will this allow me to never change my e-mail again?
Another email address that will never change! (Score:5, Insightful)
So after netscape.net, hotmail.com, yahoo.com, real.net I will have a google.com address which will never need to be changed!
I already have a lot of them you know
Edwin
Binaries? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's about time (Score:5, Insightful)
Well there is a real difference (Score:5, Insightful)
Because when you implement a consumer level storage solution, the drive is your entire cost. You buy it, store data, and our happy. That's not the case with our UNIX storage. First, it is Sun hardware so more expensive anyhow. Second, it is all SCSI RAID-5 with a hot spare, more expensive disks and 2 of them wasted space. Finally, it's all backed up. Nightly, tapes rotated weekly, with monthly trips to a secure offsite vault.
It's not so cheap to implement sotrage of that level. To expand it requires not getting another disk, but getting more disks, hardware to hold those disks, a tape backup unit capable of backing up ALL the storage in one shot, tapes to hold those backups, and space in the storage facility (we actually get that last one for free).
We don't just get to drive to CompUSA, drop $200 and boost the disk space. It takes thousands of dollars, not to mention staff time spent planning and implementing the changeover to result in no loss of service or data. Because of this, it is expected that when we put a solution into place, it will last a number of years. We are currently upgrading it, but that'll be the last time for a minimum of 3 years.
There are compenstaions though. Users expect, correctly, that if they accidently delete a file, we will be able to recover a copy only 1 day old. They expect that if a disk fails, there will be no interruption to their work. They expect that even if the building were destroyed, their data would survive. This is all correct, but all expensive.
This is also what is offered by most online webhosts and the like. They aren't whacking single IDE drives in their servers and hoping that they survive. They run some kind of RAID setup with regular backups. That costs a good deal more money.
There is also the problem that high storage most often infers high bandwidth. For a long time I had about 5MB stored on my website. Not supprisingly, I used less than 500MB/month. I then had more to store, and now use about 500MB. If I provided only my website to transfer the files, I'd exceed my 21GB/month quota, I have two other servers that combined tend to do around 30GB/month. What I offer would be considered low demand files (OGG soundtracks for the old iD (Doom/Doom2) and Raven (Heretic/Hexen) games.
Bandwidth is expensive, and companies need to turn a profit. They also don't want to risk lawsuits over lost data.
I'd shut up if I were you (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, and take a real quick guess as to what we are implementing as our new disk solution. Hint: It has three letters and rhymes with LAN.
Get off your high horse (and get an account, you high and might AC trolls are just dumb) and get a clue. That I mentioned that staff time is one of the costs of an enterprise storage upgrade (it is) does not imply that the staff spends all their time on it. However time I spend on that is time I do not spend rebuilding a system, configuring a sniffer to catch the latest virus, or explaining to a user for the 50th time why not to open an unknown attachment. It is not the major cost of the storage upgrade, but it IS a cost.
By the way, I'm the Windows guy mostly. However storage effects the Windows side too and I'm not such a one-sided tech guy that I also don't understand and work on the UNIX side as well. I simply mention our UNIX storage since it is the reliable part. The storage on the Windows servers is not as reliable. It's RAID 5, but not backed up. The UNIX storage is mapped on Windows domain accounts and users are instructed to use it for important storage.
This would be because our implementation is old, probably older than your company. Our univeristy got in on this shit a LONG time ago. We had a network (albeit a shitty one) when ethernet wasn't even a draft. It used to be UNIX or fuck off in terms of deparment provided systems. There is still a legacy there. We now have extensive Windows support (about 3:1 Windows:UNIX systems) but the reliable big iron remains the UNIX servers. We have, as of yet, not moved to a SAN. Being a university department and therefore of limited funds shapes this as well.
Oh, and it's not like the UNIX system in question just holds disks. It also runs several apps that are too heavy for our Sunblade or shell servers to handle. This isn't a little Ultra-5 with an array attached, it's the heavy duty mini-computer.
PERFERCT! (Score:4, Funny)
Wait...froogle already lets me do that
This could be a Good Monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
then, if they implement a good spam filter, including the ability to cross-reference all their users reported spam or similar titled emails, then they could effectively eliminate non-POP spam.
of course their popularity will make them a huge target of spammers' attention, but I have more faith in Google's abilities than I do in the spammers'.
Other links (Score:4, Informative)
MSNBC Article [msn.com]
I killed your bunny and put it's head on a pike (Score:5, Funny)
(^.^)
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The article (Score:3, Informative)
The new service, to be named Gmail, is scheduled to be released on Thursday, according to people involved with the plan. It will be "soft launched," they said, in a manner that Google has followed with other features that it has added to its Web site, with little fanfare and initially presented as a long-running test.
E-mail has become a crucial weapon in the competition to win the allegiance of Internet users, who often turn to one or two Web sites as the foundation of their online activities.
As Microsoft's MSN and Yahoo are preparing to attack Google's role as the first place most people turn to carry out an Internet search, Google is hoping to counter those assaults by moving onto the turf its competitors have already claimed in providing e-mail services as part of their portals.
Google is starting far behind Microsoft, which claims 170 million active users for its Hotmail service, America Online and Yahoo. But Google, based in Mountain View, Calif., is planning to play on its information search strength to compete with the existing services.
Google will offer consumers better access to searching their own e-mail and could well upset the industry balance by offering free access to services that previously were only available by paying a monthly subscription fee.
The standard industry practice is to offer tiered mail services, providing only limited storage for free and charging higher fees to users who want to preserve larger numbers of e-mail messages. Google, by contrast, is planning a service to be supported by advertising that will permit its users to store very large amounts of mail at no cost.
One internal Google study put the operational cost of maintaining electronic mail storage at less than $2 per gigabyte.
In recent weeks, Google has picked up the pace of updating and adding new features to its basic search service, as part of its effort to position itself as a strong business ready to sell shares to investors in what is expected to be the most popular initial public offering by a Silicon Valley company in years.
Early this week, for example, Google polished its appearance, making the company's array of services more accessible. The company also moved its Froogle catalog shopping search engine into a more prominent position on the first page of the Google Web site.
Google has been closely watched in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street during the past year for any indication about its plans for an initial public stock offering. The company has steadfastly declined to respond to speculation.
Its chief executive, Eric Schmidt, told The Wall Street Journal this week that the company was exploring many options, but he explained at a recent industry conference that Google does not necessarily need to move forward on an offering any time soon.
Google's entry into the e-mail business will sharpen the lines between the major competing portals like Yahoo and MSN and Internet service providers like AOL and Earthlink. Google recently lost its position as search provider for Yahoo, which has turned to a company it acquired, Overture, to take advantage of the growing amounts of advertising revenue available on search pages.
To date, Google has maintained a strong relationship with AOL. But as it enters a business that competes directly with one of America Online's core offerings, it could find that AOL, like Yahoo, begins to view Google as a more direct competitor.
Microsoft has also dramatically increased the importance of building its own capability to offer search services of its own. The company has been showing a range of features that it hopes will make its MSN service more of a draw to Web users who rely on search engines as starting points for finding information and services on the Inter
Unlimited attatchment size? (Score:3, Insightful)
The sad thing is, the people who would exploit Google's offering will also be whining when the service has to be terminated or severely restricted because of their abusive behavior.
As always, there's probably more to the story - time will tell.
Matt Fahrenbacher
$2.00 a gigabyte? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yup, heard that right.
Re:$2.00 a gigabyte? (Score:4, Informative)
source [mac.com]
Everyone should have their own domain name (Score:3, Interesting)
I registered my first domain name after my ISP was down for a week and none of my clients could email me.
If you have your own domain, and the hosting service tanks, you can sign up with a different host and have the DNS switched over in a couple days. But if your email address is at someone else's domain, you're out of luck if they go down.
I'm glad I established my own domain when I did. I kept my old ISP even when I moved away, so I could get the odd email from people who didn't know my new one. One day, though, the national ISP that bought them out shut my old ISP down entirely, taking out the email addresses for a substantial portion of Santa Cruz, California's population.
I think each individual person on the planet should have their own domain name.
searching email rocks (Score:3, Informative)
Joke? Or Not? (Score:3, Interesting)
It's no lie.... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.gmail.com/ [gmail.com]
Re:It's no lie.... (Score:5, Informative)
wayback [archive.org] has some listings for gmail.com, but it's been blocked with a Robots.txt. I wonder what the history of the gmail.com domain is and if someone made some cash selling it to google?
Re:It's no lie.... (Score:5, Informative)
I dunno (Score:5, Interesting)
"Well Mr. Jones, it seems as though you're awfully interested in increasing your penis size for some pre-teen lolitas.. What do you have to say for yourself?"
Re:I dunno (Score:4, Insightful)
In fact, Google having it might be better - if word gets out that they're letting the government read people's email, they'll lose the audience for those ads they'll be selling.
However, since no one is selling ads to Evolution on my deesktop, a search warrant doesn't kill marketing dollars for anyone.
Re:I dunno (Score:4, Funny)
"Well Mr. Jones, it seems as though you're awfully interested in increasing your penis size for some pre-teen lolitas.. What do you have to say for yourself?"
Guilty as charged? I do love them pre-teen lolitas... oh wait a minute!
Seriously though, if you are worried about email being evidence against you later down the road, DELETE IT! And if that isn't enough, what the hell are you doing sending sensitive info over non-encrypted email? I mean if it is that big of a deal, the evil gov't will just take your home email server and re-create the disks anyhow, so what is your point?
What's really interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
Name for service (Score:5, Funny)
1 GB (Score:5, Funny)
Beware too much data concentrated (Score:5, Interesting)
With all due respect to Google, and god knows they're one of the few companies that seems to get "it" right, what with uncluttered interfaces, unbiased services, and unobtrusive text ads -- Google also records the IP address along with the search terms of every search.
Anytime you've Googled on "anime tentacle rape", "venereal disease STD symptom", "P2P download", "closeted gay", "arguments for atheism" or "overthrow government", Google has recorded your computer's IP address and has tried to set a cookie in your browser. To Google's credit, the search still works even if you don't accept the cookie; but Google is keeping the IP and search term log -- forever.
After just a few hundred searches, you don't need to be a Kreskin [amazingkreskin.com] to do a little data-mining and get a good idea of a user's interests, proclivities, and possible "deviancy" from his search terms.
My fear then, is this: will you be the only one who can search through your database of email, "I guess forever"? Or will Google be able to search it too. Or even if they lock themselves out of search or reading your email directly, will Google, as they do now for web searches, keep a log of the searches you make on your own email?
Again, you can tell a lot about someone if you have a list of all his Google searches, but you can probably learn even more and more immediate information if you have a list of his searches through his email.
Remember the "Halloween X" email recently released, from Mike Anderer to SCO about Anderer's attempts to raise money on SCO's behalf? Imagine if Anderer had been searching for that email before -- or after -- the release of the "Halloween X" letter; I suspect you could learn even more juicy details by seeing what search terms he used?
What if Richard Clarke and Condaleeza Rice has stored their emails in Google GMail? Of course, the government wouldn't store email in GMail -- but imagine if the people in analogous positions in your company did -- say the head of security and her deputies? Could Google learn much about your company's financial dealings from the search terms they used to review their mail?
What if you stored and looked for emails regarding your company's Non-Disclosure Agreement or upcoming patent for some new technology? Could a competitor glean import information just from your search terms?
If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, are you still answering "yes" to wanting to try out GMail for yourself?
It's simple: too much information concentrated into any one set of hands -- even hands as apparently benign as Google's -- invites abuse or -- even if Google never bends to that temptation -- tempts others to steal that data.
Re:Beware too much data concentrated (Score:5, Interesting)
Pfffft! AOL had 40GB e-mail storage...in 1994! (Score:5, Interesting)
Each AOL account could have up to five screen names. Each screen name could have up to 550 e-mails* in their Inbox. Each e-mail could have a maximum file attachment of 15MB.
So...15MB times 550 is 8GB times 5 is about 40GB. That's per account, and thanks to the various account generation/phishing tricks, it wasn't uncommon to have several AOL accounts at any one time.
What did this mean? Well, it meant that AOL became one of the biggest warez havens in the blossoming Internet. And all with point and click easy, none of the file decoding nonsense of USENET.
How did AOL do this? I have no idea...but there were entire groups of people uploading warez non-stop so they could forward the mails around. At some point AOL cracked wise and started nuking attachments that had been downloaded X times. But for many years, it was glorious. Imagine sending several GB of software to someone with a single click of a button.
* actually you could have 550 in both Inbox, Outbox, and Read mail and various AOL tools helped you do this, bringing your capacity to a whopping 120GB.
- JoeShmoe
.
I love Google to bits, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Google search = providing me with other people's stuff. Google mail = potentially providing other people with my stuff.
Paranoia (Score:5, Interesting)
The following has no evidence to back it and is idle speculation.
Could such moves lead to an attempt to shut down the distributed email system as we know it? Consider the following scenario:
Complete paranoia, but the cynic in me says 'what if'?
just one request (Score:5, Funny)
i love you. please listen.
please allow for pop and imap connections to your new web mail.
i love you baby, but you have to do this if you want to keep me.
sincerely,
your smiley face,
Lirpa Sloof (Score:5, Interesting)
All of their other press releases [google.com] are simply dated, without the timezone...
Hmmm.. That's odd. Wonder why?
Road to piracy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Those of you who are familar with AOL back in the early days found their large capacity email to be a haven for piracy. Large file attachments that once initially uploaded, could be forwarded and shared with hundreds of people in seconds, once recieved, it could be forwarded again to yet even more people. All without the delay of re-uploading, nor even having to download the complete file.
I hope that Google has something up their sleave to preemptively nullify this problem before it starts. I used to make entertainment software for PC's and eventually had to disolve the S-Corp due to dwindling sales lost to piracy. The above mentioned method the result of...
Possible solutions would be to limit the size of attachments. Possible disallow forwarding attachments greater than 50MB. Dunno, just hope this is just paranoia talking and not an omen commanded by my Rice Krispies.
privacy? (Score:5, Interesting)
talk about a profiler's goldmine. don't tell me any of you believe google (a for-profit company) wouldn't scan every last email for "marketing" reasons?
peace
You are all individuals... (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot: "We are all individuals. Now, about a gig of email."
Google: "It's just a joke. April's Fools? It's April, you're fools."
Slashdot: "I do not think you have properly examined all the possible avenues for abuse--"
Google: "IT'S A JOKE. IT'S A FUCKING JOKE. DO YOU NOT HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR?"
Slashdot: "--where someone can use this tremendous amount of space for genera file storage in an attempt--"
Google: "Joke. Wokka wokka? Hey, look, SCO is threatening IP litigation!"
Slashdot: "--to,WHAT? Where? Quickly, man your posts..."
History of Google April Fool's jokes (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.google.com/mentalplex/ [google.com]
2002 - PigeonRank
http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html [google.com]
[shrug] It sounds like a Google AF joke to me, but it seems like it'd be a bad idea for Google to mock free e-mail when it would be a good idea for Google to get into that (even if it wasn't a gig worth of space). If it's a joke, then it's almost like they're saying, "Haha, free e-mail. Riiiiiiiiight."
As far as bandwidth and space are concerned, think about it... they have 4 billion web pages cached. How big's a web page? 4 KB? Not even including images, that's a lot of hard drive space. And bandwidth goes without saying.
Of course, they probably want attention. They got it. But Google gets attention for pretty much anything [userfriendly.org].
Today's REAL April Fool's joke: (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job.html
Heh. "Massively parallel lava lamps".
GMail's Ts and Cs (Score:4, Informative)
Gmail Program Policies
To uphold the quality and reputation of Google Gmail, your use of Gmail is subject to these program policies. If you are found to be in violation of our policies at any time, as determined by Google in its sole discretion, we may warn you or suspend or terminate your account.
Please note that we may change our policies at any time, and pursuant to our Terms of Use, it is your responsibility to keep up-to-date with and adhere to the policies posted here.
Prohibited Actions
In addition to (and/or as some examples of) the violations described in Section 3 of the Terms of Use, users may not:
Generate or facilitate unsolicited commercial email ("spam"). Such activity includes, but is not limited to
sending email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act or any other applicable anti-spam law
imitating or impersonating another person or his, her or its email address, or creating false accounts for the purpose of sending spam
data mining any web property (including Google) to find email addresses
sending unauthorized mail via open, third-party servers
sending emails to users who have requested to be removed from a mailing list
selling, exchanging or distributing to a third party the email addresses of any person without such person's knowing and continued consent to such disclosure
sending unsolicited emails to significant numbers of email addresses belonging to individuals and/or entities with whom you have no preexisting relationship
Send, upload, distribute or disseminate or offer to do the same with respect to any unlawful, defamatory, harassing, abusive, fraudulent, infringing, obscene, or otherwise objectionable content
Intentionally distribute viruses, worms, defects, Trojan horses, corrupted files, hoaxes, or any other items of a destructive or deceptive nature
Conduct or forward pyramid schemes and the like
Transmit content that may be harmful to minors
Impersonate another person (via the use of an email address or otherwise) or otherwise misrepresent yourself or the source of any email
Illegally transmit another's intellectual property or other proprietary information without such owner's or licensor's permission
Use Gmail to violate the legal rights (such as rights of privacy and publicity) of others
Promote or encourage illegal activity
Interfere with other Gmail users' enjoyment of the Service
Create multiple user accounts or create user accounts by automated means or under false or fraudulent pretenses
Modify, adapt, translate, or reverse engineer any portion of the Gmail Service
Remove any copyright, trademark or other proprietary rights notices contained in or on the Gmail Service
Reformat or frame any portion of the web pages that are part of the Gmail Service
Use the Gmail Service in connection with illegal peer-to-peer file sharing
Security
You must promptly notify Google of any breach of security related to the Services, including but not limited to unauthorized use of your password or account. To help ensure the security of your password or account, please sign out from your account at the end of each session.
Account Inactivity
Google will terminate your account in accordance with Section 9 of the Terms of Use if you fail to login to your account for a period of nine months
This doesn't seem like a joke (Score:5, Informative)
They might have used this special date to gain extra PR from the confusion about it, however I doubt it's a joke.
How they could do a gigabyte per user (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at all of the email that is duplicated, especially spam and mailing lists. Store one copy, hash it to a unique key somehow, and only store the key in the user's mail directory.
This same technology could be used to detect and eliminate spam -- even if spammers randomly generate bits of the message. The report spam button will generate a case history of spam patterns and deal with it. Idiots, of course, report spam falsely, so a reputation index can be learned through past behavior to weight the legitimacy of the reports and to minimize abuse.
I think it's real. Let's see. I'm going to be co-workers real money it's real, so it better be!
Bad sign (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:http://gmail.com/ (Score:5, Interesting)
Registrant:
Google Inc.
(DOM-425410)
2400 E. Bayshore Pkwy Mountain View
CA
94043 US
Domain Name: gmail.com
Created on..............: 1995-Aug-13.
Expires on..............: 2006-Aug-12.
Record last updated on..: 2004-Mar-31 16:50:22.
Either that or NetSol's in on the joke...
Re:http://www.gmail.com/ Full NiC Record (Score:5, Informative)
Registrant:
Google Inc.
(DOM-425410)
2400 E. Bayshore Pkwy Mountain View
CA
94043 US
Domain Name: gmail.com
Registrar Name: Alldomains.com
Registrar Whois: whois.alldomains.com
Registrar Homepage: http://www.alldomains.com
Administrative Contact:
DNS Admin
(NIC-1467103)
Google Inc.
2400 E. Bayshore Pkwy Mountain View
CA
94043 US
dns-admin@google.com +1.6503300100 Fax- +1.6506188571
Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
DNS Admin
(NIC-1467103)
Google Inc.
2400 E. Bayshore Pkwy Mountain View
CA
94043 US
dns-admin@google.com +1.6503300100 Fax- +1.6506188571
Created on.: 1995-Aug-13.
Expires on: 2006-Aug-12.
Record last updated on..: 2004-Mar-31 16:50:22.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.GOOGLE.COM 216.239.32.10
NS2.GOOGLE.COM 216.239.34.10
NS3.GOOGLE.COM 216.239.36.10
NS4.GOOGLE.COM 216.239.38.10
Alldomains.com - The Leader in Corporate Domain Management
Re:Spam Storage (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Google Adwords (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because the ad a mail provider shows you is unrelated to words in your email doesn't mean they aren't "watching" you or invading your privacy in any way.
Adwords by themselves imply nothing relating to personal privacy.
Re:Dear Google (Score:5, Insightful)
Google is huge.
And yet still, every piece of the puzzle is simple as can be. Google realizes that each piece is its own piece and should be used independantly of the others without sucking the user to a page he didn't intend to visit.
What's the primary complain about computers second to "It doesn't work?" "It takes up so much time!" Who wants to visit a website which requires drudging through links, ads and banners to do what you want? People want a simple interface and want to get their task done.
To illustrate the point: on Yahoo, you'll see distractions and clutter attempting to get you to spend more time at their website and use more of their utilities. Most people are annoyed by this. On Google, you won't find link upon link cluttering up the page trying to get you to go elsewhere. You won't find animated ads. You won't find banners. On the other hand, you WILL find what you need -- in a search or otherwise.
Google shoots for a great user experience -- and users come back. Google focuses on quality of product, not quality of marketing.
There's no reason that something this big can't be great. With the right management and the right motives, as Google has had on their very long journey thus far, this can work. These types of successes don't happen often, but Google is already a long way down that path and doesn't appear to be wandering off of it.
Cheers