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Gmail was the first one who planned on releasing e-mail with a big storage. I think Yahoo increased their space just to be competitive. Yahoo has already relased, Google still hasn't. There are also a lot of other companies imitating this strategy and already have relased e-mails with big storages.
When do you think Gmail will officially be released to everyone?
They are sending invites, to everyone as mentioned, and now they are giving THEM more invites. I just got 6 today.
Honestly, I think Gmail should stay this way, it's been a hellafun of a few months :)
Yet, you can log in on the same machine using a pre-existing gmail account just fine. Something about creating accounts is screwed up this morning.
I have sent out a couple dozen invites, most of them wouldn't have signed for Gmail. I explained Gmail to them and they are now glad to have Gmail. And email is such a hard thing to migrate. And given Yahoo is upto a fight, it needs more persuasion than just 1GB and search.
I think, they gonna just keep it invite-mode for a while, just to be a hard-to-get and mystic to folks. As long as they keep piling up the invites, everyone will invite their close friends, and it will keep growing exponentially for a while, not to mention preventing potential abuse (by signing up multiple emails and using for storage).
Invites are generating errors. Two people this morning I invited tried to register, got through the registration page, and now gmail won't load for them. Reason gmail gives is a "Server Error".
As I mentioned in another thread, I'm having the same problem. I set up my account last Thursday and it was working fine until yesterday afternoon. I haven't been able to access my account since then. Getting the "Server Error."
Emailed google about it and just got a response now saying they can't respond to all enquiries but they hope that I'm enjoying Google's approach to email. :)
Beth
ROFL! Yea, I bet you are enjoying it RIGHT now. ;)
Yes, the two new invites still can't login. I have gone to their machines, and logged into my gmail account on their machines. BTW, cookies, history, and sessions are cleared on all of our machines everytime a browser is shut down, machine is restarted, and machine is shutdown (part of security here). So it's not a cookie conflict or anything.
Here is the error we are getting (word for word mind you0:
"Server Error
Gmail is temporarily unavailable. Cross your fingers and try again in a few minutes. We're sorry for the inconvenience."
Funny that the names they chose are no longer available, but I never got the confirmation at my end that they signed up or accepted the invitation like it normally does. I still have 7 more invites, but am hesitant to send them to a couple of other people because if this doesn't get fixed the invites are essentially wasted.
Could be the invite and registration system is overloaded. I see that sellers on ebay are now offering invites by the THOUSANDS (which in turn increase things exponentially). There are, right now, 6590 auctions running for gmail.
This guy alone (btw he is violating ebay rules by having more than 10 auctions of the same item) is running over 600 auctions:
[cgi6.ebay.com...]
So I can't imagine what this is doing to the invite system.
ROFL! Yea, I bet you are enjoying it RIGHT now.
Yup. Sure is fun wondering if I've got any email up there that I can't access. ;)
However, looking at the bright side, at least I have an account set up. And I didn't have to buy it on eBay (was kindly given to me by another WW member).
Beth
A lot of people might be more willing to try a new service if it was recommended to them.
Interesting what Google might do with the invite tree they've developed and whether or not they'll try to cross promote that with orkut..
thanks.
Is there still many invites kicking around?
I'm getting bombarded with invites now - can't give them away fast enough - seems to me indicative of Google stepping up the roll-out?
TJ
No more requests please, I have now run out ;-)
Glad they all went to a good home though.
Thanks,
TJ
I run an email service and I have followed the email industry closely for many years.
Google has a great service on their hands, but they can not be entirely sure how it will evolve.
In 1999 Hotmail grew faster than expected and experiences a slowing down that made the service almost impossible to use. It took Hotmail more than 5 months to fix the problem.
Gmail could potentially get tens of millions or perhaps a hounded million users within a short timeframe.
Every email service I know of have experienced much more trouble than expected. Email is actually a very complicated service. Its very easy to set up a simple service, and very hard to develop a high quality service.
Right now Gmail is facing a number of scaling problems, with all the paralell issues going on at Google it does not surprise me that they are taking a cautionary approach to releasing the beast.
I dont know Google enough to estimate a release date, but I will not be surprised if they wait another 2-3-5-6 months.
Hans J Lysglimt
[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 3:05 pm (utc) on Sep. 12, 2004]
[edit reason] Abbreviated signature [/edit]
