GMAIL : Google Planning to Roll Out E-Mail Service

Gmail

[Mohamed_E]

Have I missed this NY Times story somewhere else on the site?

Google Planning to Roll Out E-Mail Service [nytimes.com]

[biz.yahoo.com...]

[mercurynews.com...]

[wired.com...]

[gmail.google.com...]

[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 3:55 am (utc) on April 1, 2004]
[edit reason] added links [/edit]

[edit_g]

Sans registration: [news.com.com...]

Smooth move from the big G. How long can they keep up the 1 gigabyte of storage though?

<edit>just occured to me to look at the date...

[edit_g]

Yeah, I'm thinking april fools:

Google press release:
[google.com...]

Speed: 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.

[blaze]

They'd have to be hacked.

Interestingly, [gmail.google.com...] doesn't resolve to anything. Can anyone else get it going?

Still, they probably do have wild compression technologies..

[sdani]

Its definitely for April Fools Day. The date on the release is April 1. If it was not for April fools day, they would never release a news article one day before the date mentioned on the release.

[sdani]

I am surprised on the two reporters, who are very quick to report it as news.

[Mohamed_E]

Interestingly, gmail.google.com doesn't resolve to anything. Can anyone else get it going?

No problem reaching it; love the Gmail logo!

Once you reach it, though, all it says is "Coming Soon".

[sdani]

No.. Google will not loose their credibility. They have given a link for their gmail, which takes you to the google directory. The news reporters should have clicked on that link and if they had clicked and read the date of the release, they would have understood it.

[Visit Thailand]

I think you would find newswires and most publications hate April 1st as some things sent in are obviously a prank and others not. Nasty but fun day!

[sdani]

They just put this GMAIL logo .. till few minutes ago, it was resolving to directory page.

[mack]

I dont think it's a hoax.. they also have gmail.com :)

if you go to gmail.google.com they have a gmail logo with the words "by google beta"

and bellow that "coming soon"

Mack.

[blaze]

Sending false information to businesswire.com is against TOS. You lose your account and ability to do future press releases.

My bet is that this is either legit or done by a loose cannon / hacker.

[sdani]

IF, with a big IF, they are launching this email service.. then it is basically a response to yahoo. They clearly mention 4 MB quota provided by competitors.. so I guess it is yahoo, noone else.
Dell started selling printers not to make money, but to take away HP's market share in their monet making business of printers so that HP can concentrate less on computers. Were they suvessful? Will Google Email be as successful as Yahoo email?

[mack]

I dont think this can be a joke... main reason being it isn't funny.

:)

Mack.

[sdani]

Why would they release a press release and provide a url in that which is not working yet? I would assume that the URL provided in a press release would atleast give the FAQ information..
Anyway - I am convinced that it is not real and am not changing my mind again.

[edit_g]

Millions of M&Ms later, Gmail was born.

Come on. They're not stupid - a half decent PR hack would never release something so big, or written in such a relaxed style, on April 1st.

[mack]

well for the domain name www.gmail.com

53.239.216.IN-ADDR.ARPA86368 INNSns4.google.com
53.239.216.IN-ADDR.ARPA86368 INNSns1.google.com
53.239.216.IN-ADDR.ARPA86368 INNSns2.google.com
53.239.216.IN-ADDR.ARPA86368 INNSns3.google.com

Mack.

[edit_g]

It only costs $10 to register a domain...

[blaze]

Given a large enough compression index, it is possible to achieve up to 1:10 and even better compression ratios.

Considering that Google handles all those cached pages, one would assume they have some pretty good compression/decompression abilities.

At about 2$ / Gigabyte, that comes to about 20 cents a user. They could buy themselves ten million users for 2 million dollars (space wise, all else being equal).

Given that alexa says that 74% of msn.com's traffic is hotmail.msn.com and 39% of yahoo's traffic is mail.yahoo.com, I believe this is a legitimate (and necessary!) move on Google's part.

[edited by: blaze at 2:01 am (utc) on April 1, 2004]

[mack]

plus adwords in email that are targeted to the text :)

Mack.

[blaze]

Bingo! That kind of finalizes the arguments.

I posted some links to patents, but apparently they do not belong to Google..

[appft1.uspto.gov...]

[webmasterworld.com...]

[edited by: blaze at 2:11 am (utc) on April 1, 2004]

[agerhart]

I'm with you Mack.....if its an April Fools joke, its a really lame one.

[markus007]

Google is testing adsense on email, why pay others money when you can make it yourself?

Also i think everyone underestimates just how much money google is making off adsense. I know several companies doing over a million a year. Googles grand vision seems to be to control/moniterize all information on the web, this is just another step to take them closer to that. If it is real that is...

[mack]

well lets hope the email addresses are @gmail.com as oposed to @google.com

Just think of the scamms people would dream up if they had an @google.com email address...

[e-mail] telling you, you are spamming by using keyword X when really it's the site owner behind you in the serps.

Mack.

[Mardi_Gras]

If it is an April Fool's joke, it isn't very funny. If it isn't, they don't really seem prepared to roll anything out.

I don't get it.

[mack]

I like the sound of this. This could be very big.

Currently email is a mess, there need to be massive changes put in place to make email usable again. If Google are going to introduce new tech then lets hope it is a step towards a new protocol.

We need to get rid of the spammers for once and for all, lets nope this is a step in the right direction.

Mack.

[Visit Thailand]

I do not see why a company such as G would release such big news on April 1st could it not have waited till the 2nd.

I think most major corporate announcements would not be made April Fools Day - unless they wanted loads of people to debate whether it was genuine or not.

[Brett_Tabke]

It is still a few hours to the first here. If this is an April fools joke - they are several hours ahead.

I just can't imagine they would destroy their credibility by rolling out such a self parody. It would mostly ruin any chance they ever had of launching a real service.

However, the timing is extremely suspect.

If it is a joke, it is extremly poor taste.

[mack]

Yep but any announcement that goes out on the 1st will get this sort of attention.

all this hype is good for Google.

It it / Isn't it

Mack.

[your_store]

I agree that it has to be a joke. Would Sergey and Brin really want to be quoted in a press release as saying "Heck Yeah"?

Oh well, at least pigeon rank was funny for a few minutes.