Why doesn't Google release Gmail?

It would make them the #1 visited site in the world

[razinkane]

Where do people go on google.com?

google.com ~ 83%
images.google.com ~ 8%
gmail.google.com ~ 3%
news.google.com ~ 2%
groups-beta.google.com ~ 1%
directory.google.com ~ 1%
Other websites ~ 2% ~ 9%

Where do people go on msn.com?

hotmail.msn.com ~ 67%
search.msn.com ~ 7%
msn.com ~ 7%
members.msn.com ~ 2%
msnbc.msn.com ~ 2%
g.msn.com ~ 1%
sympatico.msn.ca ~ 1%
moneycentral.msn.com ~ 1%
runonce.msn.com ~ 1%
zone.msn.com ~ 1%
messenger.msn.com ~ 1%
entertainment.msn.com ~ 1%
my.msn.com ~ 1%
china.msn.com ~ 1%
Other websites ~ 6%

Where do people go on yahoo.com?

mail.yahoo.com ~ 40%
search.yahoo.com ~ 7%
news.yahoo.com ~ 4%
login.yahoo.com ~ 4%
yahoo.com ~ 4%
auctions.yahoo.com ~ 3%
hk.yahoo.com ~ 2%
club.yahoo.com ~ 2%
bid.yahoo.com ~ 2%
launch.yahoo.com ~ 2%
kids.yahoo.com ~ 2%
finance.yahoo.com ~ 2%
photos.yahoo.com ~ 1%
sports.yahoo.com ~ 1%
groups.yahoo.com ~ 1%
profiles.yahoo.com ~ 1%
store.yahoo.com ~ 1%
fantasysports.yahoo.com ~ 1%
personals.yahoo.com ~ 1%
my.yahoo.com ~ 1%
dir.yahoo.com ~ 1%
games.yahoo.com ~ 1%
webfile.yahoo.com ~ 1%
match.yahoo.com ~ 1%
rd.yahoo.com ~ 1%
messages.yahoo.com ~ 1%
dictionary.yahoo.com ~ 1%
stock.yahoo.com ~ 1%
address.yahoo.com ~ 1%
Other websites ~ 9%

[pmkpmk]

What's your source on these figures? Or are they your estimates?

[Brett_Tabke]

Alexa - only source of public traffic figures for the top 1k sites.

[pmkpmk]

... which are quite questionable, as numerous threads on WW have pointed out. Well, probably for the top-100 or top-200 sites they are more accurate, since the webmasters of these simply don't bother to to tweak them. But the lower you get on the Alexa ranking, the more irrelevant and manipulateable the results get. When I still used the toolbar (back, when I last used IE), my main site got an instant boost in Alexa. Since I use Firefox, it drops down again.

P.S. Just seeing that WW is #502 - so no offence meant :-)

[Clark]

They are waiting to add new features, waiting to offer a goodie to either offset bad news, downward stock movement, provide a boost to quarterly to surprise earnings. As a public company and PR specialist, they consider the timing of these events very closely, not just on how much bigger they can get today. And they love the aura of people wanting a gmail account and not being able to get one so easily.

[ciml]

pmkpmk, I think razinkane's point is that hotmail.msn.com and mail.yahoo.com provide a lot of traffic for their respective owners. The Alexa figures underline his point nicely.

.

The issue really is 'stickiness'. Personally, I think Google is pretty sticky as it is - for many people it has replaced bookmarks and even the typing of URLs into the browser.

But yes, public GMail would increase the average number of visits per day and if the advertising revenue can pay for all or most of the technology and support it would seem like a good move for Google.

All the dark fibre [webmasterworld.com] they've been buying would help, but they might need a lot more storage, too.

[pmkpmk]

I was reluctant to use GMail at first, but I became a convert when I was on a business trip last summer. Instead of setting up POP through firewalls or hooking my laptop up to my partner companies network, I simply launched a browser and voilá!

I never clicked on an ad displayed next to my mail though. Actually, there are almost no ads displayed at all with my ads! Maybe that's the point why they don't release it yet - the CTR is too low?

Does anybody know whether the released GMail would be invite-only as well? They probably don't get that much users that fast by invite-only, but it gives the system the touch of "exclusivity" which might attract certain people.

[edited by: rogerd at 4:43 pm (utc) on Jan. 28, 2005]

[Clark]

Oh, one other reason. They haven't finished reading all the email of the current users. They need more staff before they will be able to handle more users. ;)

[Imaster]

Oh, one other reason. They haven't finished reading all the email of the current users. They need more staff before they will be able to handle more users.

ROFLMOA

[pmkpmk]

Oh, that's why they're hiring [webmasterworld.com]. They must be desperate...

[oliver25]

Not only Gmail, I am sure there are many pleasant surprises coming from G soon....

~Oliver

[Imaster]

I think when MSN launches their new search engine officially, Google will launch/announce new services (like GMail) so as to counteract the MSN news. On the day MSN launched their beta (or was it techpreview) version, Google had announced its increase in index to 8 billion pages.

I just hope that Google cleans up the sandbox mess in trying to counterattack MSN Search. All ther webmasters will be tooo excited with the sandbox removal news, thus not paying much attention to the MS lauch.

[razinkane]

8 Billion plus pages and only a fraction are searchable, Anyone can make up a number, I'd like to see the 8 billion pages, Or at least the 16,000,000 plus results for my keyword phrase!

[walkman]

"8 Billion plus pages and only a fraction are searchable, Anyone can make up a number, I'd like to see the 8 billion pages, Or at least the 16,000,000 plus results for my keyword phrase! "

that 8 billion is one big fat joke. At least half are dupes or old pages.

[Rugles]

Google seems to keep a lot of things in Beta for a long time, like froogle for example. So the delay in gmail just goes with the game plan.

That list in the intitial post is interesting. I was surprised that finance.yahoo was so far down the list.

[bakedjake]

I was surprised that finance.yahoo was so far down the list.

Me too, honestly. So surprised that it makes me wonder if the Alexa data is suspect.

[razinkane]

[dvhardware.net...]
Some Gmail users have received more than 50 invitations to Gmail this week. This could mean that Google is planning to release Gmail, without needing to be invited first.
A Google spokesman confirmed Friday that some users of the service were getting an increased number of invitations, saying it was part of Google's continuing efforts to expand the service. The spokesman, however, wouldn't provide any information about when Google might bring Gmail out of its test phase into general release.