gmail - 1 gigabyte Google email account

I'm "publicizing" this on F-Chat so those of us who'd like to have a huge email capacity (can you imagine the net-based picture storage possibilities?) can get some half-decent account names when the time comes. I know I don't want to be the 437th person to choose a nic.

Google rolled this out to 1,000 test users yesterday - it will likely be available to John and Joan Q. Public in next 1-3 months. That said, I, John Q. Public, signed up yesterday.

Interested in an account?

 

Yes, I noticed that as well, and felt it best to have someone else, a fair and balanced observer such as yourself (I'm fair and balanced, alright - but, I'm also the initiator of the topic, and therefore, the initial agitator - not that I'm "agitated" by your observations by any stretch of the imagination) mention the possible downside. Presumably, they're still working on it so amongst other things, it doesn't invade the privacy itself. As for advertising in and of itself, If I send an email to someone via lycos and get a reply, sometimes the message footer will contain advertising, such as this one I got from our fearless leader, Rob Lay:

Enter now for a chance to win a 42" Plasma Television!
AOL users go here
This offer applies to U.S. Residents Only

That looks innocuous enough, though, doesn't it? It wasn't relevant to the subject line or the text in the body of the email, so that isn't smart money on the part of the advertiser. Advertisers won't see gmails themselves. What they will get is info from gmail indicating how many ads got placed. That helps them determine how effective their ads are in comparison with other mediums, let alone against their sales figures.

As for gmail ads, read:
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/help/about.html#ads

As for gmail privacy, read:
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/help/privacy.html

You'll note somewhere along the line it's handled by Google Ad Sense, which is used on Google & explained here:
https://www.google.com/adsense/faq#start1

Then, if you want to learn how Google delivers such smart results, you'll get a hint of that here:
http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html

The way I foresee using gmail is primarily as storage space for emails I would otherwise toss out of my other email accounts to save space. In my case, I save just one email from each individual or company that I want to keep in touch with, yet it still takes up half the space. Ridiculous.

That means some emails I copy/paste to documents in order to save them. My own computer is more vulnerable to prying eyes than a gmail server and I'm not doing anything illegal, so even if Big Brother checked in on me, he'd be wasting his time.

But, once again, the reason I posted this info is that those who wish to have storage capacity in an email account (say they wish to forward emails from other email accounts and not have to store them locally) is so they may have a head start on decent account names and/or information once the service is widely available.

 

Since G-mail has been dragging along through beta phase, I opened a 1 GB account at spymac.com a few weeks ago. Have forwarded archive emails to said account - no spam has come to Inbox.