Google's Gmail: Hoax Or Not?

[Janak Parekh]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://money.cnn.com/2004/04/01/technology/google_email/index.htm?cnn=yes' target='_blank'>http://money.cnn.com/2004/04/01/tec...dex.htm?cnn=yes</a><br /><br /></div>Speaking of April 1 doozies...<br /><br />"Mountain View, Calif.-based Google also will provide one gigabyte of storage to free account holders, far more than that offered by Yahoo and Microsoft's Internet unit, MSN, which each built strong user bases around free e-mail services and have been attacking Google's prominence as a Web search provider. However, Google's one gigabyte of storage claim led to some speculation about the Gmail announcement being a hoax since it took place on April Fool's Day. Google has pulled April Fool's jokes on the tech community before, including jokes about pigeons being the driving force behind Google's search technology and that Google was looking to start a new research center on the moon. In addition, the press release about Gmail was fairly goofy, including lines such as 'Millions of M&amp;Ms later, Gmail was born.'"<br /><br />The one gigabyte of email, plus the fact that the <a href="http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/gmail.html">press release</a> was dated April 1 2004, UTC (why would a CA company make a post at UTC?) made me believe it was a hoax -- but apparently, it won't be. 1GB of email for... free? 8O How would they handle the backup? I can tell you this: if it's for real, I'll be signing up.

[thunderck]

I already signed-up for information just in case this is for real!!! But I will not be surprized if I get an e-mail with a pie in my face. :roll:

[James Fee]

It would appear its true...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3591589.stm

or

http://www.forbes.com/technology/newswire/2004/04/01/rtr1320652.htm

Google April Fool's Joke was this....

http://www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job.html

[jneely]

Perhaps the 1GB is just for mail text (sans attachments) -- meaning they can compress it VERY effectively. 1GB a mail text can probably be packed down to 50MB or less using compression.

This would put it within the same order of magnitude as the storage offered by some other free online mail accounts -- although still quite a bit more than the standard 2MB offered by hotmail.

Just a thought...

[arnage2]

how will google be able to afford 100's of terrabytes of server space for free? I hope it isnt a hoax. (i pay $3.99 per month for 100mb)

[Howard2k]

It could be true... There will no doubt be caveats:

* No backup (unless you pay for it)
* Mail is wiped unless you log in once every 30 days

Remember that Exchange has Single Message Storage. So if I send an email to 100 people it stores only 1 copy. Perhaps they are using something like this for either emails or attacehments. So if a 10MB attachment (identified by file size, name and checksum for example) appears in 1,000 peoples mailboxes it takes only 10MB not 10GB.

On top of that with some decent compression (and text compresses easily) it might be do-able.

Or maybe they'll have 2 million people sign up for it and just not be able to support it and it will die :)

[c38b2]

I actually saw this yesterday on CNet:
http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-5182805.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=news
The story is "last updated" today, but if you look at the dates of the comments some were made yesterday. It was this that lead me to believe that GMail is not a hoax/joke. I have even signed up for it! (I'm looking for a new email provider because mine has informed me that they will be discontinuing POP3 access in 2 months)

[guinness]

If it true, I'll sign up for it, but I'm wondering what I would ever need 1 GB of storage for (when it comes to e-mail that is). 5-10 MB seems about right for me, for free e-mail.

[Howard2k]

I have >5GB of corporate email.

[Gremmie]

Google will be able to finance it through economies of scale--it will cost google less to finance 1GB of email. Ads will be inserted into the email by, i imagine, some sort of patented Google technology to match up emails to ads.

[sponge]

2 things to consider:

How many people will use more than 10-20MB of data?
Google's caching of nearly every webpage, that alone takes hundreds of gigs.

That makes it quite feasible, especially if their claims of $2 per gb is true.

[caywen]

I think it actually makes sense. My guess is this:

If 99.9% of their users don't actually use anywhere close to 1GB, then the costs to allow that .1% of users that actually want to test the limits of the system are pretty marginal.

So, if there are 1,000,000 users, and only 100 actually use 1GB of space, and 999,900 still only use 10-20 megs, then they only have to pop in an extra 100 gig HD and their done!

:mrgreen:

[David Prahl]

I heard about it yesterday on /. and took a guess at the URL. Check it out!

www.gmail.com

YOU DO NOT GET 1 GIGABYTE OF STORAGE!
You get 1000 MB, not 1024. :razzing:

[jake080]

nice point, David...
looks real though :)

[dmacburry2003]

This is what makes April Fool's Day fun :D

[David Prahl]

This is what makes April Fool's Day fun :D

That and:

--A friend really broke his arm last night, and everyone at school thought he was joking.

--A "hacking sting" at school booted half a dozen 1337 students. I thought they were kidding for a few seconds! (no, they didn't get me!)

[schergr]

It's legit according to Google.weblogsinc.com (http://google.weblogsinc.com/entry/8548888455598645).

Greg
Epicenter.involvu.net (http://epicenter.involvu.,net). :!:

[Jonathan1]

I personally will probably join as long as Google has strong anti-spam policies and filters in place unlike hotcrap that even with their filters set to high I get about 50 spams a day. (80-90 if you count the filtered junk.) The only use I have for it at this point is a placeholder for sites where I need a legit address to register.

[beq]

Just search news.google.com itself for the frenzy of articles/discussions on Gmail :)

I too am interested in the economies of their storage capacities. Including compression strategies and targetted average consumption as mentioned (even the previously mentioned single store paradigm ala Streamload.com)...

Will be interesting to see the ripple effects in the email service industry (especially Yahoo/Hotmail). I mean, latest headlines are already quoting MS's plans for search, it will be fun to see how these two defend their core email sector...

Applying Adsense text-based contextual ads ("relevant" ads as they like to say) to emails sounds like a big synergistic win for Google (and will probably be accepted by most I feel). Key is to emphasize automated ad mechanism to keep users from being alarmed at thought of live employees reading their mail (though their TOS admits "Indeed, residual copies of email may remain on our systems, even after you have deleted them from your mailbox or after the termination of your account. Google employees do not access the content of any mailboxes unless you specifically request them to do so (for example, if you are having technical difficulties accessing your account) or if required by law, to maintain our system, or to protect Google or the public.")

Anyways, leveraging their search methodology and threading to emails certainly drives in the same direction as all the latest email management paradigms (ala virtual/search folders) to basically abstract away from the physical storage/representation of emails in folders. Heck it's the direction for general-purpose data storage (file systems) :)

P.S. I wonder what kind of antispam they have (we already know they offer a submit-spam button to collect centrally, so it's probably not user-specific Bayesian)...

[Oliver Mitchell]

if you try and log in it also uses a picture text as verification, i presume so spammers don't set it up to spam with

[TJNoff]

The drawback is that you'll be targeted with ad (read spam) mail through Google as part of the deal. 8O You're agreeing to be spammed by signing up! Pretty smart marketing ploy if you ask me, but not something that I will be signing up for! :|

[JohnnyFlash]

how will google be able to afford 100's of terrabytes of server space for free? I hope it isnt a hoax. (i pay $3.99 per month for 100mb)

Arnage~

Where in the world do you get 100 mb for $3.99 per month?!

[Jonathan1]

The drawback is that you'll be targeted with ad (read spam) mail through Google as part of the deal. 8O You're agreeing to be spammed by signing up! Pretty smart marketing ploy if you ask me, but not something that I will be signing up for! :|

If its anything like yahoogroups and their method of "spam" its not as intrusive as you'd think. They have one ad on the bottom of the e-mail. Not a big deal and considering its 1GB of storage for free I'm game. :) LOL people are so sensitive about spam. Everyone hates it but if done right the annoyance can be minimal. Its not like Google is going to be throwing 1,000 Viagra ads in your inbox. This is going to be a selective service people. Imagine banner ads that advertise Pocket PC thoughts? Or the new iPod case of the week? Frankly, and this isn't targeting any one person on the thread, I'm getting a little sick of people expecting something for nothing. Storage and service all cost money. E-mail requires both. Google needs to recover that cost from somewhere and as long as its not 100 flashing ads on the front of google.com I'm cool with it. The key is being as low key about the ads as possible. Enough to get your attention but not enough for the customer to get irked by the ads. The problem is you rarely see such combinations. Usually its some dang flashing ad or ZDNET's annoying as HELL fold up ad! :twisted:
That thing made me give up zdnet.com's website altogether. Its all about balance. Heck I wouldn't be surprised if Google got psychologists involved on the development.

[Mojo Jojo]

As others have surmised the 'cost' of this service is that an automated scanner will read your e-mail and collect key words and create a portfolio of what pepole send you. Get a lot of email about games and computers. Your ads will reflect that. Get a lot of email about impotencie and maybe you will see those viagra ads.

Targeted Ads has been the dream of companies for a long time. You can see it in sci-fi movies (Minority Report recently is a good take) early business proposals for the ad placements on websites (look up you won't see a viagra ad but I am looking at a software package running right now), even TV commercials that are placed depending on show your watching (kids show has toy commercials etc)and now it is becoming a reality but this time getting closer to the mark (thats you and your preferences).


Good idea, hard sell to people who want things free, but the enevitable end unless you want to pay even more for 'clean' services.

[foebea]

I'll stick with my own server. i can use pop3 or imap, and change it at will, make random addresses up when i need to sign up for something on the net and receive it with postmaster@domain and then block any resulting spam by turning off the address. I have 400gb of space for email, and there is no limit on attachment size.

Works for me! :mrgreen:

[fiveohhh]

how will google be able to afford 100's of terrabytes of server space for free? I hope it isnt a hoax. (i pay $3.99 per month for 100mb)

Arnage~

Where in the world do you get 100 mb for $3.99 per month?!

http://www.ripplehost.com/ 200mb 4 gigs of transfer for 9.99 a year just buy yourself a domain. For a toal of less that $2 a month, and ya get pop3 imap, and webmail.

[david291]

Seems like I could use it to backup some digital photos. I just need to send them to my gmail account.

[beq]

^ I figure an email size limit will come into play to stop such use...

[Janak Parekh]

The drawback is that you'll be targeted with ad (read spam) mail through Google as part of the deal. 8O You're agreeing to be spammed by signing up!
No -- you're agreeing to having targeted ads appear on the side of your mail client, not spam inside the mailbox. Not nearly as bad, so long as you don't mind such targeted ads and the means they use to determine the "target". ;)

--janak

[DinarSoft]

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/04/06/google.email/index.html