Get a sense of humor. Happy April Fools' Day!Originally posted by: Mock
I would be mad if this was April fools. I also think it would lead to bad press.
The inspiration for Gmail came from a Google user complaining about the poor quality of existing email services, recalled Larry Page, Google co-founder and president, Products. "She kvetched about spending all her time filing messages or trying to find them," Page said. "And when she's not doing that, she has to delete email like crazy to stay under the obligatory four megabyte limit. So she asked, 'Can't you people fix this?'"
The announcement of the new "Gmail" service was first reported by the New York Times and quickly reported by CNET News.com and wire outlets as well. The timing and wording of Google's press release, however, immediately generated speculation on online forums that the news was an elaborate April Fool's prank by Google.
Google spokesman David Krane, reached Wednesday night, admitted that the "color and personality" of the press release -- which is dated "April 1 UTC" and includes phrases such as "millions of M&Ms later, Gmail was born" -- "was indeed in the spirit of April 1" but said that Gmail was a serious product.
Google is widely expected to sell shares in an initial public offering later this year, and some in Silicon Valley had predicted the company would roll out an e-mail service to match offerings from Yahoo and Microsoft.
?E-mail is the killer (application) for getting people to share information,? Gary Stein, senior analyst at Jupiter Research, told Reuters. Such information is seen by search providers as key to delivering more personalized results.
?It?s the march of Google toward being a destination,? Stein said, echoing a widely held view that the company is moving closer to being an Internet portal like Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN, with a full range of products and services from e-mail to online shopping.
Originally posted by: sync
FWIW, I saw the press release yesterday.
Somehow I highly doubt Google is in the business of being funny and creating Gmail beta program along with a logo, FAQ, privacy policy, program policy, Terms of Use, an account login page, a Gmail feedback email address on the Google domain, and a form to remit your email to be provided with updates of Gmail.Originally posted by: JasonH
Get a sense of humor. Happy April Fools' Day!
C'mon, of course it's a joke. Read the press release.
Originally posted by: FrankyJunior
What the hell would anyone need 1 gig of email storage for? Sheesh. Unless you get tons of attachments...
Originally posted by: VaG
Somehow I highly doubt Google is in the business of being funny and creating Gmail beta program along with a logo, FAQ, privacy policy, program policy, Terms of Use, an account login page, a Gmail feedback email address on the Google domain, and a form to remit your email to be provided with updates of Gmail.Originally posted by: JasonH
Get a sense of humor. Happy April Fools' Day!
C'mon, of course it's a joke. Read the press release.
Privacy Policy
FAQ
Originally posted by: commOdog
I'm going to make 5 accounts and backup a dvd to my email account..............................
Originally posted by: kroq
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4641298/
I believe this is my first post so bear with me.
Google is set to offer free email with an astonishing 1GB storage! This is what, 250 times the current Yahoo Mail offering of 4MB and 500 times of Hotmail. So far signups has been reserved for invited users only, and we shall all be able to register in the next few weeks.
Originally posted by: Scarpozzi
April Fools Maybe?
As an Email Admin, I have to say that a 1GB mail account is plain stupid. Maybe if it's a web-based account only, it would work. But if you were trying to load the headers using IMAP, your client would probably seem so slow when you click on a folder that it wouldn't work. That is, only if you actually use most of your space.
I don't know why anyone would ever offer something like that since it won't scale very well. Think about how many Terabytes of data they'll have to be able to support overnight. We're talking about $60,000-80,000 for each 1TB SAN which only supports 1000 users. So we're talking a $60-80 committment for them per user and that's not even counting server, support, or licensing costs which usually cost more than the disks. This is either fake, or it will be short lived when the admins over there sober up.