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Joe St Sauver, Ph.D.
Director, User Services and Network Applications
joe@uoregon.edu
Jumbo-sized web email accounts from a number of vendors will soon be competing for your business. Here's a brief summary of the new Google, Yahoo, and Hotmail offerings entering the market.
Google, already famous for its industry-leading web search service, has now jumped into the free web email market.
If you're accustomed to a traditional free MSN Hotmail account offering 2MB of disk space, or even Darkwing or Gladstone accounts with 100MB quotas, Google's free Gmail accounts offering 1000MB worth of space represent quite a paradigm shift, particularly when you couple that headroom with the ability to privately "Google" all that mail.
At this point, you may be asking, "So what's the catch?"
Well, Gmail is supported by advertising, and the ads you'll be shown if you use Gmail are targeted based on your interests. The ads aren't obnoxious or intrusive, but the advertisements you see do reflect the contents of your mail via an automated ad selection process. For example, if you're corresponding with friends about travel to Hawaii, don't be surprised if you see airline airfare specials to Hawaii, or Hawaiian hotel advertising.
Browser support. You should also know that Gmail doesn't work with all browsers. As of June 24th, 2004, Gmail supported browsers are:
Obviously that covers a substantial share of the browser market, but there are some popular alternatives (such as Opera) that aren't listed yet.
The biggest "problem" with Gmail right now is that while it is still in beta testing, accounts are available by invitation only. Folks who already have Gmail accounts periodically get a number of invitations which allow them to invite a small number of friends to also get Gmail accounts. Of course, as Gmail passes out of its test phase, this issue should disappear.
While Gmail has recently lead the field in offering jumbo-sized email accounts, other web email provider haven't been standing still. For example:
- Free Yahoo! Mail now offers 100MB worth of storage, and if you're willing to pay, you can get Yahoo! Mail Plus with two thousand megabytes of storage, POP access, mail forwarding, and other features ( http://mailplus.mail.yahoo.com/help)
- Beginning in July, Hotmail will reportedly increase its default quotas to 250MB, with its "Plus" service looking much like Yahoo in offering 2000MB of storage for approximately $20 per year (see "Email Space Race Heats Up" at http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=22101948 )