Gmail Makes Other Netmail Companies Cry...

Published on April 18, 2005 By greywar In Internet

On April 1 Gmail posted a little April Fool's joke called the "Infinity +1" storage solution. It was supposed to allow unlimited storage for all users. Of course this was just for launghs put in reality Gmail did in fact double it's already massive 1GB of free storage to 2GB+ and it increases every second as they add more space. Observe :

That is an astonishing number even for a pay service much less a free one. Can Yahoo, Hotmail, etc... even hope to compete with this? Google's business acumen leaves me stunned.

Comments (Page 7)

greywar

on Apr 21, 2005

to me that's selective blindness

Jafo - I am not blind to either one. I just maintain that neither of them are evil or an invasion of privacy. Boh are simply an exchange of info for a service.

I apologize for my digression

Texas Joe- No need to apologize brother. I brought the topic up so I felt the need to warn against a thread hijacking. I would have only been a problem if the commentary had run off in that direction

They DON'T NEED to on-sell your email addy

Jafo - Yes, because they don't send spam. Ever.

PurrBall

on Apr 21, 2005

Yes, because they don't send spam. Ever.

Me got no spam yet.

Toblerone

on Apr 21, 2005

Wow I write one little comment and it turns into this...

greywar

on Apr 21, 2005

Wow I write one little comment and it turns into this...

Feel the power...

Zoomba

on Apr 21, 2005

Privacy is a touchy subject for some... especially touchy for those who forgot their morning meds or tin foil hats

It's probably one of the most misunderstood issues in IT there is. It has come to the forefront because now people are suddenly aware of their data being passed around, whereas before it was all done in the smoke-filled back rooms of your local bank.

My point with all of this was that Google is no worse (in fact they are far better) than most brick-and-mortar institutions and services we use on a daily basis, and to single out them and call them evil while happily continuing the use of those other services is paranoid and hypocritical to say the least. It's easy to go after Google simply because one can without suffering for it. Boycotting banks and credit card companies however can put a serious cramp on your lifestyle and make it difficult to participate in society. Since we can't fight the evils we are forced to put up with, we place most of our anger on those we do not have to use.

Jafo

on Apr 21, 2005

Zoomba....maybe it's an 'age' thing...that has you so presumptuous of others' 'touchiness' and/or naivete. 23 is old enough to determine nothing is left needing to be known.

There IS no 'fact' that Google is better, or worse than anything/one else...certainly nothing you may have presumed to have demonstrated.

FYI...in Australia, 'Meds' is a brand of tampon...and I for one never forget my tinfoil hat...It's nailed to my paranoia and under a pile of last night's hypocrisies....

Damilee1958

on Apr 21, 2005

Okay, I've been using it for about three weeks and I love it. I started out letting my contacts know what my new g-mail address is and a little information about g-mail and at that time I had 2080mb of storage. Everytime I log in I have more storage!!! Unfortunately, know one want to use my new gmail account. I only have one friend who consistently emails to that account. I love the flexibility. I can use POP for my outlook which hotmail did away with. So I use my cable email address and gmail, and whoever wants to still use those other accounts just won't reach me because I'm not checking on all those accounts that don't do what I want them to.

Zoomba

on Apr 21, 2005

Jafo -
I don't profess to know everything... far from it. But I do know that you're singling out gmail while ignoring other offenders as a matter of convenience. You're asserting that gmail is invading your privacy when they're actually doing no such thing. You went on about your communication being passed on to a third party when no third party existed (unless you count the company who stores the email as the third party, which is kind of silly because then every email you send to anyone anywhere is then intercepted by a third party)

Google is incredibly transparents as to how their services work. If you want to toss out that there are no "facts" supporting my reasoning, there are even fewer facts supporting yours. Their systems are pretty well documented and explained. Your emails are not being read or comprehended, they're being keyword scanned, just like any server-side spam filter your own provider might use.

Why do you trust your data to Stardock? There's nothing saying they can't or don't do mean things with your information. You trust in their sense of whats right to not do such things. Who's to say that Google is not also worthy of such trust? You're saying Google is guilty of doing such horrible things without a shred of actual proof. It's just a gut feeling/distrust for a large(ish) company.

Oh, and I guess there is a magic age at which you suddenly do know everything and can conveniently dismiss those younger than you because they haven't reached your own magical age of enlightenment. I may not know everything, but I am able to understand that there are far worse invsions we allow every day, that google parsing our emails to display two sponsored ad links at the bottom of an email is chump change. You forfeit more rights by using Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop or Macromedia Dreamweaver than by using GMail. There are much bigger fish to fry than Google. I'd personally love to nail Sovereign Bank to the wall since as soon as I opened my account with them I got flooded with Providian credit card offers.

On a completely unrelated note... I'm going to have to add "Meds" to my list of amusing words with different meanings in other parts of the world. My favorite so far is "Rubber" (pencil eraser in the UK, a condom in the US)

EventHorizon

on Apr 21, 2005

Ahh, nevermind... Forgot to read to the end.

100

Jafo

on Apr 21, 2005

Why do you trust your data to Stardock

Simple....I know the people at Stardock.

Obviously you 'know' google and therefore trust your data with them.

I don't.

Please remember..I am NOT 'singling out Gmail'....this is a thread about Gmail, not about privacy erosion in general.

IF perchance it was a thread about your 'Sovereign Bank' then maybe I'd be talking about them, instead.

BTW...if your bank disseminates your information the cure is....change bank. I know I would...

101

Archangel_Douglas

on Apr 22, 2005

i personally dont like G-Mail, and the way google handles your emails (i mean, they dont technically get deleted from their servers).

and remember GMail is still technically beta; you can only get it via an invitation.. they could just close it down (for god knows what reason), and noone can really bitch about it.
and i doubt google likes the idea that people are using the email service as an online virtual drive..

ive been happy with Yahoo! for over 5 years, and ill be happier when they bump the email storage up to 1 gig.

102

greywar

on Apr 22, 2005

they could just close it down (for god knows what reason), and noone can really bitch about it.

Yahoo has the same thing even including the pay service. That EULA is a bitch eh?

103

Archangel_Douglas

on Apr 22, 2005

Yahoo has the same thing even including the pay service. That EULA is a bitch eh?

thats for individual accounts.. google could kill the whole gmail thing given its not an openly/publicly released..
otherwise, why are they holding back making it completely open?

104

PurrBall

on Apr 22, 2005

OMG, guys, take it loose-- yes anything can happen to Gmail, but they have alot of users. Also, the same can happen in the OS world-- Mac or Linux could take over any time now.

105

Zoomba

on Apr 22, 2005

One of the things Google is known for is keeping products in beta for ages and ages. With Google beta doesn't mean unstable or subject to deletion, it's kept in beta because that means they can fend off angry users when a bug crops up by saying it's still in beta.

GMail is here to stay.

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