Gmail in the News

roadies writes "Despite all the negativity and privacy concerns that surround Gmail, it has still gained cult-like status where net-d0rks feel self validated by having a gmail address and will do anything to get one. Services like the Gmail Machine, a randomized Gmail lotto that has people hitting refresh until they get carpel-tunnel in the index finger, reports over 7 million pageviews (though, definitely not uniques) in 3 days and 55 invites given away. They just added 222 more through donators who have given up invites in exchange for a text link on the high-traffic site. GmailSwap (covered recently on /.) has given away everything from cameras to good vibes. Good news for hardpressed geeks: The invites are becoming more and more available and mainstream. Ebay once had gmail invites going for a couple hundred dollars. Now, nobody is bidding on them anymore, so you can purchase one the old-fashioned eBay way for a dollar or two." Reader marklyon writes "Third party developers have stepped in with utilities that enhance and improve GMail. One utility, Mbox & Maildir to Gmail Loader allows users to upload their existing email to their GMail account. Another, POP Goes the GMail, offers the ability to access your GMail account with any POP mail reader, giving users the ability to permanently archive messages. GTray lives in your taskbar and alerts you to incoming messages. Other, more general programs, allow you to forward your Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail messages to your new GMail account. The question that remains, however, is whether Google will work with or against third party developers in GMail's future."

Re:Waning excitement

[MikeXpop]

And I awoke a couple weeks ago to the fact that my webmail provider provides not one gig. Not two gigs. Not 5 gigs, but unlimited space. *And* I only pay $0 for it.

I did it before, and I'll do it again

[los furtive]

I've you'd like a Gmail account, send me an email at [e-mail] [mailto] and as I get invites I'll hook you up. I've hooked up 18 people this week alone.

What I noticed was that as soon as Yahoo announced they were upping their email limit, Gmail started letting me invite about 5 people a day.

Understand that I already have a backlog of 10 slashdotters waiting for accounts, but I labeled them all and as the invites trickle in, I'll pass them on...my friends and family and irc buddies are already hooked up.

Cheers!

The Logical Next Step

[CdBee]

.. would be Google Messenger.
Use Gmail address as a login ID, use it to capture the business IM and email market

Re:I'm lost

[Frisky070802]

What's so big about Gmail, anyway? Is it the gigabyte of storage? The allure of using something offered by Google? The excitement of being admitted to a semi-exclusive online club?

Perhaps all three, but I think after using Gmail for a couple of months, the idea that I can quickly search the full content of everything I've received is nice; the threaded conversations are really cool; and the sharp user interface is pretty nice.

On the other hand, the filter model doesn't cut it for me. Tagging things with a label but leaving them in an "inbox" makes it hard to find the good stuff. Maybe if I could "star" incoming messages based on criteria as well?

The GMail Market

[Rie Beam]

One thing I noticed about GMail was that it was, at least for a short time, a small commercial market within itself. The market ebbed and flowed depending on if invites had become availble that day or not. Originally, there were few accounts, and I managed to snatch one up thanks to my Blogger account - while it lasted, my invites were gold. Before the market "crashed" a few weeks ago, I managed to get unlimited virtual hosting and some nude pictures from a college CS girl who wanted one for "geek cool". My, it was great.

Of course, then the market crashed. So now GMail Swap and others are worthless. But I've been using my invites for another purpose now - I currently have 30 GMail addresses to my name, including some interesting ones. I figure, although the rarity may not exist in having an account, the rarity could exist in having the account you want. Commercialism rises again.

Reply-to Feature Tops My List

[Mean_Nishka]

What I like most about Gmail is its ability to have a 'reply-to' option in the setup screen. I was using a cranky old IMAP account on my web hosting provider which was proving to be a nuisance (and I had far from a gig of storage!).

Since I am a Treo user, I still valued having the ability to check my account from my phone. But I also really liked the Gmail interface when I was at my desktop. So here's what I did:

I was pleased to see that Google allows you to override the reply-to address, so I immediately changed that to my current email address.

I then deleted my IMAP account and set up a mail forwarding alias that directs any incoming messages to my Gmail account as well as a pop account on the hosting provider's server.

I use the POP account to check mail from my Treo, and it also gets picked up by my Outlook client for permanent archiving.

The best part is I was able to switch my email exclusively to Gmail without anyone noticing the switch. This is top notch stuff.. Google has done something extraordinary here.

Re:My experiences with Gmail invitations

[bendelo]

I'll give 3 GMail accounts to the first 3 people to reply to reply to this post (with an e-mail address to send the invite to).

POST NOW!

When?

[gmuslera]

When it will be out of beta? when it will allow non-invite subscriptions? When they will consider "its ready"?

They are making their webmail a playfield like is the domain name ownership one, and if it last months a to have really big webmail mailboxes, ligth webpages, intelligent spam/virus filtering and threaded mail view will be so common than when it will be finally out could be no news.

I even wonder if in the open source webmail market not exist already one that provides a good part of what gmail will give who knows when.

At this moment i would open the registration in gmail, not by invitation, but at will, still leave there the "beta" mark to show that still could be rough edges, but to accaparate the market before is too late. What if i.e. the actual Teoma [teoma.com] come out around the same time google started? still google would be the #1?

Well, anyway, i could be wrong, not tested yet so i can't say how hard or easy could be duplicated with advantages, but so far for non-users is almost vapourware.

Exporting from GMail with Python

[holovaty]

I've been experimenting with a Python interface to Gmail. Just released version 0.1 [holovaty.com] today. Hope it's helpful to someone.

I think they will

[daishin]

The question that remains, however, is whether Google will work with or against third party developers in GMail's future.
Provided that the things such as the POP3 forwarder do not circumvent the ads which are highly non-intrusive, and which Google relys on a good deal.

Re:The Logical Next Step

[John Harrison]

Many think that the fact that it reads your email in order to provide targeted ads is disturbing.

Imagine Google IM, it would read your conversations as you were having them in order to send you targeted ads. Now that is creepy.

invites

[grahagre]

if any of you want a gmail invite hit me up, i only have two

Re:Still policy blocked from work...

[lophophore]

Hmmm. Try https://gmail.google.com

The filters at my office don't handle https! So it works well that way.

As always, your mileage may vary.

Re:My experiences with Gmail invitations

[Kalgash]

That gmail-is-creepy site is run by the dude who also runs the equally paranoid and whacked-out http://www.google-watch.org site.

See Google-Watch Watch [google-watch-watch.org] for details on the creepy paranoid dude and then go back and read his rantings with a large-ass grain of salt.

For those who still think email is secure I got news for you: Your email is already exposed in plain text on just about any server it is sent to. If your email is ever relayed through a third party server (and a lot of mail is) then chances are an unscrupulous admin has already read your messages or at least stored a copy.

What GMail does by comparison is relatively tame. The adds are inserted at display time. All email is parsed to more effectively block spam. No human will ever read your email.

Don't take my word or the word of some kook with issues.

Read the Gmail privacy policy [google.com]

EXCERPT BELOW:

Email contents and usage. The contents of your Gmail account also are stored and maintained on Google servers in order to provide the service. Google's computers process the information in your email for various purposes, including formatting and displaying the information to you, delivering targeted related information (such as advertisements and related links), preventing unsolicited bulk email (spam), backing up your email, and other purposes relating to offering you Gmail. Because we keep back-up copies of data for the purposes of recovery from errors or system failure, residual copies of email may remain on our systems for some time, even after you have deleted messages 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.

SSL & GMail

[keg]

Gmail also has ability to run secure:

https://www.gmail.com [gmail.com]

Not going to accept or send email to/from Gmail?

[Kalgash]

Directed to no one in particular because I am seeing more and more people take this stance.

If you don't accept/reply to messages from Gmail your gesture is worth less than the click you didn't take.

Want secure email? Get a cert and encrypt your messages. Only send messages to people on your same server. Make sure no one else has access to the server. Only you. Because as soon as that message leaves your client it is vulnerable to attack.

Now is this likely to occur? Unless you are some sort of leet cracker duude or on some govy watch list or undersurvelllience guess what... Your rantings and "insights" have less value to the BigBrother complex than they do to the poor sap to which they were sent.

Your messages are only valuable as part of a larger statistical model. If you have had an expectation of privacy when dealing with email you have been sadly mistaken.

Did We Accidentally Inspire Gmail?

[Zastrossi]

About two years ago, my colleagues and I at Cape Clear [capeclear.com] devised something called GoogleMail [capescience.com]. It was an extremely simple email interface to the Google API. You just send an email to [e-mail] and receive a reply with the top ten search results. I just checked it, and it still works. As you can see by the news coverage [capescience.com] (scroll down), everyone loved the idea, even though it was practically useless. The only exceptions seemed to be visually-disabled people and those in countries whose governments blocked Web access to Google. We were contacted by Google and asked to change the name, which was fair enough. It now goes by CapeMail. I imagine a scenario, though, where somebody at Google brings up our little invention at a meeting. "GoogleMail? They can't call it that. Get legal on the phone." Legal calls us, and we change the name. However, the phrase GoogleMail sticks in somebody's head back at Google corporate HQ. Two years later, Gmail is borne. Coincidence? Probably, but it's fun to speculate.

Re:My experiences with Gmail invitations

[bhsx]

I just openned my account a few minutes ago. Thanks for the "creepy" link, but they make it painstakingly clear about how they sort the data to target adds and the search capabilities. As I see it, they've basically added some rich features and changed everything to the point where it really doesn't feel like email anymore. Gmail may really spark some interesting new concepts in GUI email clients. Adding some of these abilities into Thunderbird or KMail might really end up benefiting users; and give'm a jump on MS, who will obviously be "borrowing" concepts for Longhorn.
Anyway, I digress; but I'm really excited about getting to use what looks like a really cool system.

Re:Getting Invited

[DivideX0]

Gmail machine just worked for me. I refreshed for about 20 minutes, finally won an invite. There was a problem with the invite process but it got taken care of right away, and now I've got logged into gmail, no problem.

Re:My experiences with Gmail invitations

[illumin8]

... and quickly had well over a dozen requests for accounts despite including a disclaimer pointing to gmail-is-too-creepy.com :)

I too am a Gmail beta user, and I've been very pleased with the service. Setup my .forward file to send a copy to my Gmail box, and set my reply-to address to be my private email, and I'm all set. Now I can switch between Gmail and Mail.app on my Powerbook lickety split.

I wanted to bring up something else that I just came across that was kind of strange. I agree that the people freaking out over adwords is a little over the top, but I found this article [hackinthebox.org] that brings up a very interesting point:

"Moreover, like any e-mail provider, the text of your Gmail is stored and subject to subpoena. I can envision a situation where an advertiser, paying Google hundreds of thousands of dollars, claims that Google failed to "insert" its ads in relevant e-mails, or inserted a competitor's ads instead (or in addition to, or more prominently). In the course of the ensuing litigation, wouldn't both the ads themselves and the text of the messages into which they were inserted be relevant, and therefore discoverable? I can't imagine why not."

I generally believe Google is a good company, but this argument actually got me thinking.

Okay, so when's the GMail middleman getting here?

[jemenake]

One of the links in the main story has *another* link to gmail-is-too-creepy.com. One of the things that page mentions is that many people (aside from not wanting a GMail account for themselves) are electing to never *send* mail to GMail, for fear that it will get permanently archived forever.

So, I guess it's inevitable that someone's going to make a site that lets you send to GMail while avoiding it. Imagine checking your GMail and getting a message saying:

You have received a piece of mail which the sender does not want archived by the GMail servers. Click Here to read it...

which would be a link to a web page which held the message for, say, two weeks. The service could be set up as a mail relayer, of sorts, where it would be easy to reply to GMail people. For example, the site could be, say, notgmail.com. Then, when replying to someone at GMail, you just add "not" to the address and the service would handle saving your message (only for two weeks, remember) and sending the real Gmail recipient the notice that they've got mail waiting.

I'm surprised that something like this isn't here already. Just imagine GMail's archives getting flooded with "You have received....".

Gmail's spam problem

[tcoady]

When responding to mail, gmail inserts not only the name but also the email address of the person you are answering. Although the same happens in brain dead applications like outlook, I think most smart clients suppress this information by default since it allows spam harvesters to easily collect addresses from archives of mailing lists.

I have alerted the gmail team to this and they say they are working on it, but they can't fix it soon enough for me as I occasionally forget to delete this gmail generated text from my replies.

POP Goes the GMail and others

[terranlune]

Has anyone actually tried the utilities listed in the original post? The lack of import and export options from gmail is a real limiting factor (I already have a lot of mail I'd like to search). What happens if/when google goes under? How do we extract our gigabyte? These utilities look very promising, but slashdotter stress-testing seems in order...

Re:Start Your Betting!

[adpowers]

I posted my address offering invites to people on slashdot yesterday. It was a third level comment (a reply to a reply of a comment or 'grandchild' post). Even without being modded up, I got a page full of requests. Not nearly as bad as you, though. I took a screenshot after I got back to my computer.

http://andrewhitchcock.org/images/gmail-slashdotte d.png [andrewhitchcock.org]

Google Social Networking

[Sunspire]

Google is giving out GMail invites like candy at the moment, you can get anywhere from 3-10 invites every other day or so (at least I do). Of course every invite you use is recorded, since it adds the inviters address to the invitees contact list automatically. With this by-invitation-only strategy they've managed to drum up an amazing amount of hype and discussion on blogs, mailing lists and message boards all over the net. Of course it also helps that GMail, in it's true Google-like fashion, is pretty damn good. That means there's a high demand for it, it's the latest in-thing and you don't want to be left out.

So, with everyone inviting their friends, who in turn invite their friends and so on, Google is sitting on a gold-mine that would make any data-miner drool. They've probably got the biggest social networking dataset ever compiled right now. I'm just thankful it's Google and not Hotmail or Yahoo. As someone else already said, the 1GB storage is just a gimmick, it's the Google brand that matters.

Re:If you would like to be invited

[galo]

I've got 5 invites.. If someone wants an invitation, and I still have them :), just email me carlos DOT silva AT gmail DOT com .

Gmailmachine results

[Jahf]

I wrote a 2 minute script (perl and wget are our friends) and let it run overnight. Their server started out really speedy, then started getting laggy so I shortened wget's timeout to 60 seconds (900 seconds? please :)

During this run the chances went from 30,000:1 to 50,000:1 to 100,000:1 :)

Results ... over approximately 10 hours the script iterated just under 30,000 times before getting an invite, which averaged out 50 hits per minute for me. If you assume most of the heavy hitters had a similar script (maybe, maybe not) running for the same time period where the server got 20,000,000 hits, that means 666 scripters ;)

NOTE: I made my script relatively friendly ... only 1 process at a time, it gave the server a minute to respond, and it slept for 1 second between requests. No forked processes, no running as fast as it can. Did I defeat the "feel" of the process, sure, but someone had to be expecting it because there was nothing in the HTML that made this at all difficult. This means I would guess I could have gotten closer to 1 hit per second if I'd -tried- but there didn't seem like much point.

I want to give a HEARTY congratulations for having a server with a dynamic page that took the load like a champ. No images had to help, but it was still pumping out >5K per request at 550-600 requests per second. Not an amazing feat technically, just good planning, but appreciated. I was quite surprised to see it had made it through the night (my invite came @ 8:30am, almost exactly when I woke to the thought of "hey, wonder if I got an invite?", maybe I accidentally invoked Telepathy::Broadcast).

And before someone goes "why did you waste your time for a freakin Gmail account", I spent 5 * the time needed to write the script to write this post ... it is /. where my behavior is unexplainable :)

Little late but... I wrote a program for GMail

[RabidSquirrel]

For those of you who are interested. It's called G-Mailto.

It is really simple. It associates mailto: html links with GMail. So when you see a link like this on the web:

[e-mail] [mailto]

You can click it and have the GMail compose window open up instead of something like Outlook Express that doesn't work with GMail. If you are not logged in to GMail it will bring you to the login screen and then redirect you to the Compose Page.

I'm using it right now on my Windows XP machine and it works perfectly. Supposedly works fine on Win9x/ME as well.

It's free, open-source, comes with an installer/uninstaller, and you can always switch back and forth between using it from your control panel. Under Internet Options > Programs Tab > Email. After you install G-Mailto, it will be in that list along with any other mail program you use.

Anyway, if you're interested, I put it up on my site:
http://www.rabidsquirrel.net/G-Mailto [rabidsquirrel.net]