Gmail opened to the masses

by Stephen Withers

Thursday, 15 February 2007

Google's Valentines Day gift to the world (apart from the cutesy chocolate-dipped strawberry on its search pages) was opening its Gmail webmail service to all comers. Previously, it was only possible to get a Gmail account by scrounging an invitation from an existing user.

Gmail led the move to providing large amounts of online storage at no charge. Users are currently allowed well over 2G, and some enterprising types have figured how to exploit this for storing files (see, for example, GMail Drive, gDisk and GmailFS).

Gmail supports a wide range of browsers for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, including Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari, though the Google Talk compatible integrated chat feature is only supported on Internet Explorer (version 6 and later) and Firefox (version 1 and later).

While fans applaud the generous mailbox size, rapid searching and effective spam filters, the price is that targeted text ads are inserted into messages. As with any web-based service that stores your data, you also need to decide whether Google's privacy policy and terms of service are appropriate for your intended use.{moscomment}

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