GOOGLE'S GOT LARGE MAIL Apr 1 2004
By Kevin Lynch
Its been rumoured for some time, but Google today finally confirmed it was planning to take on Microsoft's Hotmail and launch its own free webmail service.
Called Gmail, the service is about to enter its beta-testing phase, and is expected to be up and running later this year.
Bearing in mind what day it is, we took Google's claims that the service comes with 1GB of free storage with a big pinch of salt - but we're assured this isn't a wind-up.
The huge storage space is equivalent to 500,000 pages of e-mail and is more than 100 times what most other free webmail services offer.
Gmail will use the company's search technology, allowing subscribers to quickly find every email they've sent or received and will dispense with the need to delete unwanted messages.

Google also promise the service will be spam free.

So what's the catch? Well it appears subscribers will have to tolerate advertisements tailored to keywords in the emails they receive.
For example, if you receive an email from a friend about The Simpsons, ads plugging DVD's of Springfield's finest will appear at the bottom of the message.
One definite hoax perpetrated by Google today is a job advertisement on its site for a new lunar research centre set to open next year.
The ad says the company is looking for engineers for its new development arm called Google Copernicus Hosting Environment and Experiment in Search Engineering (G.C.H.E.E.S.E.).
It goes on to say the research centre will be carrying out experiments in high-density high-delivery hosting (HiDeHiDeHo) in a bid to bring information access to new heights of utility.
Messers Lynch

Via The Mirror in London iblog pages : linkdump have your favorites got an error 404 page visiablity.. have not checked it probably needs a commendation tag..