Google Offers Email! (Click for Reuters link)
From http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/gmail.html
Google Gets the Message, Launches Gmail
User Complaint About Existing Services Leads Google to Create Search-Based Webmail
Search is Number Two Online Activity – Email is Number One; “Heck, Yeah,” Say Google Founders
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – April 1, 2004 UTC – Amidst rampant media speculation, Google Inc. today announced it is testing a preview release of Gmail – a free search-based webmail service with a storage capacity of up to eight billion bits of information, the equivalent of 500,000 pages of email. Per user.
The inspiration for Gmail came from a Google user complaining about the poor quality of existing email services, recalled Larry Page, Google co-founder and president, Products. “She kvetched about spending all her time filing messages or trying to find them,” Page said. “And when she’s not doing that, she has to delete email like crazy to stay under the obligatory four megabyte limit. So she asked, ‘Can’t you people fix this?'”
The idea that there could be a better way to handle email caught the attention of a Google engineer who thought it might be a good “20 percent time” project. (Google requires engineers to spend a day a week on projects that interest them, unrelated to their day jobs). Millions of M&Ms later, Gmail was born.
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Sure sounds like an April Fool’s Day joke to me. According to one slashdotter: “Hmmm… unless the joke is that everyone thinks it’s a joke but they’re really doing it. Ha ha!” But search google news and you get a ton of respectable sources that document Google’s press release, including Reuters, Infoworld, and Wired News.
If this is true, I’ll definitely give it a try when it comes out in the next weeks or months.
