Gmail

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=What Is Gmail?=

Gmail is a fairly recent expansion of Google and is a free email service. The great thing about Gmail is that every account begins with 1G of storage which is equivalent to 1000 MB!!! The Gmail motto is "You'll never have to delete anything again". One gig may not seem alot at first but you must consider when it began, the oh so popular Hotmail created by Microsoft only had a storage capability of 250 MB. Another important factor to consider is that the 1G accumulates over time. Currently on my Gmail which I've had not more than a year and a half has accummulated up to 2699 MB. That's over double the storage increase under a time frame of 2 years!

=How Did Gmail Begin?=

Gmail was pronounced a beta in 2004, April 1st. It was because Gmail began as a beta that those who were the very first to test it were given 6 invites to invite whoever they choose. The number of invites has now grown to 100 per user. The change to double the 1G was announced in 2005, again on April Fools day; the one year anniversary of Gmail.

=Features=

Some key features of Gmail include the following: Gmail also avoids any types of advertisements that may be bothersome to some people.
 * conversation history
 * labelled folders
 * filtering
 * searching
 * contact list
 * auto save enhancement
 * 2G's of storage starting April 1st 2005
 * friendly interface with enabling of Java and HTML
 * keyboard shortcuts
 * rich text formatting
 * RSS feeds
 * custom "from" addresses
 * a Gmail notifier
 * and even chats

To join with the growing community of Gmail please click here [|www.gmail.com]

=Interesting fact about Gmail=

=Issues=
 * Gmail uses the same datamining technique as Google

Some people are unsure or completely against using Gmail due to the privacy issues that have come about. Google claims that you never need to delete anything from your account and instead let the search engine sort through all the mail messages. The issue arouse when Google admitted that deleted messages would remain in their systems for an indefinite amount of time and be accessible to everyone within their system. To make matters worse, after 6 months on their database the documents "lose their status under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act" and are therefore very easily accessible to the public. Google has responded to this invasion of privacy by claiming that they are a corporation that have good faith and are incapable of doing wrong, but in a corporation so large who can really know?

=References=

Wikipedia. __Gmail__. February 27, 2006. 

Images Courtesy of:
Gmail - http://www.todopocketpc.com/imagenes/imag_noticias/2A2_logo.gif

G-mail is too creepy- http://www.gmail-is-too-creepy.com