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Gmail* opened its doors to the public on February 7, 2007.
Previously to this, it was available as an invitation-only beta that began on April 1, 2004.
I was one of those people fortunate enough to be invited to beta-test the product. I have no idea why, but I’m very glad they did.
Gmail is far, far and away the greatest email product on the market. It’s better than anything you have ever used. It’s better than Outlook. It’s better than your Blackberry. And it’s much, much better than Hotmail, Yahoo mail or any other equally-ghastly online mail platform.
Gmail is an online mail platform, i.e., browser-based webmail. But don’t assume that it’s anything like what came before it.
But somehow, it only has 10,000,000 users. Ten million. According to this website, there are 1.3 billion people on the Internet. That means only 0.7 per cent use Gmail.
I’ve told many of my friends about Gmail, and whilst some of them have signed up for accounts, when I get an email from them it’s still from their old Hotmail account, or something that came with their ISP.
I have to ask: why? What is wrong with you people?
Here’s the usual reason given for why people either haven’t signed up, or have, but don’t use Gmail as their main account:
“I’m used to my current email address. So are my friends.”
This, I’m afraid, is no reason at all. The advantage of email over something like actually moving house, or even changing your mobile phone number, is you can immediately tell everybody something for no cost. If you change your email address, just select everybody in your address book and send this message out:
HiThis is Shéamus. I'm no longer using this email account.This is my new email:sheabennett@gmail.comThanks, Shéamus
Now what was so difficult about that? (Obviously, use your own name and email address.)
Now, I hear you - we’ve all got idiot friends who either won’t read the message or are too stupid to understand it. But Google have taken care of this. You can configure Gmail so that ANY email account you have can be picked by it as well, which means you can run multiple accounts - even multiple Gmail accounts - from one login. Better, you can also set it so that you still reply from a given email address on any given account if you want to (i.e., maybe a business address). This means you’ll never miss a single message from your moron pals.
What, that’s not enough? You want more proof? Is that it? You want to hear more about Gmail’s award-winning features?
Well then take a look at this lot:
Storage Space
Gmail offers 6.6gb of free storage, which is increasing by approximately 3.348mb per day. You’ll never have to delete another email again. Ever. (Unless you want to.)
Google Search
Google’s industry-leading search function is built into the Gmail package You’ll never lose another email again. You don’t even have to bother making up folders and labels and stuff, even though that’s all available on Gmail (and it’s much better than what you use now.) Just search for whatever it was or whomever it was from. Done.
Conversations
This only is the reason why you should be using it over anything else. Much was made of the iPhone’s ability to filter SMS messages into conversations between the two users. Gmail has been doing this since day one. It’s an incredibly simple idea that eliminates nearly all clutter from your inbox. Rather than having endless Re: messages to wade through, everything on a given topic from one (or more people, if you’re CCing) is kept in one thread. This makes it very quick and easy to read back on previous parts of the conversation and makes everything run a lot smoother.
Spam
Gmail has a built-in spam filter which is not only brilliant out of the box, it learns. Mark things down as spam from anybody you like and never have to worry about it again. Spam messages go into their own folder which you can view (just in case something slipped through the net), and are then deleted after 30 days. At any time, you can delete the entire lot - even thousands of messages, if that’s how popular you are - with just one click. Brilliant.
You Get A Google Account
When you sign up with Gmail (or, vice versa, with Google) you get a Google account, too. This opens up such great browser-based features as Google Documents (word processor, spreadsheets, etc) and Google Calendar. For web designers, you also get access to Google Analytics, which will track every possible statistic you can think of on your website, and money/traffic-making products like Adsense and Adwords.
I mean, who doesn’t want an account with Google? You? Commie!
All this, and all the other pros of web-based email (convenience, accessible anywhere, no ’sharing’ risk because you’re viewing software-based mail from more than one PC) are naturally part of the deal too.
You have no excuse: sign up today!
* In the United Kingdom and Germany, Gmail is known as Google Mail.
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