Google Tests Email - Takes on Yahoo and MSN

Google yesterday released the news of the testing of Google’s soon to be email service - GMail. Given the date of the release and Google’s history of April Fool’s pranks, some have cautioned about taking the news too seriously. However, Google has confirmed that this is the real thing and given the specs of their GMail email project, it looks like Google will definitely give Yahoo and MSN Hotmail a run for their money. Moreover, the move is one step closer to legitimizing Google as a stand alone portal, and not just a big search engine.

Google’s GMail will be a free service with a storage capacity of up to eight billion bits of information, the equivalent of 500,000 pages of email, per user. Other features include:

Search: Built on Google search technology, Gmail enables people to quickly search every email they’ve ever sent or received. Using keywords or advanced search features, Gmail users can find what they need, when they need it.

Storage: Google believes people should be able to hold onto their mail forever. That’s why Gmail comes with 1,000 megabytes (1 gigabyte) of free storage – more than 100 times what most other free webmail services offer.

Speed: Gmail makes using email faster and more efficient by eliminating the need to file messages into folders, and by automatically organizing individual emails into meaningful “conversations” that show messages in the context of all the replies sent in response to them.

Anti-Spam: Gmail includes a sophisticated spam filter that includes a Report Spam link. The link removes spam from the inbox and sends valuable data to the Gmail team working on spam blocking.

Advertising: Gmail will relevant text ads powered by AdWords and AdSense technology. The matching of the ads to the email content is planned by Google and sure to raise privacy red flags all over the email world. However, Google does state that “no humans read your email to target the ads, and no email content or other personally identifiable information is ever provided to advertisers.” No graphic or popup ads will be served in Google’s GMail.

GMail will be in direct competition with Google’s two big search engine rivals, Yahoo and Microsoft’s MSN. Yahoo and MSN have always had one advantage over Google, the ability to keep online users active by offering an online community set up, a portal. They have intertwined their search, email, groups, and news communities together to keep users onsite.

With Google launching GMail along with their other recent additions; Google News, Froogle, Orkut Social Community, Personalized Search, and Google Groups… put them all under one umbrella and the result is one large and powerful ad revenue generating online portal

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