Gmail Hype

Everybody is talking about Google’s upcoming Gmail. Since I wasn’t choosen to beta test, I can not offer any excellent insider view, but I can write about what I think of the whole thing. The reason of this post is to keep a record, for the posterity, about my point of view on this whole thing.

So, let’s get to the point. I think Gmail will be awesome, if it opens at all for the general public (“We think it’s an absolute invasion of privacy. It’s like having a massive billboard in the middle of your home,’ said Sen. Liz Figueroa, a Democrat from Fremont, California. ‘We are asking them to rethink the whole product,’ she said.”). I think that anyone that might have privacy concerns –or any other– should refrain from using it; after all nobody at Google is forcing you to get an account (accounts aren’t available at the time I am typing this).

If I were Hotmail or any other webmail provider, I would be afraid. Google is going to offer a webmail service and is going to do it well, like everything it has done so far. As I said on my comment over Tomas Jogin related entry, “I can’t speak for the rest of the guys/gals, but I love Google. Should they go public I will buy Google stock. Google makes my every day life so much easier that praising them is the least I can do.”

An email to david@gmail.com¹ rendered the following from Mail Delivery Subsystem <mailer-daemon@gmail.com>:

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification
Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

david@gmail.com

Does that means there is, still, hope? :-)