| Gmail Leads Way in Making Ads Relevant - Leslie Walker Washington Post - May 13, 2004 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20596-2004May12.html (registration required) |
| "I hope [Google] doesn't back down from its plan to offer loads of free e-mail storage in return for showing targeted ads next to messages. I view it as an important experiment in the Internet's drive to make advertising more relevant. I have been testing Gmail (gmail.google.com) for weeks and find the value it delivers -- including innovative sorting features and a gigabyte of free storage -- outweighs any worries I have over Google's computers scanning my mail for such key words as "flowers" or "cameras," then displaying matching ads alongside messages." |
| Google Conquers E-Mail – Simson Garfinkel Technology Review - July 7, 2004 http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/04/07/wo_garfinkel070704.asp |
| "Gmail shows that Web applications with thin clients can have advantages over software running on your desktop. The most obvious is reliability: Gmail runs on Google’s servers, not your hard drive, and Google almost certainly does a better job than you do with routine maintenance, backups, and the like. And because everything is kept on Google’s servers, you don’t have to wait for long downloads. Google’s computers are blazingly fast: searching through the few thousand messages stored in my Gmail account is essentially instantaneous. Searching through the same amount of mail on my local computer takes ten seconds or more." |
| Gmail by Google – Jim Lynch PC Magazine – June 30, 2004 http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1618669,00.asp |
| "As it did with Internet searching, Google is looking to raise the bar in the Web e-mail category with its Gmail service. It's a fine service for anyone, and is particularly attractive for power users who require lots of storage and deal with a large volume of e-mail. We just hope this initial 'test' phase is successful and the company rolls it out as a permanent offering. " |
| Google Gmail - The Email Experience- Sushubh Mittal Search Engine Journal – May 18, 2004 http://www.searchenginejournal.com/index.php?p=580 |
| "[Gmail is] one heck of a wonderful service that begs you think, how is it free!... [The ads] just are present at one side. It's not something that's in your face. ...Compare that to Yahoo's big flash ads and Microsoft's heavy pages. You are in a world where you do what you are supposed to do. Manage your mails. And manage them fast!" |
| Google's new e-mail service every bit as great as its search tools – Tom Gromak Detroit News, May 19, 2004 http://www.detnews.com/2004/techcolumns/0405/19/techcol19-150257.htm |
| "It's fast and clean and works: Gmail, like Google itself, is a utilitarian tool, not a pretty one. …If you've got a lot of messages, you can unleash Google's search on your mailbox from an input box located at the top of the web page. Google bills that search tool as one of the service's killer features. That, and space. With a gigabyte of storage, there's really no need to delete messages. You can store them forever and search them in an instant, whether they remain in your inbox or you archive them away and outside your standard view. And big messages don't get rejected or deleted like they do with some services. A colleague's 5.5 megabyte zip file came through to my Gmail account just fine after initially being rejected by my company's e-mail server." |
| Email Gets a Makeover - Michael Bazeley San Jose Mercury News - April 19, 2004 http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/8465749.htm (registration required) |
| "Gmail has significantly raised the bar for Web mail. ... To test its features, I routed my work and some personal e-mail messages through a Gmail account, upward of 100 a day. ... The service I experienced was fast, easy on the eyes and, overall, a treat to use." |
| Google generous with mailbox size, vows no eyes will pry - James Coates Chicago Tribune - April 25, 2004 http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-0404240315apr25,1,1795681.column?coll=chi-technology-nav (registration required) |
| "...each Gmail box gets 1 gigabyte of storage, orders of magnitude larger than the 10 megabytes typically given by free e-mail accounts. ... The huge account size means Google lets users send e-mail attachments up to 10 megabytes each. That's enough to move thousands of digital photos in a single gulp. Sweet." |
| Read My Mail, Please: The silly privacy fears about Google's e-mail service - Paul Boutin Slate - April 15, 2004 http://slate.msn.com/id/2098946 |
| "Gmail's ads are text-only, in the same spartan format used for the ads next to Google's search engine results. In my tests, a mailing-list discussion about in-ear headphones was flanked by terse ads for headphones and audio stores. Press releases about developments in the Wi-Fi industry were accompanied not by ads, but by links to 'related pages' from Google's search engine. Social chit-chat, such as 'let's catch up' or 'what are you doing Friday,' got no ads or links at all. ... Best of all, my outgoing messages are free of the appended shills tacked on by other services." |
| A First Look at Google's Gmail - Arik Hesseldahl Forbes.com - April 12, 2004 http://www.forbes.com/personaltech/2004/04/12/cx_ah_0412tentech.html |
| "If there's one thing Google does well, it's search. We entered in words we knew we had used in messages sent and they popped up instantly. ... On other e-mail programs or services, the most effective way to search message content without taking a long time is to rearrange e-mail by date, sender or subject and then try to zero in on the message you're looking for. Gmail has solved this problem brilliantly." |
| Google Gmail Review: Preliminary Impressions - Bob Matsuoka VAR Business - April 22, 2004 www.varbusiness.com/sections/news/dailyarchives.asp?ArticleID=49596 |
| "In addition to standard features (spell-checking, personalization, attachments), there are some unexpected touches: the ability to 'pop off' composition window, keyboard shortcuts (type a key while browsing mail to trigger features); 'personal level indicators' (indicate messages sent only to you or to you as opposed to a list); and 'snippets' (displaying a section of text from the body of the message, a-la Google searches). ... That's pretty much it, but this simplicity is deceptive. While any one feature may not rise to the level of revolutionary, as a collection they are. ... My experience with Gmail has been in many ways typical of my experience with all of Google's products: efficient, quick, accessible, easy. I suspect that many other people will feel the same way, too." |
| Google's new Gmail has a few quirks, but it works - Mike Wendland Detroit Free Press - April 27, 2004 http://www.freep.com/money/tech/mwend27_20040427.htm |
| "You're going to like this program. Google has spent a lot of time designing a completely original and very useful tool. ... Gmail's most outstanding feature is the cogent and convenient way it organizes mail by collapsible threads, displaying the messages in context and sequence, just like conversations. All the e-mail is searchable. The more I use Gmail, the more I appreciate it. It's the most powerful Web-based e-mail tool you'll find. It's going to be a huge hit." |
| Is Gmail Safe? - Lance Ulanoff PC Magazine - April 21, 2004 http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1571491,00.asp |
| "... [Gmail's contextual ads] would be out of the way, but available to people that want them. Yes, there are people who might actually appreciate the service. I could imagine a scenario where a friend e-mails me about Sony's new Sony DCR-HC40 MiniDV Handycam. I'm interested in learning more, and then I notice that there are some text-based ads next to my mail message pointing to online stores where I can buy the digital camcorder or even prices on the tapes that it uses. What's not to like about that?" |
| Don't be afraid of the big bad Gmail - Mathew Honan Salon.com - April 26, 2004 http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/04/26/gmail/index.html (registration required) |
| "Gmail's labeling is also interesting. Normally, when you want to organize your e-mail, you have to sort it into different folders. Gmail uses 'labels' instead, that allow users to apply multiple labels to the same message. ... Want to keep your work mail separate from your personal mail? Set up a filter that applies a 'work' label to incoming mail from your office's domain. Have friends at work who send you personal messages? Set up another filter that labels those messages as 'friends.' Thus when a co-worker sends you a message about catching an A's game after work, you don't have to make a decision about where to file it. It can appear in both places." |
| The Fuss About Gmail and Privacy: Nine Reasons Why It's Bogus - Tim O'Reilly O'Reilly Media - April 16, 2004 http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/4707 |
| "Despite the claims of critics, I don't see that the kind of automated text scanning that Google would need to do to insert context-sensitive ads is all that different from the kind of automated text scanning that is used to detect spam. (And in fact, those oppressed by spam should look forward to having Google's brilliant search experts tackle spam detection as part of their problem set!)" |
| Google Mail: Virtue Lies in the In-Box – David Pogue New York Times - May 13, 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/13/technology/circuits/13stat.html (registration required) |
| "Even in its current, early state, available only to a few thousand testers, Gmail appears destined to become one of the most useful Internet services since Google itself. ... Gmail is infinitely cleaner, faster, more useful, more efficient, less commercial and less limiting than other Web-based e-mail services. Once Gmail goes live, Hotmail and Yahoo won't know what hit them." |
| Gmail: Google's E-Mail Winner – Steve Bass PC World – June 3, 2004 http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,116301,00.asp |
| "If you've had your fill of Web-based e-mail burdened with skimpy storage and cluttered interfaces, say hello to Google's free Gmail. Packed with innovative features such as message threading and fast searching, Gmail provides a full 1 gigabyte of server space and does away with both banner and pop-up ads, relying instead on sponsored links similar to those on Google's search engine page. … If you would like a free and uncluttered Web mail service with tons of storage, check out Gmail the moment it launches. The privacy issue doesn't bother me: Unlike sleazeball spyware that grabs data without my knowledge, Gmail asked for my permission." |