Another G-Mail Thread

[alpha]

Time for a little sober reflection here whilst all of the hype is going on about Google's G-Mail service.

Has anyone stopped to consider the following.

1. If Google are still offering this for free, will their current advertising schemes create enough revenue in order to purchase new servers that would be needed to accomodate all of the members?

2. If they cannot get servers quick enough to cope with demand once the system goes live to everyone, would you expect to see a reduction in the size of mailbox offered?

I would reckon users with 1GB of space each would require one hell of a lot of servers.

It might have been a great marketing ploy, but I reckon the finance guys are going to have sleepless nights about the eventual costs of this.

 

[Lesli]

Here's another thing to think about.

Viral marketing is touted as a fantastic thing. It is, because with few exceptions, it's difficult to couterfeit this kind of marketing. It has to be friend-to-friend, associate-to-associate. It can't be tracked.

But through the invites, Google may be able to track some of it. Or at least they may be able to convince other companies that they have a rough roadmap of viral marketing among the digerati - which would net them plenty of cash, even if all they could identify was more patterns. We've all been tagged and released.

Or I could just be drinking too much coffee this morning.

 

[alpha]

I thought the invites were for the beta only to test it?

 

[imported_Stephen]

They were meant to be rwa but I am sure google knew they were going to be either sold or just given away to people that wanted to check them out before they were live, otherwise they wouldn't have given out so many invites.
There couldn't be anywhere near as many people that wanted to test it for bugs as the number of invites given out by the system.

I think you are right though, I think that they and now yahoo too will have problems with space.
Yahoo are giving 2gb for $20 monthly I think the cost is.
But with google giving out so much space, they couldn't afford to keep it going at the rate it is expected for once it goes live.

Far too many people will want it, since you can't delete emails, the space will be filled with millions, if not billions, of spam emails, and maybe even emails with viruses that will take up even more space.

I don't think it is very well thought out, if they allowed users to delete emails I think it would be a different case, but as it is I don't think it is a great idea to be honest.

 

[gooooogle]

Hotmail is also increasing their account sizes now, but I have a feeling that Bill Gates can afford it.

 

[Lesli]

Keep in mind that most of the email content won't be accessed on a daily basis - just read, replied to, perhaps forwarded, and then (largely) forgotten about. Even with the conversational threading (which is kind of neat, kind of annoying, takes getting used to), most "conversations" will go dormant a week or two after they're started. Then they'll just sit there. This isn't even like little-accessed files on someone's web account, which can be accessed by anyone unless there's specific blocking on the file(s) in question. As long as Google keeps their storage needs in mind and plans accordingly, they should be fine.

They apparently already have their own mini-farm of servers, so they aren't just starting from scratch or making a very sudden change in what they'll deal with. Their admins have worked with herds of servers before. They know most of the tricks.

I'm also almost willing to bet that the pace of invites being given out is tied into how much available room they have for growth on the gmail servers (as well as other factors, of course).

Oh - and Stephen, you can remove emails from your account space (either individual messages or entire conversations.) When you move something to the trash folder, you can either delete that specific item from the Trash folder view or just let it sit for 30 days. Google will delete the item after that.