April 1, 2004

April Fools Or For Real? A humorously written April 1st press release from Google indicates it will be providing a free email service with 1 gigabyte of space per user. Initially excited about the idea, many Slashdot posters now think it is a hoax. But the linked New York Times article by John Markoff gives a price of $2 per gigabyte to maintain and contains enough details to make one think the idea might be real. Furthermore Google can use its already very success Ad-Words text ad system to provide revenue by placing context-related ad on the top or side of each email you read.  So I guess the answer is to wait and see what turns up. Update (April 1st): While noting that using terms such as, "Heck, Yeah," Say Google Founders" and "She kvetched about spending all her time filing messages or trying to find them" was fairly non standard for a press release CNN has learned from Jonathan Rosenberg, vice president of the products group at Google, that the Gmail announcement is legitimate. 12:20:48 AM

Locus Online has a series of special April 1st reports. 12:10:31 AM