RE: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] Google Gmail...

[Jonathan King <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Thu, 1 Apr 2004, Mike Miller wrote:

> On Thu, 1 Apr 2004, Russell Horn wrote:
> 
> > > > Fact or Fiction?
> >
> > http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/gmail.html
> 
> Almost sure to be fact -- they've done too much work for it to be fiction.
> I got on their mailing list.  I want to try to sign up as soon as possible
> to get a cool g-mail address!

If this is a joke, it's a really, really, *really* elaborate joke.  
I actually did the math, and it's pretty clear that it would take 
even me like 10 years or so to fill up a 1 GB space.  (Calculation:
100 messages / day x 10 years x 365 days/year x 3000 bytes/message 
~= 1 GB.)  Most accounts will contain much less than that (I'm 
having good thoughts about 50 MB).  So let's pretend they can fit 20 
users into 1 GB of space.  That's 20,000 users per TB, and a 
Terabyte of disk probably costs them a couple thousand on the 
outside in hardware.  If the cost of running the service is ten 
times the hardware cost per year, that gets me a total cost of $1 
per user per year.  *Maybe* I'm low by a factor of 10.  In that 
case, the cost per user is like $10 per year, or under $3 billion 
for every possible email user in the US.

Now: do I think Google can generate that much in revenue from each 
email user or from advertisers wanting to reach such users?   OH 
yeah.  No problem.  Especially since I can guarantee that a lot of 
GMail users will end up getting it through their affiliation with 
some other group that can easily be marketed to.  College alumni 
email accounts are one obvious source.  Unions and professional 
societies are another.  Hell, *whole companies* could get out of the 
email business by outsourcing to Google (maybe getting some deluxe 
service).

> It sounds like something I might actually be able to use.  I do
> e-mail on my Sun/Solaris computer, but I can forward everything to
> g-mail then read my messages more easily from anywhere.  Having
> lots of storage space and good searching capability makes it
> potentially worthwhile.

You're thinking too small. "Potentially worthwhile?" I'm sorry, but
this is the bomb.  Feel free to call me an idiot if we all end up
being hoaxed, but this really is a plan for world domination.  
Today your email, tomorrow your domain name, the day after, your
website (if your email is up to a gig, your shiny new personal
website is just lost in the noise, and the more websites they host,
the fewer they have to crawl.)

In potentially related news, I noticed that their list of supported
browsers are Explorer 5.5+ and a bunch of different ways to spell
"Mozilla".  To say that Microsoft is going to HATE this move is an
understatement.  It might actually be the turning point for them.
And I think we can safely assume then that the Mozilla Foundation
will find themselves with a pretty decent cash position soon.

And I, for one, welcome our new Google overlords.

jking



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