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Gmail Notifier

The Gmail Notifier, an official tool offered by Google, displays a small icon in the notification area (see Taskbar) in Microsoft Windows and on the right-hand side of the menu bar in Mac OS X, indicating the presence of new mail in one's inbox. It also has a feature that makes Gmail the default mail client for mailto links. It does not, however, download new messages.

On Windows, the Gmail Notifier is uninstalled (after a prompt to the user) if one installs Google Talk, which provides the same features and a new, updated interface.

Available to those who surf with Mozilla Firefox is the identically named Gmail Notifier extension, first appeared around July 8, 2004 , more than one month before the official one (August 21, 2004).

On Mac OS X v10.4's Dashboard, there is a Widget that is the Gmail Notifier

Chats

Gmail's chat feature allows you to chat with other people that have a Gmail account. It interacts with the whole Google Talk network, so can be synchronised with that particular program. However, only text-based chat can take place within Internet Browsers; voice calling is Google Talk's advantage.

Because of the move away from e-mail, and therefore the name "Gmail", Google have decided to change the logo for Gmail, so that it includes '+ talk'. The logo also has a glossier finish compared to its predecessor.

The introduction of Gmail Chat allows Gmail users to easily connect to the Google Talk network on computers that do not have the Google Talk cilent installed, without needing third-party cilents (such as Psi, Miranda IM, iChat, Adium and Gaim) or web-based applications such as GTalkr.

Dormant accounts

Every account which is inactive for 9 months gets deactivated by Gmail. All stored messages get deleted and the account gets "recycled", which means the account name can be used by any other users afterwards. Other webmail services, like Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail, have different, sometimes shorter, times for marking an account as inactive. Yahoo! Mail deactivates dormant accounts after four months, while Hotmail deactivates accounts after only one month.

Security

E-mail signing

Gmail is the first major provider to sign outgoing mails with Yahoo!'s DomainKeys signatures.

Anti-virus scanning

Gmail recently introduced a feature which automatically scans all incoming and outgoing e-mail attachments for viruses. If a virus is found on an attachment the reader is trying to open, Gmail will try to remove the virus and open the newly cleaned attachment. Gmail also scans all outgoing attachments, and if a virus is found on an outgoing attachment Gmail will prevent the message from being sent until the attachment is removed; this is an innovation that has not been previously seen in other webmail services such as Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail. Despite the newly added anti-virus service, Gmail does not allow users to send or receive executable files (such as files ending in .exe or .com), even if they are sent within an unencrypted zipped (.zip, .tar, .tgz, .taz, .z, .gz) file. This makes it difficult to use Gmail to send programs to other users. A way users bypass this is to change the file extension (to .txt or .exe_ or .zip_ for example) then change it back once the other user has retrieved the file.

Spam filtering

Gmail offers a spam filtering system. According to Gmail, messages marked as spam are automatically deleted after 30 days, but there have been reports on Gmail Help Discussion of spam mails staying in the spam folder for months.

Awards and support

Gmail was ranked #2 in PC World's "The 100 Best Products of 2005" , ranking #1 being given to Mozilla Firefox. Other awards include "Honourable Mention" in the Bottom Line Design Awards 2005 . Gmail has drawn many favourable reviews from users.

Shortcomings & criticism

The conversation view groups related messages in a linear stack, which can be expanded and collapsed. While this does provide an innovative view of an e-mail thread, it does not provide any way to differentiate messages that branch off from the original thread. This can occur when mail is sent to multiple recipients who respond individually.

Google seems hesitant to release any upcoming plans for the implementation of these features.

Absent features

The following features are absent from Gmail.

Some are provided by another kind of computer program, such as Eudora, Outlook Express or Apple Mail.

Some are provided by the same kind of computer program, webmail applications (sometimes for a price), such as Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail.

Features present in Linux mail programs (such as Kmail) are: automatic spell-checking (by red underline), "attachment warning," and automatic bounce-back of unwanted mail (imitating a mail-daemon message). Gmail may or may not add these in the future.

General

Those are absent features that include, at least, Organizing and Searching:

• The ability to fully use Google search technology on Gmail.
• The ability to fully use Google search technology on Gmail Contacts.
• The ability to search (or filter) in the whole e-mail, like in the headers.

Organizing

• The ability to group labels.
• Some conversation handling features such as adding an e-mail to a conversation and removing one from it.
• The ability to separate conversations, or to have e-mails not grouped into conversations by default.
• The ability to select "All" e-mails, or "All" contacts, or even apply labels to all selected e-mails, not only the limited amount displayed. (this is in fact a much bigger limitation than it may look like as using both features together can get really troublesome)
• The ability to use the automatic filter on messages already received. (although users can use Gmail's advanced search)
• The ability to do many actions with the same filter (although the user can always create a lot of filters).
• The ability to add own notes to received messages.

Searching

• The ability to search within text message attachments.
• The ability to go to the oldest item, or page, of any search / filter / label, whenever the list gets big enough.
• The ability to search beyond 20 results (the settings / max page size only works for labels and the inbox).
• The ability to use same searching syntax with filters.
• The ability to view the entire conversation threaded together from the inbox.
• The ability to retrieve relevant search results using partial queries (e.g., a search for "class" should also return occurrences of "classes").

(E-mail) protocol resources

• The ability to import mail from external POP3 servers into the webmail account.
• The ability to queue messages to be sent automatically at a future chosen date and time.
• The ability to send a request for a return receipt with messages.
• The ability to mark the importance (e.g., "urgent") of a particular message.
• The ability to enable POP only for unread mail.
• The ability to create disposable email aliases.

Others

• The ability to delete any attachment from a delivered message, be it sent or received.
• The ability to change signatures along with changing the "From" field.
• The ability to alternate between private and official signatures.
• The ability to log in on the same account and mailbox by using Plus-addressing while enabling to customize configurations.
• An option to add description / information to Report Spam feature.
• The ability to edit the HTML of an email to personalize formatting.
• The ability to format a signature block with font types, colors, sizes, links, or pictures.
• The ability to maintain a blacklist.
• The ability to import existing messages from desktop email software such as Microsoft Outlook
• The lack of a calendar/to-do list function such as that found in Yahoo! Mail
• The ability to use the Vacation Responder as an action of the messages Filter.

Blacklisted

Some of the Gmail-proxies are listed on the blacklist of Spamcop. This means some e-mail sent from a Gmail-account will be bounced as spam when sent to providers using Spamcop as anti-spam measure.

Differences between interfaces

It has been noted that changing the interface language between English (UK) and English (US) will affect the overall interface. For example, the UK has different standards for date and time, as well as naming (ie: Trash versus Deleted Items).

While these are simple cosmetic differences, there are several limitations encountered within various language interfaces:

Non-US interfaces

Because Google is located primarily in the United States, non-US interfaces tend to lag behind in upgrades and features:

• Use of the Custom From Address feature is disabled. Custom From Address on Gmail Help (2005-11-29)
• Virus scanning feature is unavailable.
• Contact Groups are unavailable
• Vacation Responder is unavailable

US interface

• When replying, the display does not show the original message's time, just the date.

Bugs

• There are no known bugs in Gmail at present

"Lockdown in sector 4"

In 2005, some Gmail users began reporting that their accounts were being locked for 24 hours or more. Account home pages were reportedly replaced with the flippant title: "Lockdown in sector 4!" along with a short explanation of the lockdown. Google's explanation was that the accounts in question had conducted "unusual usage," although the users maintain their innocence. Most account lockdowns are lifted after 24-72 hours, although some users report being locked out again not long after , though most of the time the user could clear their cache and reload the page, and the account would become unlocked again. It also may be worth noting that virtually all webmail providers will suspend an account if it is suspected of violating the provider's terms of service.

It is worth noting that many scripts for the Mozilla Firefox extension Greasemonkey have caused this problem as well.

In response to questions about the lockdown, Gmail sends an automated reply that directly tells you to not use Greasemonkey. From Gmail: "using certain browser extensions that change the behavior of a website (Greasemonkey, a popular Firefox extension, often interferes with Gmail. We suggest disabling Greasemonkey to use Gmail without any issues.)"

The Privacy Issue

There has been a great deal of criticism regarding Gmail's privacy policy. Some of the controversy surrounded the clause "residual copies of e-mail may remain on our systems for some time, even after you have deleted messages from your mailbox or after the termination of your account." Many believed that this meant that Google would intentionally archive copies of deleted mail forever. Google continues to rebut some of this criticism by pointing out that Gmail is using mostly industry wide practices. Google later stated that they will "make reasonable efforts to remove deleted information from our systems as quickly as is practical." Most webmail providers keep multiple copies of e-mails in case of system failures or errors, and when users delete e-mails or accounts, it takes time for them to completely purge the e-mails from all their backup servers.

Most of the criticism, however, was against Google's plans to add context-sensitive advertisements to e-mails by automatically scanning them. Privacy advocates raised concerns that the plan involved scanning their personal, assumed private, e-mails, and that this was a security problem. Allowing e-mail content to be read, even by a computer, for advertising purposes, raises the risk that the constitutional expectation of privacy in e-mail will be reduced. Furthermore, non-subscribers' e-mail is scanned by Gmail as well, and these senders of e-mail did not agree to Gmail's terms of service or privacy policy. Exacerbating the situation is the fact that Google can change its privacy policy unilaterally, and that Google is technically able to cross-reference cookies across its information-rich product line to make dossiers on individuals. However, most webmail providers use e-mail scanning to offer spam filtering and other features, and no human (except for the sender or recipent) ever reads the e-mails in this proccess. Google believes that showing relevant ads will offer a better webmail experience, and Gmail only shows "Family-Safe" ads, and does not show ads for messages with sensitive or inappropriate content, such as coverage on natural disasters.

Another unresolved issue discussed amongst privacy advocates is the lack of disclosed data retention and correlation policies. More than 30 privacy and civil rights organizations have urged Google to suspend Gmail service until these issues are resolved .

History & Development

Gmail was announced amid a flurry of rumor. Owing to April Fool's Day, however, the company's press release was greeted with skepticism in the technology world, especially since Google already had been known to make April Fool's Jokes (such as PigeonRank). However, they explained that their real joke had been a press release saying that they would take offshoring to the extreme by putting employees in a "Google Copernicus Center" on the Moon. Jonathan Rosenberg, Google's vice-president of products, was quoted by BBC News as saying, "We are very serious about Gmail."

Gmail also initially received a lot of criticism for a statement they made in their original terms of use, refusing to guarantee that all e-mails at Gmail would be deleted upon request by the user. Google later clarified that they were referring to backup copies of e-mails, and promised that all deleted mails would eventually be expunged completely from their servers. This, along with the feature that advertisements would be generated by software-based scanning of e-mails in order to better target them, gave rise to a controversy on web privacy (see BBC News Article and google-watch.org; for a defense see The Fuss About Gmail and Privacy: Nine Reasons Why It's Bogus).

Before being acquired by Google, the gmail.com domain name was used by the free e-mail service offered by Garfield.com, online home of the comic strip Garfield. This free e-mail service has moved to e-garfield.com.

As of June 22 2005, Gmail's canonical URI has been changed to http://mail.google.com/mail/ instead of http://gmail.google.com/gmail/.

Beta testing phase

Google initially invited about 1,000 employees, friends, and family members to become beta testers, with trials beginning on March 21, 2004. Active users from the Blogger.com community were offered the chance to participate in the beta-testing on April 25, and later, Gmail members occasionally received "invites" which they could extend to their friends. One round of invites was sent out on May 1, and another three invitations were given to all active members on June 1; by mid-June, the number of invitations had increased, with many users receiving between three and five invites daily. On February 2, 2005, the invitation interface was changed to make it easier to give invites by simply entering an e-mail address and at approximately 3:00 UTC on February 3, 2005, some Gmail users were awarded 50 invites, and more recently, 100 invites, suggesting that Gmail would soon go public. Now, if one attends a Google Mini webinar, one will get a Gmail invitation. One is also able to receive an invitation to Gmail through the use of Google Mobile. More information can be found at http://www.google.com/enterprise/mini/product_tours_demos.html.

During the initial months of the Gmail beta, Gmail's well-publicized feature set and the exclusive nature of the accounts caused the aftermarket price of Gmail invitations to skyrocket. According to PC World magazine, Gmail invitations were selling on eBay for as much as US$150, with some specific accounts being sold for several thousand dollars. After a new round of invitations in early June, the price for invitations fell down to between US$2-$5. Several philanthropic Gmail users have utilized services such as the now defunct GmailSwap to donate invitations to people who want them. On June 28, Google amended its policy to forbid the selling of registered accounts. See the Official Gmail Program Policy.

Current status

In March 2004, Google said that Gmail would probably be released publicly after six months of testing, which would have placed their launch in September 2004, but it is still in beta as of March 2006. Speculation also regarding the release date is right after The New York Times said they had "credible sources" saying "Gmail will be released publicly by the end of the year 2005." As of present, however, one needs an invitation from an existing user or to sign up via text message using the gmail homepage (www.gmail.com) and a U.S. cellular phone that has SMS capabilities to get an account, and the site still says it is in the beta development stage. The number of invitations existing account holders can send has been varied, presumably to control the usage and growth of the system. For all intents and purposes, Gmail is open to the public now, since thousands of invites are publicly available from many websites. The use of the invitation/text message system helps prevent spammers from registering numerous accounts for purposes of spamming, and will ensure that any account used illegally will have another valid e-mail address or phone number to trace a user (the one to which the invite was sent).

In January 2005, security experts discovered a critical flaw in the handling of Gmail messages that would allow hackers to easily access private e-mails from any Gmail user's account. This was posted with detailed information to popular technology site Slashdot at 9:23 a.m. PST on January 12, 2005. At roughly 10:15 a.m. PST on January 13, 2005, developers at Gmail announced that they had fixed the problem, and that the security flaw had been patched. Despite Gmail's status as a beta application, this raised concerns among some users who use Gmail as their primary mail account.

On April 1, 2005, exactly one year after the initial release, Gmail increased the mailbox size to 2 GB (advertising it as 2GB plus) and introduced some other new features, including formatted editing (giving users the option of sending messages in HTML or plain text). As of March 2006, the mailbox size is 2.7 GB, and is increasing continuously at a rate of approximately 10 MB per month.

On June 7, 2005, Isnoop.net Gmail Invite Spooler was deactivated by the site moderator, due to intolerance by Google. It was explained that Gmail's Product Manager would no longer tolerate the service, and was shut down midnight PDT. The service was featured in Popular Science magazine, and had given out over 1.2 million Gmail accounts.

Starting on July 11, 2005, or more likely earlier, Google gave away free Gmail accounts to random people who searched for the word "gmail" using the Google search engine. A promotion link would appear at the top of the page displaying "New! Get Gmail - Google's free e-mail service with over 2GB of storage." This has since expired.

On August 24, 2005, Google offered a new method of signing up for a Gmail account via mobile phone text messaging. The public would be able to obtain an account by submitting a U.S. mobile phone number to Google, which would then send a text message with an invitation code that would be used to create a Gmail account. Numbers are stored in order to keep track of the number of accounts created which is limited to ten per phone number. This method of creating accounts makes it difficult for spammers to send out spam messages, getting spam delivered, or obtaining an account thus keeping Gmail as spam-free as possible. This method is currently only available to people with a U.S. mobile phone number. See https://www.google.com/accounts/SmsMailSignup1.

On August 30, 2005, Gmail started to add the facility to customize the address that messages are sent from on outgoing mail to some accounts. This adds option for outgoing messages to appear as if they had been sent from an alternative e-mail address, rather than from the Gmail account. Right now, this option is only available for accounts that have set English (US) as Gmail display language. Gmail Help Center., but users can switch to another language and keep using this feature after adding another address.

In August 2005, Gmail started offering 100 invites to some users.

In October 2005, Gmail withdrew use of username@gmail.com within the UK, due to a dispute with the UK company Independent International Investment Research (IIIR), who own the gmail.co.uk domain. From October 19, any new UK users wanting a gmail account were forced to have username@googlemail.com. There is still a concern that old UK users will also have to change to the new domain sometime in the future.

In December 2005, Gmail added a "Vacation responder" (to provide automatic response to e-mails), and Contact Groups (allowing e-mail to be sent to a number of contacts, in a user defined group).

On December 16, 2005, Google quietly released a version of Gmail for the mobile device, which they named "Gmail Mobile" , This product competes with, and has features similar to an open source version of Gmail Mobile 1.0 which was launched just 3 weeks earlier by the SourceForge community.

On January 17, 2006, Gmail added a delete button to the menu bar. This now allows users to easily delete their messages.

On February 7, 2006, Gmail added the ability for users to chat with others on their contact list when logged into their account. A Quick Contacts box displays names of people that are emailed most often and when a name is clicked, a chat session or email will start. Chat sessions will then show up on the bottom right corner or it can be popped-out into a new window. Users have the option to save their chats in a Chat History.

Gmail for your domain

On February 10 2006, Google introduced Gmail for your domain. This service, currently in beta testing, allows organizations to offer e-mail services through Gmail using their own domain. San Jose City College is one of the organizations currently using this service. Google may eventually open the service to all domain owners, as Microsoft has with its Windows Live Custom Domains service.

Gmail in other languages

• On April 13, 2005, Gmail became available in several languages: British English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian and simplified and traditional Chinese.
• On June 30, 2005, Gmail became available in 4 new languages: Danish, Finnish, Polish, and Swedish.
• On August 9, 2005, Gmail became available in 12 new languages: Bulgarian, Croatian, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Latvian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese.
• In the beginning of September 2005, Gmail became available in 9 new languages: Catalan, Czech, Estonian, Hindi, Lithuanian, Romanian, Tagalog, Thai, and Turkish.

Name change in Germany and in the UK

Gmail in Germany

The German version of Gmail was first named Gmail Deutschland. Unfortunately for Google, the German company Giersch Ventures had already trademarked G-mail in 2001. The company later filed a lawsuit against Google for trademark infringement.

On 4 July 2005, Google announced that Gmail Deutschland would be rebranded Google Mail. From that point forward, visitors originating from a German IP would be forwarded to googlemail.com where they could obtain an email address containing the new domain. Any German user who wants a gmail.com address must sign up for an account through a proxy. German users who were already registered were allowed to keep their old addresses.

Despite this limitation, German users can still be emailed at their corresponding address containing the gmail.com domain. In many respects, the googlemail.com address is simply an alias. A German user interested in having their mail sent to gmail.com can simply change their reply-to address.

The Giersch Ventures lawsuit also forced Google to change the site's URL from gmail.google.com to mail.google.com, which briefly broke some applications and plugins that relied on this address to access the mail service.

Gmail in the UK

On 19 October 2005, the UK version of Gmail was converted to Google Mail for similar reasons to those described above for Germany .

To register a @gmail.com email address in the UK, a proxy server such as VTunnel can be used to avoid the @googlemail.com address UK residents are given. As of the 9th February 2006, users in the UK appear to be seeing the main logo "Gmail+Chat" as opposed to the expected Google Mail logo. However, on the day afterwards, it was changed back to Google Mail, suggesting a mistake in the process.

There is another way to register a Gmail address in the UK or Germany. When opening a Gmail invite in the UK or Germany, the suffix &gd=1 is appended to the end of the invite URL. By changing the "1" to "2", one can get a Gmail address.

Competition

After Gmail's initial announcement and development, many existing web mail services quickly increased their storage capacity. For example, Hotmail went from giving some users 2MB to 25MB (250MB after 30 days, and 2 GB for Hotmail Plus accounts), while Yahoo! Mail went from 4MB to 100MB (and 2 GB for Yahoo! Mail Plus accounts). Yahoo! Mail storage then proceeded to 250MB, and finally, in late April 2005, to 1GB. These were all seen as moves to stop existing users from switching to Gmail, and to capitalize on the newly rekindled public interest in web mail services. The desire to catch up was especially visible for MSN Hotmail, which upgraded its e-mail storage erratically from 250 MB to the new Windows Live Mail (beta) which includes 2 GB of storage over a number of months. In August 2005, AOL launched AIM Mail, a webmail service integrated with AIM offering 2 GB of storage and an innovative unsend feature. Another example of great competition came from www.30gigs.com who were offering 30 gigabytes of storage, and was also invite only.

Other than the general increase of storage limit, there has also been an improvement of the e-mail interfaces of Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail after the launch of Gmail. The e-mail attachment size of 10MB was also matched by Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail during the year 2005.

Getting Help in Gmail

When users first sign up for Gmail, they are prompted to take the Gmail Tour which teaches them the basic features and what makes Gmail different. There is also a help page teaching new Gmail users how to import their contacts from their previous webmail account using CSV . However, it only offers personalized help for Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail; it has also been reported that recently-created Gmail accounts will receive a welcome e-mail with the link to the switching guide. Clicking on "Help" at the top right hand corner of Gmail takes a user to the Gmail Help Center. If the Gmail Help Center does not answer a question, a user can contact Gmail. Alternatively, a user can also ask other users for help on Gmail Help Discussion, a Google Group for users to give and receive help on Gmail.

See also

• List of Google services and tools
• Google
• Google Groups
• Gmail Help Discussion
• AIM Mail
• Hotmail
• Yahoo! Mail
• Windows Live Mail

Add-Ins

• PhpGmailDrive
• Gmail Drive
• GmailFS
• RoamDrive

External links

• Gmail
• Gmail Tips
• O'Reilly on Gmail Hacks
• Interview with Sergey Brin about the future of Gmail
• Google help and discussion group

FAQs

• Gmail - Google FAQ
• Google's Gmail: A Rough Guide to Protecting Your Privacy - EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
• Gmail Privacy FAQ - EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center)
• Gmail - The Unofficial Gmail FAQ

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