Google to offer free e-mail

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, April 01, 2004

Google to offer free e-mail

Search engine Google Inc. announced Wednesday it will launch a free, Web-based e-mail service to compete against popular services from rivals Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

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Search engine Google Inc. announced Wednesday it will launch a free, Web-based e-mail service to compete against popular services from rivals Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

Google's service, called "Gmail," will include a built-in search function that will let people search every e-mail they've ever sent or received.

According to company executives, users will be able to type in keywords to sort e-mails or find old missives. And it will come with 1 gigabyte of free storage �� more than 100 times what some popular rivals offer and enough to hold 500,000 pages of e-mail.

The service is being offered to invited users, and will be available to everyone in a few weeks, the company said.

Officials at Yahoo and Microsoft's Hotmail division declined to comment on Google's entry into a new category.

But analysts said that Google �� whose technology is behind nearly four out of every five Web searches �� could shake up the free e-mail market.

Yahoo dominates the niche, with 52.6 million unique users per month in the United States, according to a February survey by online research firm comScore Media Metrix. Hotmail is next, with 45.4 million users. AOL has 40.2 million paying users.

Industry analyst David Ferris said Gmail is a logical extension of the world's most popular search engine. But he said Google may run into trouble if it tries to charge for e-mail eventually.

The company would not provide details of its pricing strategy, but rivals have kept stripped versions of e-mail free and asked users to pay annual fees up to $30 or more for extra storage and spam protection.

"I know that companies offering free e-mail are very frustrated because the consumer expects it will stay free �� they simply will not pay any money for them," said Ferris, president of San Francisco-based Ferris Research. "Although there's a clear tendency for these free services to offer for-fee extensions, users are very resistant to taking them up. The level of adoption is very disappointing."

Source: agencies

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