Gmail – The Terrific Email Service from Goog. Review on Gmail.com

The introduction of Hotmail saw the birth of free web mail. Those were the days of first generation Emails. Gmail, Google?s latest offering has started a new era that of Second Generation Emails. Google now has made it a habit of making products that forces other established products to improve it self to order to survive. Hears Why?

The much publicized 1000MB Free Space per users as offered by Gmail is now competed by some of the other players in the market in an effort to retain users. But it?s not the mail box size that makes Gmail a pioneer in second generation Emails. It?s the in built Search Engine, Conversation View, Filters, Labels, Starred & Archive features that make it a class apart.

Google is renowned for its Search Engines & the same technology is applied in Gmail too. This makes it really easy to find a particular mail from the thousand of mails one is sure of accumulating in due course of time. The search engine comes with some of the classic Google features; like Snippetsthat?s show the message along with the other thing like subject, date & sender. The advance search function helps search by label, keyword, date range or a host of other options. As long as you don?t delete a mail it can be searched. (Then again with 1000 MB why would one want to delete an email? In that much space one can store roughly about 500,000 emails!!! And that?s the reason all the mails you send are also stored by default in your Sent Mail folder.)

?Conversational View? or ?Threads? is an innovation of Gmail (Much like the view one get while using Google Groups). This innovation groups all the relevant messages together like a deck of cards rather than isolated & scattered messages. I am really pampered by using this feature and now going back to other web mails is really hard for me. There is an option to show all the messages in the thread, but by default only the latest message is shown while others lie collapsed showing only the sender, snippet and date. This feature is a definite trump card for Gmail and they are working to make it much better. Another feature that is bound to change the way traditional web mails function is ?Labels?. These Labels are folders and much more as it gives you the functionally of a folder with a much greater degree of flexibility.

The theory is instead of sorting mails and placing them in a folder (only to forget the location in the crunch moment & waste a hell a lot of time searching for it manually) let all the mails be in the Inbox as they arrive. All you got to do is Label it. (User can create Labels & each email can have multiple Labels.... Yes you can just stick a label or two or three.) When you click on a certain label category the label then becomes a folder displaying all the mails under its banner. The multiple Labeling is the real short in the arm for Gmail. Imagine a situation where a mail sent to you by your friend having certain jokes. This email can be labeled twice and found under both Friends & Jokes category, where as in reality its just one email which lies in your Inbox.

Filter is an automated sorting mechanism which helps you organize your web mail. You can set up to 20 filters. Incoming emails that match your filter rules can bypass the Inbox (i.e. sent to Archive or Trash), be automatically labeled or starred. The heavy email users will find their organizing burden lightened a lot. Gmail is innovative & hears why. When you open a mail to read, the thing that strikes the most is that only the actual gist of the mail is present and all the other no so relevant details like the To address, CC, BCC factors are all hidden by default, but there sure is a reply text field below tosend replies without fuss.

The Archive option is also a good but necessary option. The Star is a jazzy icon that lets you highlight mails & it is possible to set filters to new incoming mails to be starred. (Star is the funky cosine of Label function). It has a runtime address auto complete which again is very handy along with its monstrous 10MB attachment limit. The Print function is very neat & looks quite formal without any ads or irrelevant data (much like MS Outlooks mail print.) Another impressive factor is the quick Java Script interface that lets you navigate pretty fast along with the user friendly ?Newer? & ?Older? links instead of the traditional ?Forward & Back?. The Script also reloads the page at regular intervals there by informing me of a new incoming mail while I am working. Using Gmail has become a pleasurable experience but then?.

Gmail isn?t perfect. It comes with its own baggage of cons, for some solutions are being found as this only the limited entry beta version. But others negatives lie dubious.

A better solution is bound to be found for some of these niggle, but as of now you don?t have a Virus Filter? Yes No Virus Scanners are installed (but some extensions can be blocked) Still? No explicit Virus Filter = Paranoia.Sending HTML email is a far cry and only text messages can be sent as of now. (Point to be noted is that the text messages can be spell-checked. An efficient tool which is incorporated.)

The Address book is very primitive. (Guess the team developing address booking in Google is on vacation. That?s the only excuse that can be given for such a primitive address book.) Hope the come back from vacation and deliver another path breaking address management system when Gmail opens to public.

This is the biggest presumption on my part that Gmail WILL be Free Web Mail in the future for general public use. As of now Google won?t divulge details of their future plans. (Considering Google?s latest IPO & shareholders interest?. let?s say we are on shaky grounds.) The only way Gmail can stay free is if it is able to generate enough renew through is ?Relevant Text Add? of the Google AdSense Program. (On the left hand side of the screen targeted add appears which matches the contents of your email) This again is controversial topic which makes some people feel as Big Brother Google is reading all our mails. Though Google has assured that theNo Human ever read the mail & it?s the program that does it.

Personally I feel the success of the AdSense Program will determine the course of action for launching the full and finial free for all web mail. Like I said as of today it is Only by Invitation one can participate in the preview release & limited test Gmail. The invitation to this exclusive club is so rampant that third party independent websites have popped up facilitating as a hub for invitation swaps. (Something Google is not fond of & their latest Privacy Policy strongly addresses it.) Then again U can find someone like I did who will invite you for Fee just like that. Some of the popular sites offering invitations for Gmail are:

http://www.gmailswap.com

swap.heeheehee.com

http://www.GmailInvitation.com

Bottom Line:-

What Google is for search engines, Gmail will be for Web Emails in time to come? But only if the service is Free for all.

I would give Gmail 4 stars for now and the fifth star when it becomes Free for all.

Go ahead and start Gmailing.

I have Gmail Invitations on me. If you want one mail me.