Gmail Account Features: * Free Web Based Email * Over 7 Gigs of Free Storage * POP3 Mail Retrieval Included * Built In Chat, Video, and Text * 20 Megabyte Attachments

History of Gmail:

Gmail, known as Google Mail in some parts of the world, was made by Google Inc. on 1 April 2004 as an invitation-only beta release and became available to the general public on February 7, 2007. It was a project initially started by Google developer Paul Buchheit several years before it was announced to the public. Initially the software was available only internally as an email client for Google employees.

Google invited about 1,000 employees, friends, and family members to become beta testers, with trials beginning on 21 March 2004. Gmail members occasionally received "invites" which they could extend to their friends.

During the initial months of the initial beta phase, 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 accounts being sold for several thousand dollars.

Gmail Unique Interface:

The Gmail interface makes Gmail unique amongst webmail systems for several reasons. Most evident to users is its search-oriented features and means of managing e-mail in a "conversation view" that is similar to an Internet forum.

Through organization users can construct "advanced searches" using either the Advanced Search interface or search operators in the search box. Search options include search for phrases, message sender, message location and message date.

Gmail recognizes related messages by subject and groups them into "conversations" where associated messages appear listed one after another, with the newest messages at the bottom. If a conversation has more than approximately 100 messages, it splits into separate sections.

To organize messages further, users can label e-mails. Labels provide a flexible method of categorizing e-mails since an e-mail may have any number of labels. Users can display all e-mails having a particular label and can use labels as a search criterion. In addition, important e-mails can be flagged with a star, so that a user may find an important e-mail more quickly than searching through the entire inbox.




Gmail Web Browser Support:

Gmail's HTML version will work on almost all modern browsers:

* Internet Explorer 5.5+
* Mozilla Firefox 1.0+
* Safari 1.2.1+
* K-Meleon 0.9+
* Netscape 7.1+
* Opera 9+
* Google Chrome
* AOL Explorer 9.0+

Although officially unsupported, Gmail also works in Konqueror when the browser identifies itself as Firefox 1.5+. However, the new code introduced on 29 October 2007 has more stringent requirements; users must upgrade their browsers to Firefox 2.0+ or to Internet Explorer 7. This can cause a minor issue for some users, as several new features operate only in Gmail's newer version.