Introduction
Google has an email service called as Gmail or Google Mail. Gmail can be accessed through the ‘mail.google.com’ domain. In the United Kingdom and Germany, Gmail is known as Google Mail because of dispute over its name ‘Gmail’. The ‘mail.google.com’ service is offered free to everyone because it is well supported by advertisements.
Google Mail service can only be accessed through a secure connection and it can also be accessed through email clients that use IMAP4 or POP3 protocols. On 1st April 2004, beta version of ‘mail.google.com’ was launched and this service was only offered by invitation.
On 7th February 2007, everyone on this globe was given access to the beta version of ‘mail.google.com’. On 7th July 2009, the beta version of ‘mail.google.com’ was upgraded to stable version.
All around the globe ‘mail.google.com’ service had 350 million users as on January 2012. The Google Mail service has been developed on Ajax platform and it is a search oriented service. When ‘mail.google.com’ service was started it had storage space of 1 GB but now it offers more than 7 GB storage space.
A user can get additional 20 GB storage space by paying $5 USD per year or a user can opt for 16 TB storage space by paying $4096 USD per year. If a user opts for additional storage space then such space is shared between Google Mail, Google Docs and Picasa services.
The ‘mail.google.com’ service also has new feature testing service called as Labs which was first introduced on 5th June 2008. Through Labs, a user can test new Google Mail features and can provide its feedback to the development team of ‘mail.google.com’. A user can also disable all the Labs features while using ‘mail.google.com’ service.
The ‘mail.google.com’ service has the best spam filtering service which helps Google Mail to divert all the spam emails directly to the spam folder. The ‘mail.google.com’ also provides mobile service. The mobile service of ‘mail.google.com’ allows a user to access email through a mobile device. With the mobile service of ‘mail.google.com’ a user can easily read, unread, compose, add star or archive any email message.
The Google mobile service is available in more than forty languages and it was launched on 16th December 2005. To use mobile service of ‘mail.google.com’ you should have a mobile phone with a WAP browser and an internet connection. For iPod Touch and iPhone, Push Mail was added by using Google Sync to the ‘mail.google.com’ service on 22nd September 2009.
In some countries for spamming and security reasons, to register for ‘mail.google.com’ service a new user has to compulsorily provide a mobile phone number or else the person can’t open a Google mail account. If a registered user does not uses his ‘mail.google.com’ account for at least nine months then such a Google Mail account is terminated.
Tips and comments
Through ‘mail.google.com’ a user can also chat through Google Video and Voice Chat feature. Through the chat feature, a Google Mail user can make free calls to Canada and the United States at least till the end of 2012. Executable files cannot be received or sent by a user of ‘mail.google.com’.
