I’m on a roll today! This time yesterday, zero Gmail accounts. Today, I have 3 invites (none of them from Blogger.com, I should add)! That’s one for me, one for my fiancee, and one for one of my brothers. Both of them got firstname@gmail.com. My name, unfornately is too short for that, as the username has to be at least six characters long, so I just picked aebrahim, as you might expect :).
I’m kind of surprised that no one is selling the invites they receive, because the invites are not tied to a specific email address. Rather, they are unique links that let you enter any name/username you want. Here is a sample invite below (from a Google employee, with names removed, to protect those who offered them to me from being spammed):
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2004 14:45:14 -0700
From:
To: Ali Ebrahim
Subject: Ali, xxxx has invited you to open a Google mail account
I’ve been using Gmail and thought you might like to try it out. Here’s an invitation to create an account.
———————————————————————–
xxxx has invited you to open a free Google Gmail account.
To accept this invitation and register for your account, visit
URL removed — but the URL is unique to each invitation
This invitation can only be used to set up one account, so please read the information below carefully.
Once you create your account, xxxx will be notified with
your new @gmail.com address so you can stay in touch with Gmail!
Gmail is a new search-based webmail service that offers:
– A new webmail account and address at gmail.com
– 1,000 megabytes (one gigabyte) of free storage
– Built-in Google search that instantly finds any message you want
– Automatic arrangement of messages and related replies into “conversations”
– Links to related web pages and text ads
Gmail is still in an early stage of development. As one of the system’s first testers, you may experience some turbulence but you’ll also get to see how it improves over time. While we think Gmail is ready for a taste test, we still need your help to add the frosting and little colored sprinkles. We’ll ask for your comments and suggestions periodically and we appreciate your taking the time to provide feedback.
If you’d prefer to wait until Gmail is fully baked, please delete this message and sign up to receive email updates on our progress by visiting this page: http://gmail.google.com/gmail/help/about.html.
Speedy delivery,
The Gmail Team
To learn more about Gmail before registering, visit:
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/help/benefits.html
(If clicking the URLs in this message does not work, copy and paste them into the address bar of your browser).