Google has been running it’s beta Gmail service since just before April fools day last year. It caused a major stir for two reasons. Firstly, the 1 Gigabyte storage allowance, where others were providing only capacities in Megabytes. Secondly, because it was by invitation only. It gained such a perception of geek status because of these two factors that people were auctioning invitations on eBay until Google intervened and prohibited this action in their user agreement. As part of the features the software provides, users are able to invite people to join the service. Usually these were limited to only a few at a time. Recently, the allowance in most accounts increased to 50. Today, it seems that the service has taken the next step in opening up, and the Gmail team have invited in people who signed up for notifications. The message starts with :

Thanks for signing up to be updated on the latest Gmail happenings. We hope it’s been worth the wait, because we’re excited to finally offer you an invitation to open a free Gmail account!

Perhaps we’re on the verge of seeing Gmail leave it’s beta status.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 18th, 2005 at 7:18 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.