Gmail - a new email service

Google has launched of a trial version of email services called Gmail.

Gmail will be a rival to Hotmail and Yahoo! and offers a massive amount of free storage (1,000 Mb against Hotmail's 2 Mb and Yahoo!'s 4 Mb) giving the ability to have long term storage of messages.

But the launch has not met with wholesale approval from privacy watchers. Whilst Gmail says it will be free of banners and pop-up adverts, the content will be scanned (Google says it's automatic – no human intervention) to detect the content and then feed related adverts from its very successful AdWords programme. There are also concerns being expressed over the level of privacy when large amounts of private messages are retained.

The introduction of the Gmail service is seen as part of a growing commercial battle between the search engines and email providers. Google has a very strong position in the search engine field – although it no longer provides the main feed of data to Yahoo! – but whether its foray into email services will be a success remains to be seen. Addressing the privacy concerns will be key to this.