Google Planning to Roll Out E-Mail Service

Be ready for the Google portal…it will launch a new consumer-oriented electronic mail service.

The new service, to be named Gmail, is scheduled to be released on Thursday, according to this NYT story.

Google’s entry into the e-mail business will sharpen the lines between the major competing portals like Yahoo and MSN and Internet service providers like AOL and Earthlink.

Update: Wired News: It plans to offer a free Web-based e-mail service with 1 GB of storage space, far more than rival services by Yahoo and Hotmail.

Google’s official press release

Related: Seth Goldstein wrote last week about why e-mail is important to Google: “When you factor that roughly 50% of the time spent on Yahoo is email related, and that 50% of their advertising revenue is equal to over $400M per year, then its clear what the economic stakes could be.”

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