Want free Gmail account? Buy it at ebay

Supply-demand imbalance gives value to e-mail

The saga of Google's 1GB email account, Gmail, with a slew of features unheard of in the email industry, is getting quite engrossing. People who have got an invitation from Google to open a Gmail account, which is undergoing testing, are now auctioning this invitation on ebay with a reserve price of all of $1.

If you don't want to pay up for this free account, but still want to get it as it is gaining significant cult status by the day, keep trying one of the scores of blogging sites, which have detailed discussions and short-cuts on how to get this account.

For the uninitiated, Gmail is part of "Google's mission to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". The backbone of Gmail is a powerful Google search engine that quickly finds any message an account owner has ever sent or received.

That means there's no need to file messages in order to find them again. When Gmail displays an email, it automatically shows all the replies to that email as well, so users can view a message in the context of a conversation.

There are no pop-ups or untargeted banner ads in Gmail, which places relevant text ads and links to related web pages adjacent to email messages.

What is it in this account that is making people to go to great lengths to be part of it? Says an industry analyst: "Google has managed to build an aura around this service. The features being offered are also pretty interesting and the main reason for not being open to one and all is also one of the elements driving people to want it."

One more interesting aspect that Google has brought into the testing stage of this account is that any user who has been able to get an email account can actively participate in giving suggestion and feedback on how he would want an email service to be. Anyone can suggest to Google how best to structure this service when it hits the internet with access for everyone.

Google has also promised for email users 'small and unobtrusive advertisements.' It will have text ads, similar to those on Google search result pages, and ads will never be inserted into the body text of either incoming or outgoing Gmail messages.

Google's plans for Gmail have already affected the industry. A hoard of other email service providers, led by Yahoo, enhanced their storage limit ranging from 6MB to 1GB to their email users in an effort to stem the impending exodus to Gmail.