HoustonChronicle.com - Google to offer free e-mail -- with a catch: "Search engine Google to offer free e-mail -- with a catch
Associated Press
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Online search engine leader Google Inc. announced plans Wednesday for a free e-mail service providing 250 to 500 times more storage space than market leaders Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft Corp., delivering the latest challenge in a fierce fight for Web supremacy.
But there's a catch to the new service: Google's computers will scan e-mails to deliver targeted advertising.
Google's service, called Gmail, will offer 1 gigabyte of storage space, roughly 500,000 pages of e-mail. Gmail users will be able to receive up to 10 megabytes in a single e-mail -- more than the free services of Yahoo and Microsoft's Hotmail allow to be stored in an entire mailbox.
Gmail also will enable its users to type a keyword into a built-in search box to find information contained in their e-mailboxes within seconds. "