You know about e-mail, but are you ready for Gmail?

SURVEY Online search provider Google is introducing a free e-mail service called Gmail. Do you think you will sign up for an account? Yes No Results  |  Disclaimer

Online search provider Google said in a news release that it is introducing a free e-mail service as it raises the stakes in its battle against Yahoo! and Microsoft.

The company is promising to provide up to 500 times more storage space for users than the market-leading e-mail services provided by Yahoo! and Microsoft Hotmail. Gmail will offer 1 gigabyte of storage space, roughly 500,000 pages of e-mail.

Hoping to make money from the service, dubbed Gmail, Google has told its computers to mine the topics in the e-mails and then deliver text-based ads related to those subjects.

For instance, an e-mail from one friend to another discussing an upcoming concert might prompt Google to include an advertising link from a ticketing agency.

For now, Google is only opening up the service to invited users but expects to make it accessible to everyone within a few weeks. People interested in signing up for an account are being encouraged to register at Gmail.com.

In the news release, Google cofounder Larry Page said that the company developed the project after e-mail users complained about having to stay under storage limits on other web-based e-mail systems.

There was some speculation on technology related message boards that the plan was an April Fool's Day prank.

Google representatives later said that an online job listing for a position at a lunar station was a prank, but that the e-mail service is a legitimate project.