Since 2004, gmail or google-mail, has been offering e-mail accounts with large amounts of storage for free. Until now, though, you've had to have someone 'invite' you to join. Now anyone can join by visiting their web page.

I collected free e-mail addresses at one time. My favourite, reallyserious@twinkie.com, has expired. Like many others, it was a useful trophy, but not very nice to use. Google's mail is great to use. And Google doesn't place ads in messages you send, unlike Yahoo and Microsoft's Hotmail. It's the one free e-mail address that I use every week. Now there's a version for mobile phones, as well.

The main argument against it is that Google is getting to the point of knowing entirely too much about us. They can scan incoming as well as outgoing e-mail from your account and can add to that what they know about you from cookie-tracking your searches not to mention the fact that you might blog via 'blogger' which they own now. And you don't read your RSS stuff via GoogleReader, do you?

There's a serious point there. I've got nothing to hide, but do I really want to assist any corporation in gaining that much power? Maybe I oughta reconsider that google account....