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| Webmail | ||
| Webmail is a class of web applications that allow users to read and write e-mail using a web browser, or in a more general sense, an e-mail account accessed through such an application.
Webmail is commonly offered as a service by Internet companies, sometimes in exchange for providing personal information for marketing purposes. It may also be offered by one's Internet service provider for remote access to a regular e-mail account. Many companies also provide web-based access to their internal e-mail systems, for use by employees when at home or travelling. Some mail servers, such as Microsoft Exchange , Kerio MailServer or Atmail, contain built-in webmail interfaces. Historically, the first webmail service was Hotmail, created in 1995 by Sabeer Bhatia of India and Jack Smith. Hotmail became very popular, and was later bought by Microsoft and re-branded MSN Hotmail. Since then, webmail offerings are widespread, with offers ranging from Chinese portal Sina to European portals such as Voila.fr or GMX.de. In early 2004, Google announced the arrival of Gmail, a free search-based webmail solution including new features such as a 1 GB storage limit (now expanded to nearly 2.7 GB, and currently growing at a rate of 13 to 14 kilobytes per hour), conversation threading and labels to replace the need for folders. It also features small contextual text-based advertisements based upon the content of messages (though for a short while this did provoke some privacy concerns). This has strongly stimulated competition in this sphere, forcing most webmails, and in particular Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail, to update their webmail interface and increase their storage from a few megabytes to several hundred megabytes or more. There is webmail software available that allows one to create ones own webmail server, notably open source software such as Horde IMP or SquirrelMail. Many universities take advantage of this software to provide students and faculty with university webmail. Also, more and more Internet Service Providers offer webmail for their customers. The market for webmail has two primary competitors: Hotmail has a 33% market share and Yahoo Mail has a 30% share. Gmail, despite causing quite a stir of publicity, only has 4%, mainly due to its invite only policy. The remaining market share is held by much smaller providers. Most webmail services have the following features: * folders Several webmail services offer the following features: * E-mail spam detection * The user must stay online to read and write more than one e-mail. They cannot easily edit mails they are working on offline (except by cutting and pasting the text). * Webmail accounts can be set up with minimum technical competence and provide independence from one's current ISP as well as a degree of anonymity. These features mean it can in theory be more easily used as a communication tool for nefarious purposes (or for avoiding oppressive authorities) than conventional e-mail. In practice, most governments security agencies are fairly easily able to track individuals who try to use such methods, just as with someone who calls from phone booths. Ordinary citizens will find it more difficult, however. Due to the heavy media coverage of Gmail's initial announcement of 1 gigabyte of storage, many existing web mail services quickly increased their storage capacity, as did many ISPs. This was seen as a move to stop existing users from switching to Gmail, and to capitalize on the newly rekindled public interest in web mail services. Below is a brief outline of the course of events following Gmail's initial release. * On March 31, 2004, Gmail was initially released with 1 gigabyte of storage space per user. On April 1st, 2005 (Gmail's first birthday), Gmail increased each user's storage quota to more than 2 gigabytes. This new figure and the original offering of 1000 megabytes are hundreds of times more than what other webmail services offered at the time of Gmail's original announcement in 2004. |
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