Google's Gmail system, announced on April Fool's day has been confirmed. They really are offering 1gig of free storage space.

I have no idea how they are going to manage this, I am truly amazed by it. They are going to have one hell of a rush of people signing up for accounts within the next few days as people realise it wasn't an April Fools day prank. Now that they've announced they are going to provide it, they are going to have to I guess. Presumably they're hoping their targeted ads system within the email will provide enough revenue to pay for the volumes of storage they are inevitably going to have to buy.

What I want to see is how Yahoo Mail and Microsoft Hotmail will respond to this. Currently I believe Yahoo provide 4Mb and Hotmail provide 2Mb of free storage. Personally I've never come close to filling the 4Mb of Yahoo space I have, but I suppose some people must have problems with these limitations. 1gig compared to 4Mb is a laughable comparison.

If Google can pull it off they will be the kings of webmail until Yahoo/MS can regroup.