I got into the beta through a friend. It's legitimately the best webmail I've ever used. The conversation threading is brilliant — it groups replies together so you can follow a discussion. The spam filter is also amazing, almost nothing gets through. The 1GB storage means you never have to delete anything. Yahoo and Hotmail are going to have to match this.

It's real but it's invite-only at first. You need someone who already has Gmail to invite you. The interface uses Ajax so it feels really fast — no page reloads when you read messages. They also have a great search function (of course, it's Google). The ads are small text links, nothing annoying. I'd switch from Hotmail in a heartbeat.

I'm skeptical about giving Google access to all my emails. They already know what I search for. Now they want to read my email too? That's a lot of personal data for one company. I'll stick with my ISP email or maybe Yahoo Mail which just upgraded to 100MB. That's plenty of space without the privacy concerns.

Yes, it's called Gmail and it's launching on April 1st, which is why some people think it's an April Fool's joke. But it's real. 1GB of free storage is insane — they can do it because storage is cheap and they plan to show targeted text ads based on your email content. That's the catch — Google reads your emails to show you ads.