The context: John Paczkowski, from Good Morning Silicon Valley fame (a reading I highly recommend), says it best.
Club Gmail fires bouncers: Gmail, Google's 1GB free e-mail service, may finally be coming out of beta. Since Gmail's launch in April of 2004, Google has grown the service through a viral invitation-only program. Periodically, the company has awarded a small number of invitations to registered Gmail users, who are then free to send them on to friends and family who might want an account. Now, I've had a Gmail account since April and the greatest number of invites I've ever been given is six. This morning I logged in to my account and found that I've now got 50 to give away. I assume I'm not the only one. So, either we're nearing the service's official launch or Google is gearing up for some serious load testing.
The inventory: a boatload of bloggers have mentioned that their Gmail account was showing a pool of 50 invitations available. This is also my case, so feel free to send me an email here, and I'll do my best to send you an invitation sometime this week. First come, first served. And be fair, one request per person please. Note that I am also making another pool of 50 invitations available on my Buzznet photoblog.
The mistery: Now, who can explain to me why there are still several hundred auctions going for gmail accounts on eBay, and people are bidding money to get them? This means that there is a category of people paying for something freely available, and there is another category of people expecting to make money off of something freely available - therefore commiting to pay eBay's minimum listing fees.
Eh, no offense intented. It is everybody's genuine right to pay for something that is free.
The conclusion: some Internet business models are still beyond me...
The update: there are over 1.5 million Gmail invites at this site [via Google Weblog]. And Google seems to replenish acccounts anyway, I'm back to 50!
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