Gmail accounts available -- by phone?

[muzikool]

Anyone notice the main Gmail page (where you login) has a link to open an account using your mobile phone?

https://www.google.com/accounts/SmsMailSignup1

It doesn't appear that you can create an account manually through the web site, so it's just a cell phone based deal right now. I guess it's just available in the U.S. for now.

 

[NetRyder]

People without cellphones or those outside the US can still receive email invitations from friends/family like before.

 

[muzikool]

Right, but this seems like the first step in making Gmail openly available to the public. It's just that you can't sign-up in the traditional way.

 

[NetRyder]

Reasons why:

One of the reasons we are offering this new way to sign up for Gmail is to help protect our users and combat abuse. Spam and abuse protection are two things we take very seriously, and our users have been very happy with the small amount of spam they've received in their Gmail accounts. We take many measures to ensure that spammers have a difficult time sending their spam messages, getting these messages delivered, or even obtaining a Gmail account (spammers will often use many different accounts to send spam). Sending invitation codes to mobile phones via SMS is one way to address this, as the number of accounts per phone number can be limited.

We will use your phone number to send an invitation code in a text message to your phone. In doing so, we store each phone number to make sure it is used to create no more than 10 accounts.

In addition, if you choose to, we can save your mobile phone number in your Google account, so that you will be able to use it for upcoming Google mobile services like secure password recovery and SMS alerts.