Using Gmail for Your Personal Email: Why Use Anything Else?

In today?s modern, technology-driven world, having an email address has gone from a novelty to a virtual necessity. The words ?Email me!? are now heard nearly as much as their telephone counterpart, securing it as one of the top communication methods in the 21^st century.

Email has a long and storied history that actually predates the internet itself. The first modern form of email debuted in 1965, with MIT?s CTSS MAIL. With the introduction of the internet, and its explosion in popularity over the following decades, more and more services arose offering email services. Many of these were ISPs, or internet service providers, combining access to the internet with a way to communicate electronically. In February of 2007, one of the currently most popular free email services on the internet today was introduced: Gmail.

Gmail is provided by Google, a global company that offers a wide variety of different internet-related services, most notably their wildly popular search engine. When it was first introduced, Gmail set itself apart from other free email providers by offering a whopping full gigabyte of storage capacity, as opposed to the two to four megabytes that was the norm. With this feature, combined with a host of other user-friendly components, Gmail quickly rose to be one of the most widely-used free email providers on the internet. As of mid-2012, Gmail had over 425 million active accounts and still climbing.

Signing up for Gmail is a simple process and can be completed in under a minute. Accessing Gmail?s homepage can be done by typing www.gmail.com into the address bar of your favorite web browser. Here you will find the option to either sign in or create a new account, as well as some links to other areas of the website that give in-depth information on the Gmail service.

Clicking on either the ?Create an account? button at the top or bottom of the page will take you to the registration page. Here you will be asked to fill in the usual information, such as name, username and password, which will be used to set up your account. On the left side of the page, some of the more popular features are briefly described, giving information on the different options provided by the Gmail service.

Once you have entered the required information into the required fields, you will then be taken to a page that allows you to add a personal photo to your account. Since Gmail has the potential to be much more than a simple email address, this can be helpful in identifying you on the various other services that your Gmail account can be used. This step is entirely optional and can be skipped by clicking on the ?Next step? button.

Upon completion, you will be taken to the Inbox of your new Gmail account. As a first time user, you will be presented with a Welcome box that offers a few different options to help you set up your account. If you have an account on one of the other major free email providers, such as AOL (www.aol.com) or Yahoo (www.yahoo.com) it is easy to import all of the emails and contacts you have into your new Gmail account. This can save you quite a bit of time if you have a large contacts list, as well as ensure that you do not lose any of your important emails. By clicking the ?Learn more in the help center? option, you will be provided with step by step instructions on what you need to do to perform these actions.

Gmail is highly customizable and packed with different ways to turn your account into your own personalized space. The same Welcome box that provided the link to help you transfer your emails and contacts can also take you on a brief tour of some of the more popular Gmail features. By clicking on the ?Next? button, you will be presented with different ways that you can quickly and easily set up your account to your personal taste. Each of the features presented also includes instructions on how to perform them, so you don?t need to spend extra time trying to figure it out on your own.

One of the ways that Google is able to keep the Gmail service free is through the use of advertisement. However, unlike many other ad-driven services, they are extremely small and unobtrusive. There is no obligation to click on any of these ads in order to continue using the Gmail service.

Near the top of the default page of the Gmail service, the Inbox page, there is a menu providing links to many of the other services that Google provides. Among these are YouTube (www.youtube.com), Google?s search engine (www.google.com) and a customizable calendar. Use of any of these other services is also free and can greatly add to the exciting Google experience.

As you can see, Gmail offers virtually every option that you can find with a paid email service, all completely free of charge. As far as the comprehensiveness and ease of use, it is entirely possible to use Gmail exclusively for all of your email needs.

Source: http://www.techtous.com/blog/using-gmail-for-your-personal-email-why-use-anything-else/

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