RSSService Offers File Sharing Over Gmail
By Nate Mook | Published November 28, 2005, 4:45 PM
P2P users have found a creative way to fill up the more than 2 gigabytes of e-mail storage offered by Google's Gmail: file sharing. A new service created by Dutch student Robbie Groenewoudt taps into Gmail and creates an index of files that can be accessed by other users.
Appropriately named G2G Exchange, the Web-based service does have some drawbacks. It requires users to hand over their Gmail account information, although it can be configured to index only e-mails with certain labels. G2G's FAQ page recommends that users create a new Gmail login specifically for sharing files.
The process also isn't exactly straightforward. In order to upload content to share, users must send themselves an e-mail with the file attached, and Google imposes a 20MB limit per message. Alternatively, tools such as Gmail Drive or RoamDrive that interface with Gmail's API can be used to upload files directly.
G2G uses Gmail labels to serve as pseudo directories, and indexes each registered account every 24 hours. At the time of writing, about 600 users were sharing over 11 gigabytes of files. Because content is located on Gmail, however, downloading is done from Google's network and not other users.
The service is still in its early beta stages and has a number of problems that Groenewoudt promises to iron out. Internet Explorer also doesn't render certain G2G pages properly. "This project is hard to make and to run. However, I'm rolling out more updates than I breathe," he wrote on the site.
But having its generous e-mail offering used for file sharing purposes likely won't sit well with the world's largest search engine. Thus far, Google has not endeavored to block applications such as Gmail Drive, but it could put its foot down in this case due to piracy concerns.
Dangit, the site's back up. Looks like we made him buy a more expensive bandwidth package. Everyone ping bomb it. Maybe we can take it down again.
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|You just haaaad to warn them..
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|I wonder how many people who use this service have read Google's privacy policy. http://www.google.com/privacy.html
I wouldn't fileshare using Gmail if it were the only method possible.
Google links your accounts together through their cookies. Google openly shares any of your information with any 3rd party it wants to.
Care for a serving of real time tracking of all of your filesharing habits? Most of you, I'll bet not. Get a clue.
http://www.googlewatch.org
http://www.gmail-is-too-creepy.com/
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|I don't see the point of this. Why would you go through the trouble of doing all of this work to get setup when there are alternative ways to share content off your computer without 2gb limitations. Check out www.avvenu.com for a real content sharing software!
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|This sort of filesharing isn't so much about being able to access your computer from anywhere. What these people are looking for is a way to share and download copyrighted files illegally from each other.
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|Right, but with avvenu you can share your files with others, and let them download as well. It's not just about accessing files remotely.
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|This sytem already exist => P2M (peer to mail). Some freeware exist too for direct downloading on an account(gmail, yahoo, etc...).
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|Connection to Gmail is already noticeably slower. Time to cut this c**p off.
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|Agree, there is enough places to get stuff without ruining Gmail.
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|as long as this service doesnt affect the policy for normal users w.r.t. using email, then its okay I guess! (but a waste of time)
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|"Bandwidth Limit Exceeded
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later. "
Now there's a good start
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|Remember AOL ... about ... 5 or 6 years ago? Getting on 'MM' lists in chat rooms where your e-mail box filled up with files with attachments ... the beauty there was that the attachments were all stored on AOL's server ... so it wasn't exactly as if the files themselves were being duplicated =)...
This reminds me of that, but the fact that Google's "limitations" -- or rather, the fact that this uses GMail which isn't setup to store huge files and be used as a hard drive -- will make it an awkward way to share files... RapidShare seems like a more sensible and similar way of doing things...
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|This is funny!
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|I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not laughing. I hope this gets shut down soon, or all Gmail users could suffer. Imagine them shutting down any access to GMail APIs whatsoever - no more Gmail Drive =(.
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|Why doesn't he make one for hotmail? :P
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|I agree with you. There are quite many peer2mail (p2mail) apps, so G2G Exchange is nothing new. The thing is that after a time all the bandwidth and space has been eaten by swappers. Therefore some European content providers (which provide free e-mail accounts) imposed impose a ban on peer2mail swappers. It means that if you have a 3 gig. account and you want to download everything to your HDD you have to do it in three not consecutive days.
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|Cause hotmail is about 250mb... Google is 1.2gb (or something) and counting and yahoo is about 1GB
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|GMail is 2669.393588 MB and counting as of right now.
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|is very simple hotmail sucks.... :P
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|ok wincement...we get it. ur against it. relax ok.
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|I doubt the nice people at Google will leave this hole unpatched for long. If they know about the program (I'm guessing since it's on the web then they will) and they allow it to continue, potentially the RIAA / MPAA could sue Google.
Don't get used to it guys.
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|Umm... and Google completely approves of this right?
They're not going to let some punk kids ruin Google's name by getting them involved with the RIAA/MPAA.
Plus, everyone is stealing Gmail's bandwidth slowing down the servers. That sucks.
Stupid punk.
I foresee this going away very soon. At least I hope it does.
People just can't leave a good thing alone. They have to keep taking more and more until everything's taken away from them. Morons.
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|Also, I noticed their website says "© 2006" at the bottom.
How does that work?
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|Google is early in its copyright this year!
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|That copyright isn't on Google. It's on http://dutchmega.nl/G2G/
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|I guess this is an attempt to prevent their site being copyrighted, since "prior use" is established (LOL ;*). However this will not work since copyright is an automatic intellectual property right - a copyright indication like that does not establish copyright, it is just to improve enforcibility since it says that the copier knew about the right.
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|Great...another person that the RIAA and the MPAA is gonna sue..Bad move man...bad move...
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|F*ck it. Exploit it as long as it lasts! Thats the spirit.
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