Search giant gives open access to Japanese version of Gmail.
Google Inc., the world’s biggest Internet search engine, lately said that Japanese users can access its email service, Gmail, without an invitation. In other countries, signups are limited to those who receive email invitations from existing users or access it via mobile phones.
Google already offers open access to Gmail in two other countries; Australia and New Zealand. Japan will be the third country to receive this perk.
Google does not disclose the number of accounts it has opened for Gmail, a free service it launched in April 2004. Gmail generates revenue for Google as an automated system displays advertisements linked to the details of e-mails sent and received.
The new policy was announced at a press conference in Tokyo, according to Reuters. At the conference, Angela Lee, Tokyo-based product manager at Google told reporters that the change will allow as many people as possible to access Google.
“We want as many people to have access to our service,” Lee told reporters. “The change has had quite a significant impact in Australia and New Zealand,” she said, without providing figures.
Reaching Out to Asia
Mountain View, California-based Google is the world’s largest Internet search engine, but it has less reach in Asia, where it competes with both national competitors like Japan’s Biglobe and DoKoDa.com, as well as U.S. competitors such as Yahoo.
Japan is the third market after Australia and New Zealand in which the U.S. Internet conglomerate has allowed open access to Gmail, which it offers in more than 40 different languages.
Google is trying to offer sufficient storage space for GMail users so they do not have to erase old messages. It currently allows about 2.7 gigabytes of data space to every user. Lee said it will continue to expand the storage size.
Another challenge for the search giant is to convince Japanese users to access Google via their mobile phones—a more popular method of web surfing in that country, according to Reuters.
It is also trying to raise its presence in Japan, where more people access the Web using mobile phones than from personal computers. In May, Google signed a deal with the Japanese phone company KDDI Corp., to put its search engine into KDDI’s EZ Web Internet service for its “au” mobile phones. So far, however, Gmail is not yet available on mobile phones in Japan.
“We are trying to offer GMail for mobile phone users as soon as possible,” said Hiroto Tokusei, another Google product manager. He said no specific plans have been decided yet.
About three-quarters of Google’s revenues derive from the U.S. and U.K. markets and advertisers. The rest of the world accounts for the remaining 25 percent.