Tech Watch

When search giant Google announced on April 1 it was road-testing a new Web-based e-mail service, a lot of tech types assumed it was an April Fool's prank: One gigabyte of storage memory per account, for free? Yahoo charges $10 a year for a tenth of that space. Yet Gmail is for real. It sorts, searches and spam-filters your e-mail. Just two catches: it won't be widely available for up to six months (test accounts are being offered only to employees' friends and families right now). Also, every message is sponsored, often based on your text. If the e-mail server spots,...