As you can see on the right, I've signed up for Google's AdSense program. I'll get some pocket change every time people click on the links. The money will go towards paying for the hosting and domain costs for this site, and I don't expect to make much more than that. For an idea of what AdSense is like, see Tim Bray's impressions after a month of using it.

Google's also been in the news lately about their new web email service called Gmail, which gives you one free gigabyte of space to store email. Right now, Hotmail gives me 2 megabytes for free. That makes Gmail 500 times larger. Wow. The program is in testing right now but goes live pretty soon.

You'll also be able to search your mail with Google's search technology, which is a great feature the others don't have. How can Google afford to give away a gigabyte for free? They'll use advertising targetted to you based on the content of the email you are looking at, which is pretty much what AdSense does to this page.

I'll probably snag one of these accounts. But the real bonus is the competition that Hotmail and Yahoo will feel. I expect you'll get more free space at other sites to compete with this.