Market Opens on Speculated Gmail Names

Gmail speculators now have GmailforSale.com, an online market solely for the buying and selling of active Gmail names (not invites). Buyers and sellers are able to contact each other through the classified listings.

June 28, 2004 -- Gmail speculators now have GmailforSale.com, an online market solely for the buying and selling of active Gmail names. GmailforSale.com is now displaying its listings and is the first website solely for contacts between buyers and sellers of registered Gmail names. No, these are not the simple Gmail invitations that recently captured media attention, but rather completed and submitted invitations, in other words actual registered Gmail accounts.

These active Gmail accounts can easily be traded because all that needs to "exhange hands" (or rather be seen on your computer monitor) is the account password. Once you have the particular account password for a specific Gmail account, it is easy to logon and change all the registration information as required. At that point, you are effectively the "owner" of that Gmail adddress.

Mike Pratt, who runs GmailforSale.com, says "Given the inital response, I expect Sellers to have listed over one hundred names in the next 24 hours. After that, it is only a question of time till we are looking at a thousand or more."

Analysts previously predicted that many thousands of "invitations" issued by Gmail would be grabbed by speculators as good investments. Apparently, such speculators believe that once the general public has access to Gmail, there will be a significant demand for the "good" names that the speculators have snapped up. For example, the address "e-mail protected from spam bots" could be sold to someone with Wicca interests who wants to avoid being forced to otherwise use a name such as "e-mail protected from spam bots." Or another buyer with literary interests might prefer "Mr.SherlockHolmes" instead of "SherlockHolmes22b".

Pratt says "The value of Gmail names has yet to be determined. I expect for the first while most of my Seller listings will describe the price as being an "asking price". Initially, I think some sales will be in the $40 to $100 area, but this is a volatile market. Who knows what a name is really worth to a hungry Buyer? He is acquiring a unique online identity, a fantasy world, that can't be copied by anyone else."