I'm getting the feeling that Google is going to get tasted with the introduction of  "GMail". The first general portals learned this lesson very painfully. Just launching something "bigger" than the last guy and putting a lot of stock in the brand and the fact that "we have lots of users" isn't going to be enough to get people to signup and use the application.

Dave Winer: "I heard about Google mail... A free gigabyte and integration with the search engine.
That's cool. Raises the bar for Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, etc."

 
Raising the bar for Microsoft isn't going to be enough. Building a better application than Microsoft isn't going to be enough. Influencing consumer behavior is the only thing that is going to work. Will Google score a few million users that aren't happy with the webmail services that Y/A/M offer? Sure thing - but only until Y/A/M upgrade their current offerings. Is Google going to get anyone to migrate from Outlook to Gmail? Probably not. Why would any email user give up an incredibly rich client and unlimited storage to let Google drop Adwords into their Inbox? Surely they don't think that people will be seriously enticed by an "@google.com" email address. 
 
But here's the real problem with GMail.
 
GMail is an email client. Google is a server company.
Hotmail is an email client. Microsoft is a client company.
 
Email is a client business.
 
Who writes more compelling client applications Microsoft and Apple or Google?