Removing the barriers in switching to Gmail: time to celebrate

To all those who have been patiently awaiting the day when it would be easy to switch to Gmail and migrate your mail and contacts from your old mail provider, your time has come!  A post on the Google Operating System blog reports that users of other popular email services such as AOL, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, and other mail services provided by ISPs will soon be able to switch to Gmail and take their emails and contacts with them; in other words, they will soon have the option to have their cake and eat it, too!Google has partnered with TrueSwitch – a firm that specializes in migrating users’ data from ISPs to other email services – and in doing so has removed the last barrier in switching to the search giant’s amazingly and spectacularly different email service.  The feature is not yet available to all Gmail users.

Once the service is available, however, users will be able to

• Import contacts
• Import mail
• Import new mail for 30 days
• Add a specific label to imported mail

The option will be available via the Accounts and Import tab in the Settings menu.

Personally, I can’t wait to use this feature: I have had enough of Yahoo! Mail and the company’s blatant rip-off “strategy” of charging for an increased amount of mail filters and POP3 access (both features available free of charge in Gmail and, best of all, without any limitations).  Thankfully, I use Yahoo! Mail for only my “bac’n mail.”

Perhaps this will be the feature to take Gmail out of beta… one can only hope!