Google Visitors Offered Gmail Invites

Pcworld reports that Google opened up its Gmail Web mail service to a wider scope of users this week by randomly offering, for the first time, accounts to some visitors of the main Google.com page.

“We just started offering Gmail accounts to a randomly selected sample on Google,” says Marissa Mayer, Google’s director of consumer Web products. “It’s a natural step to leverage the wider user base of Google.com to grow Gmail.”

About one in 20 Google.com visitors are getting the Gmail account offer, Mayer says. “Based on the success of this one-in-20 scope, we’ll be ramping it up over the next couple of weeks,” she says.

Gmail is Google’s popular free email service. Currently accounts are available by invitation only. It is not open for use by the public as it is under beta testing phase.