Gmail, the webmail service from Google recently improved by adding POP assistance and forward facility. You can use it to download messages on your client side application (like Outlook), POP-compatible PDA or mobile phone.

The download capability is freeware, unlike other web-based clients like Yahoo and Hotmail that charge about $20 per year for a similar service.

The Gmail POP support, otherwise useless to those 24/7 on-line geeks, offers great service to Internet users that like to have their emails downloaded in their computer and available to be read off-line.

POP technology enables users to read their messages on- or off-line. Google's intention, as Georges Harik, director of “googlettes” (Google's new products) explains it, is to make Gmail a portable email service.

The Gmail service was launched April this year, restraining usability to invitations-only. Once it rolls-out this phase, Google expects to widen its user base.

Gmail offers 1 gigabyte of free storage and it is recognized as the first email service that integrates search capabilities.

The competition responded the provocation soon, Yahoo for example enhanced the storage limit but did not integrate search capabilities. Microsoft only recently entered the web search competition while Google already announced to have doubled the number of web pages in its index to 8 billion.

Gmail is certainly more appealing than the other less-featured web-based email clients. In the end, it will all depend on how much Google decides to keep freeware of its multivalent application, when no longer in beta.