Google's Gmail Gains Integration With MS OutlookGoogle's Gmail Gains Integration With MS Outlook

Google's still-not-released-to-the-public free Gmail e-mail service on Wednesday added POP3 support, letting users send and receive messages from traditional desktop clients and some mobile devices. The POP3 (Post Office Protocol) access allows users to retrieve and send messages through Gmail from e-mail clients such as Outlook, Outlook Express, and Eudora, as well as mobile devices such as wireless PDAs and cell phones that offer POP3 e-mail. Gmail includes automated tools to configure several of the most popular clients for accessing the service, as well as step-by-step instructions for manual configuration.

Unlike other Web-based mail services, like those from Yahoo and Microsoft (Hotmail), Gmail's POP3 support is free.

Gmail also offers free forwarding, another feature some rivals charge for. Using forwarding, Gmail users can send incoming messages to the e-mail account of their choice.

Google is rolling out the feature gradually, and may need several weeks to deploy it to all Gmail accounts, the San Francisco, Calif.-based company said.

Late Wednesday, Google stole some of Microsoft's thunder by announcing that its search index had surpassed the eight-billion-page mark. Earlier, Microsoft's had boasted that its MSN Search beta had indexed more than five billion pages to make it the world's largest search database.