Gmail, Google's email product, is available for the general public. In the past, Gmail accounts required an invite. In the beginning it was hard to get invites, but eventually enough people had accounts so that the invite list wasn't constrained.

Now that it's open to the general public, Google has placed a curious condition on signing up for Gmail. During the sign up process you're prompted for a cell phone number. Google will then text a message to you with an authorization code.

Odd.

Google says they do this to eliminate spammers from their service.

When you sign up for the service you'll see the following screen shot:

There are two interesting points about signing up for gmail:

1) If you don't have a cell phone, you're out of luck.

2) If you have a cell phone, normal text rates apply.

Why would Google make this decision with gmail? Partially, I do think it's to avoid spammers, but more importantly I think it helps them gather even more data about their customers.

Google's disclosure on the sign up page reads as follows:

Phone numbers are also stored to manage the number of accounts created per phone. Your number will never be sold or shared for marketing purposes without your permission, and will only be associated with your account if you check the box above. To learn more, read our privacy policy.

They keep a copy of your number, but they won't sell or share it for marketing purposes. But, they don't say anything that precludes the number being used for search, customer or usage metrics.

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