On April 1, 2004, Google announced plans to launch Gmail - a free, Web-based email service that would provide up to 1,000 MB of storage space - more than 15 times the storage of Yahoo! Mail and 50 times the storage of Hotmail. Google would also provide Google Search capability to assist in locating specific emails, and would subsidize the cost of providing this service by serving contextual based ads in the margin of sent emails. ** Google Gmail is now offering 7GB of storage.