Some people will give just about anything for the newest "free" e-mail service.

Homemade cookies, an essay on any topic, spying services or just cold cash --- all have been offered on eBay or another swap site in exchange for a Gmail account.

Gmail, the newest venture of Web-search giant Google, has created an underground buzz among the young and the tech-savvy --- and it's pushing established giants Hotmail and Yahoo to tweak their offerings.

Gmail offers an almost-instantaneous e-mail search function and an unparalleled 1 gigabyte of free space. The storage capacity all but guarantees users won't have to delete messages for years, if ever.

But there's a catch: Gmail is still in beta testing and is only available by invitation. Google released the service in April to a group of employees' friends and family members and since then has rationed access codes that allow Gmail users to invite others to open accounts.

The service is free, but its limited availability has made it a hot --- and often pricey --- commodity.

A quick eBay search reveals about 1,000 matches for "Gmail," including one ad posted last week with a $5,000 asking price for a single account. Most ads are in the more reasonable $1 to $30 range.

Gmail wannabes also have hocked everything from wisdom to a "koala bear in a can" on the popular trading Web site gmailswap.com.

"It's just cool to be associated with something that comes out of Google," said Tina Lu, a 23-year-old Norcross resident who scored one of the first Gmail invites.

"People are like, 'Ooh, Tina, you have a Gmail account.' I think one of the coolest things about it is it's new and it's hard to get."

Strategy lauded

Google officials say the limited supply wasn't a marketing device, but rather was necessary to control the Gmail user population during testing.

But some industry experts say Google's slow-release tactic is on-point marketing that has boosted demand, and the company must know it.

"Right now, where consumers are, this is the strategy that's going to work," said Robbie Blinkoff, principal anthropologist and managing partner at Context-Based Research Group.

"It's about starting clubs." Google's splashy entry into the free e-mail sector has sparked a flurry of competitive moves among the major players.

Web-based e-mail services, like Yahoo Mail and MSN Hotmail, generate revenue by marketing their free-customer bases to advertisers and by selling users on fee-based enhanced features.

The services are most popular among the young and the mobile because they are inexpensive and allow users to access mail from any computer with an Internet connection.

Yahoo Mail and Hotmail --- generally regarded as the Nos. 1 and 2 Web-based providers, respectively --- could see their user numbers eroded if Gmail succeeds on a large scale.

The two leaders boosted free features and significantly increased their free storage offerings after Gmail's April launch, as did several smaller players like Spymac and WallaMail.

"[Gmail] has immediately forced a lot of the competitors to get more aggressive," said Loren McDonald, vice president of marketing for EmailLabs.

Yahoo bought e-mail and news vendor Oddpost.com last week, giving it access to technology and talent needed to develop next-generation e-mail. The company also released 50 million address options and upped storage to 100 megabytes.

Storage capacity has become a hot-button issue as many users increasingly use e-mail to swap photos, large databases and graphics files. A single photo or graphic can eat up 5 to 10 megabytes.

Hotmail will begin boosting its free storage to 250 megabytes later this summer and has begun cleaning e-mail viruses for no charge. The company previously offered the service only for paid accounts.

"Anti-virus cleaning and scanning is a big issue. This is a big concern for people," said Kathleen Callaghan, a spokeswoman for MSN Hotmail. "Google and Yahoo and all are raising their storage limits, and we sort of wanted to make [storage] a non-issue for our customers."

Double-edged sword

The revved-up competition creates more options for users, but profits will take a hit as companies offer services for free that weren't previously available or were available only to paying customers.

"It's going to threaten their overall revenues," said David Card, senior analyst at Jupiter Research. "The Hotmails and Yahoos of the world are going to have to work hard to sell people on premium services."

Google is in a "quiet phase" pending its much-hyped initial public offering, and it won't release data on the total number of Gmail users or estimated demand. McDonald, of EmailLabs, estimates Gmail now boasts 600,000 to 700,000 active accounts. And there seem to be many more people who want one.

Beyond the hard-to-get buzz, the service has several crowd-pleasing features, namely its hallmark search-and-sort capabilities and seemingly unlimited storage. Its directory feature also is top-notch, users report, and the overall design is streamlined and user-friendly.

But Gmail lacks some basic e-mail features like virus scanning, a save option for unsent drafts and POP3 capability, which allows users to funnel several e-mail accounts into one inbox. It can't be accessed on many old-model computers, and users have reported occasional hang-ups and blackouts.

Google plans to work out the kinks and bring additional features online before a full launch, which could be months away.

The service generates revenue by displaying small text advertisements on the user's screen that are related to the e-mail messages being viewed.

The feature has been roundly criticized by privacy-rights activists, but Google maintains that the ads are not a privacy threat because computers, not humans, match e-mail content to ads.

"I think it's going to take a while for it to make a dent in anybody's market share," said Jupiter's Card. "But there's no question in my mind that if they are serious about this, they'll make headway."