Another article with a way to get a Gmail account: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050825-5239.html

Gmail opens to the public

8/25/2005 12:18:20 PM, by Ken "Caesar" Fisher

If by some strange set of circumstances you've not been able to get a Gmail account, your chances just got better. Sixteen months after the launch of Gmail, it's finally "open to the public" (but still beta, of course). But there's a catch: to get an account, you have to sign up for Gmail over a US mobile phone, using SMS [ https://www.google.com/accounts/SmsMailSignup1 ]. Merely give Google your phone number, and you'll get an invitation code from them in minutes.

Google promises to never reveal or sell your phone number to any third party, although they do retain phone number data in order to limit account sign-ups. Currently you can sign up as many as 10 accounts with one phone number.

It would appear that for now Google wants to bring more users to Gmail in a slow and controlled manner, while also making it significantly more difficult for bots to sign up for accounts. Using SMS is a bonus on both accounts, and Google is also taking the opportunity to sign people up for Google's SMS alerts.

One of the reasons we are offering this new way to sign up for Gmail is to help protect our users and combat abuse. Spam and abuse protection are two things we take very seriously, and our users have been very happy with the small amount of spam they've received in their Gmail accounts. We take many measures to ensure that spammers have a difficult time sending their spam messages, getting these messages delivered, or even obtaining a Gmail account (spammers will often use many different accounts to send spam). Sending invitation codes to mobile phones via SMS is one way to address this, as the number of accounts per phone number can be limited.

SMS verification is a simple and painless way to sign up for a service, and I wouldn't mind seeing it more often. E-mail verifications can be slow, are often tagged as spam, and can be a real pain when URLs wrap and break. On the other hand, not everyone has an SMS-capable phone.

Google is looking to boost its Gmail userbase as it ramps up Google Talk, which was unveiled yesterday. Google Talk requires a Gmail account, and while such accounts are common accoutrements among Ars readers, they aren't among the general public.

In related news, I've been using Google Desktop Search's new Sidebar all week, and thus far it's extremely buggy. It crashes and restarts on me probably once every 2-3 hours. I'm trying to pin down the problem so I can report it, but so far, it seems entirely random.

I can give invitations too! Just let me know if you need an account!