Two popular computer services - e-mail and search engines - are scheduled to combine with a new "Gmail" service provided by Google Inc.

Announced Wednesday, the Web-based e-mail system would be free for users and offers 1 gigabyte of storage, more than 100 times the amount of rival free e-mail service providers.

Gmail also would incorporate the Google search feature to sort through the about 500,000 pages of e-mail the system is expected to hold.

Richard Wiggins, MSU's Academic Computing and Network Services Senior Information Technologist, said the new system could cause a "massive shift" in information technology, with millions of people switching to the new service.

"Right now, anybody who is in the Web mail business is looking at the cost of online storage and trying to calculate 'What does this do to our bottom line?,'" he said. "All of those people must be pulling their hair out now saying, 'What are we going to do?'

"That's going to put some people out of business."

A Google spokesman said the philosophy behind the search-based e-mail is the belief that e-mail does not need to be deleted and can instead be stored and made searchable. The planned size of Gmail could store 10 years of e-mail messages.

The Gmail service currently is offered to invited users on a trial basis and will be made available to the public in a few weeks, the company said.

The Google search engine already is present on four out of every five Web searches and concern exists it might dominate the e-mail market as well.

Currently Yahoo Inc. dominates the U.S. market with 52.6 million users per month. Microsoft Corp. follows with 45.5 million users and AOL Time Warner Inc. has 40.2 million paying users.

Psychology and communication senior Lina Bell said the added features would be enough to make the switch from Hotmail.

"I think it would be cool," she said. "The storage sounds like something Hotmail doesn't do."

But Hotmail user Kaori Fujiura said the large storage Gmail offers is a nice incentive, but she doesn't plan on switching her account.

"I think I'll stick with Hotmail because I'm used to it - I don't really want to start a new one," the history senior said.

Wiggins said the combination of the search engine and large storage space is good and that he has faith the service will succeed.

"They proved their point in the Web-search arena, and I have every confidence they will succeed in the Web-mail arena," Wiggins said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Staff writer Scott Cendrowski contributed to this report.