Google announced this week that the extremely popular Gmail webmail service is now open to anyone who wants an account.  The service launched on April 1st, 2004 as a beta product and invite-only.  Gmail quickly caught on with tech enthusiasts, and a strange vortex of hype and demand surrounded it due to it's invite-only method for allowing people to create accounts.  Gmail is also notable for the amount of storage space it provides to users.  Starting at 1 gigabyte, the total has been steadily increasing since April 1, 2005 and stands at roughly 2.8 gigabytes currently.

Since its launch, the number of available invites has grown, and most people who really wanted a gmail account picked one up some time ago, but if you for some reason missed out, now's your chance to join the club!

The catch?  There's an account verification bit that requires you to be able to receive a text message via a cell phone.