Until now nobody could have an Gmail e-mail address unless he/she got an invitation from another Gmail user. From today anybody can have a @gmail account. After a period of nearly three years, you can apply for an e-mail address without invitation. Since the introduction of Gmail in April 2004 the web mail service became one of the biggest rivals of Microsoft Hotmail. The big advantage of Gmail was the 1Gb of storage space they had over other providers. Now the storage space has increased to 2814,522021 MB and is still increasing every second.

For now the service still has the beta tag, and if they will get rid of that in a short time isn't known for now. It's also possible that Google has to deliver it's Gmail in Europe under another name because of the law suit filled by Daniel Giersch, owner of the company G-mail. German and British users will have a @googlemail.com account instead of a @gmail.com account, and there is a chance that the whole Europe will suffer this fate.

Link: Make your own account