Yesterday a story made the frontpage of Digg regarding Google opening up Gmail to new registrations without needing a cellphone. As of right now the story has 2860 Diggs but the original submitter has also posted a retraction on Digg. Here is what he says in the retraction:
The thing is it only became open in Egypt where I live and I wrongly thought it’s now open worldwide.
…
What happend is that Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt was visiting Egypt and signed an agreement with the Ministry of Education and that Gmail was now open from within Egypt.
Googling around I found out that Gmail has been open in Australia, New Zealand and Japan for a while now.
The funny thing is that the story got dugg very quickly. People dugg the story without checking the link which obviously led to the Cell phone registration page. The even funnier thing is that several tech blogs reported that story without checking for themselves. This says much about how stories get dugg by thousands without checking it first. Many reported that the story was inaccurate, yet thousands dugg the story.
I was going to post about it yesterday but something just didn’t seem right so I wanted to wait it out. I brought it up in the forum just to make sure I wasn’t crazy but apparently it wasn’t working for other people as well. Turns out that I am glad I didn’t post about it because I would have been one of those “several tech blogs” who incorrectly reported about it. 
I can’t believe with all of the people who were saying in the comments that this was inaccurate people were still (blindly?) Digging it? It is still getting around 2 Diggs every 5-minutes which boggles my mind. I guess some people were just so happy that the day has finally come for Gmail to be open to everyone that they didn’t bother to check whether it was really true?
Ah I feel bad now
I dugg this story yesterday without checking*
*I did read some comments which said it was open though.
When I first saw it I was about to Digg it as well because we all know that it is overdue for Google to open Gmail. I originally thought it was just me that couldn’t get it work but then saw other people saying the same thing. For some reason, however, the guy that commented saying that this must not work in the U.S. has been buried and currently stands at -22. That made me think that it was working for people in the U.S.
That happens a lot on Digg lately. Someone pointed out to me a Digg story to a YouTube video last month, the story had 800 Diggs, but the YouTube video only had 200 actual views. Boggles the mind.
Digg = Myspace of News sites.
unless you’re new to digg this really should come as a surprise.
Sorry I meant SHOULD NOT
Haha, looks like the jokes on Digg users!
That why I just say “no” to Digg. I tried to like the site, I really did. But there are simple to many stories about Digg.
I saw this screen yesterday too!
I never had Gmail account, and yesterday was trying to create it, but changed my mind, and created webmail inbox elsewhere.
P.S. I don’t like Google a little, because it is something like Big Brother.
actually very few realize this…but when it was originally submitted…it actually was a registration page w/o the need of a cell phone…the link was changed quickly. if i still had the page up and running i’d copy the site and take a screenshot of it for you all…but my ISP has been on the frits lately…cutting off my internet access every 10-30 minutes…requiring me to reset my modem and my entire network to get it all up and running again for no longer than another half an hour.
but it actually was a normal registration page, and not the cell phone one….i suppose it was either a mistake by google, or something to that end..as it has been changed.
apparently this was only intended for certain countries…but the link was valid…and diggers weren’t digging it blindly to the homepage…the page was merely changed while it was being dugg…so certainly many dugg it w/o clicking the link…but for quite a while..even when on the homepage the page was a legit registration page, and no via cell phone.
Huh, that’s weird. I tried it when it was at less than 100 Diggs and still didn’t get it to work. Guess Google must have switched it pretty quick then.
Ryan: Its already open in Australia long back.
haha! excellent.
digg is horribly flawed. i’ve decided to stop using it these last few days because of just this type of thing – how many other stories (in areas I don’t know about) are wrong?! the majority of diggs are literally coming from people who think the headline is interesting but haven’t even read the story, even enough to see the people pointing out it’s wrong. absolutely hopeless, makes the Sun newspaper look reliable, or something. back to slashdot or something with slightly less of a sheep problem. even Fark looks sane next to digg (bizarre!).