There are many reasons why you might want to know how to create a new Gmail account.
For many web user, Gmail is email. It’s one of the best email services around, not just in terms of its features and usability, but also because it offers a very generous 15GB of free storage for consumers (though this is now shared across other Google services), with more available for as little as $1.99 a month. Looking more professional than your average Yahoo or Hotmail account certainly helps, too.
If you’ve filled that space, or you simply fancy a fresh start, it’s incredibly easy to create a new Gmail account. Perhaps you’ve started a new business and need a new professional sounding address, or maybe your name has changed and you need your email address to reflect that? Newcomers to Android will find they need a Gmail address to log in and get started, too.
How to create a new Gmail account
1. Head to Google's signup page. This is at http://accounts.google.com/signup, and it's also very easy to find via search, as you’d expect for a Google product.
2. Google asks you enter some fairly basic information in order to open your Gmail account: your first name, last name, the username you want, and a password (typed twice to ensure it's typo free).
While there’s no rule that you have to use your real name, as with the likes of Facebook, bear in mind that this is how your emails’ recipients will see you.
3. People have been grabbing Gmail addresses since 2004, so unless your name is really unusual, it’s hugely unlikely that you’ll get the dream firstnamelastname@gmail.com address on your first attempt.
Think creatively. Try including an initial, your profession, or a series of numbers that’s memorable to you, though avoid anything that could be useful to cybercriminals looking to steal your details for phishing attempts.
(Note: Gmail ignores periods in email handles, so "john.smith", "joh.nsmith" and "johnsm.ith" would all end up being equivalent to "johnsmith@gmail.com".)
Click outside of the box when you’ve changed the username. Do that enough times, and eventually the warning that an email address already exists (see screenshot below) will vanish. That means that it's available and yours for the taking.
You may need to confirm your identity by giving Google your phone number for a two-factor authentication code.
4. You’re in! Now you just need to fill in a few more details before you can start using your shiny new Gmail account.
Note this time that two of the boxes are optional. There’s no need to fill in your phone number or recovery email address if you don’t want to, although the latter seems like a sensible precaution to avoid future lockouts.
You may also get a prompt to use your phone number with your account — feel free to click Skip. You can allays come back to this later.
5. It’s easy to glide through Google's terms and conditions, and simply tick the two compulsory boxes — that you agree to abide by Google’s rules and agree to have your information processed according to the privacy policy — but there are actually a couple of extra customizations available.
Expand the "More Options" drop-down menu just above the checkboxes and you can stop advert personalization and prevent your app, web and YouTube history from being linked to your new account if you wish.
Your page may look different, depending on the rules in your country.
6. You’ve now created a Google account — and with it, your free Gmail address.
7. To get started with Gmail, either visit the Gmail website in your browser, or click the "Google apps" icon in the top-right corner of any Google service and select Gmail.