Week in Numbers: Gmail's five years of beta

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With this week’s G20 meeting in London, mobile companies took the opportunity to propose investing a great deal of money to expand the world’s broadband access, while students at Birmingham City University now have the chance to complete an MA program in ‘Social Media.’

Five years – the time that's passed since Google launched Gmail. At first, the service was available by invite only, but opened to the public in 2007. Even thought it has been around for five years, Gmail is still listed as a beta, and holds less market share than its rivals.

360 – the number of people Google would like to hire to fill a range of job openings from software engineers to sales and marketing positions to foodservice supply workers. This comes one week after Google announced it was cutting 200 jobs.

£4,000 – cost of a new one year master’s degree program in ‘Social Media’ at Birmingham City University. The course teaches students how social networking can be used as a marketing and communications tool.

19,000 – the number of sets of credit card details available on the internet after fraudsters mistakenly published them online, making them available to fellow fraudsters as well as billions of internet users.

$550 billion – money companies like Nokia and Ericsson are willing to spend on new mobile broadband networks during the next five years according to a letter sent to the G20 leaders. Industry said by investing in mobile broadband it could stimulate growth by connecting millions of people to the internet, especially in less developed countries.

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