WebProNews

In a roundabout way, the use of Gmail is about to become much more common in the UK.  Virgin Media and Google announced a deal this morning that'll allow four million home broadband customers to benefit from the service's perks while using either new or existing email addresses. 

The upgrades, which will include stuff like larger inboxes and better email search, come courtesy of a deployment of Google Apps Partner Edition.  This should be the largest deployment to date, netting Google some revenue and a great deal of exposure.

Doug Lucas, Strategic Partner Development Director for Google, stated as a result, "Virgin Media is one of the UK's leading ISPs and this is a great partnership between two companies focused on innovation.  We look forward to rolling out new features for the benefit of all Virgin Media's customers."

And Virgin Media will benefit, too, of course.  By offering better and more reliable email service, it should be able to make customers happier (and perhaps more numerous).  Also, since Virgin Media was maintaining @blueyonder.co.uk, @ntlworld.com, and @virgin.net email addresses (and @virginmedia.com addresses are now becoming available), handing over the reigns to Google should spare the company a fair amount of confusion.

Finally, here's one more interesting tidbit: a formal release claimed, "[T]he two companies continue to work together to explore a range of additional services and applications."