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Google Vows to Increase Gmail Limit

Posted by CowboyNeal on Sat Oct 13, 2007 08:07 AM
from the bigger-inboxes-incoming dept.
Businesses Google Data Storage The Internet IT
An anonymous reader writes "Google claims that people are devouring capacity with photos and other attachments on its Gmail e-mail service faster than the company can add to it at its current pace. So Google said on Friday that it would increase the rate at which it is adding capacity to its web-based service. There's only one problem, Google's main competitors — Windows Live Hotmail and Yahoo Mail — far surpassed Gmail this year with their own capacity."
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Submission: Google vows to increase Gmail limit by Lucas123 (935744)
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  • hands up (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wwmedia (950346) on Saturday October 13 2007, @08:08AM (#20965233)
    hands up who here uses gmail to the max?

    myself after 2 years im only using ~500MB

    • Re:hands up (Score:5, Funny)

      by Enderandrew (866215) <enderandrew@gm a i l . com> on Saturday October 13 2007, @08:10AM (#20965243) Homepage Journal
      I haven't filled my inbox, but I use GMail to the Maxx!!!

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by bigdavesmith (928732)
        You, sir, are totally awesome.

        I've been using Gmail since the early days, but I've only used ~300MB. If someone sends me a photo I want to keep, I put it in my photo library. If someone sends a video, it goes into the video library. Documents go into one of a number of document folders. If I didn't do this, I think I'd probably be near, if not over, the limit.

        Just keep things neat and organized, and use email to store email, and the current limits shouldn't be a real problem. At least that's my exp

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by AndroidCat (229562)
        I use my Gmail accounts more as filters than as storage areas.
    • I won't be using it in the foreseeable future.

    • Re:hands up (Score:5, Insightful)

      by konekoniku (793686) on Saturday October 13 2007, @08:21AM (#20965297)
      I've actually hit the limit twice now, and had to spend a few hours searching and deleting emails with attachments to free up space (am now back down to 96% of capacity). What causes this is primarily convenience (or laziness, depending on how you see it) -- I have a habit of never deleting emails. If an email is useless (e.g., random emails from university mailing lists that don't concern me), I never even bother to open it, much less delete it (the way gmail lets you preview the first dozen or so words in your email without ever opening it is very useful for this).
      • yeah right let's be honest, its a porn not a uni mailing list, don't get me wrong there's nothing wrong with a little porn in your gmail account, I've got more than a little myself, but hiding, hording, and lying are signs of addiction. If you can't bring yourself to delete it, get professional help

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by c_forq (924234)
          At least at my university, a lot of the events sent out through the mailing list have PDFs or Word documents attached. Many others are heavily formatted with HTML, using images in order to do word art. It adds up quickly, and I am happy to see Google increase their space as I noticed my free space percentage has been steadily decreasing.
    • Just over three years now (oldest email in the inbox is from August 2004), I'm at 430 MB. I never actively delete emails except spam, but I did accidentally remove several months worth of emails when I accidentally had the wrong IMAP settings.

      I'm guessing they'd have to be under a LOT of pressure to make storage "unlimited" because of all the people that would very quickly devour that using gmail-drive programs. Personally, I think I would just install Ubuntu on gmail-drive and never worry about space aga

    • Re:hands up (Score:4, Funny)

      by SkyDude (919251) on Saturday October 13 2007, @09:13AM (#20965573) Homepage
      hands up who here uses gmail to the max?
      myself after 2 years im only using ~500MB

      Well, maybe it's because you don't have friends or relatives that send you stupid videos and pictures.

      I regret the day I trained my mother-in-law how to attach things to emails. I may have to show her how to find things on Youtube or how to upload and link to them on Youtube.

      Or maybe just break her PC and tell her it can't be fixed........

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by rucs_hack (784150)
      I use it as a rolling backup of important documents. One to the working folder, one to a backup drive on another machine, and one to Gmail. With the integration of gmail with google docs, thats actually incredibly handy. I have several utility spreadsheets sat in google docs that I use quite often.

      I've been doing this for two years, and I'm up to 66Mb. I delete obsolete backups after six months.

      I don't have a large set of old mail either, with few exceptions I delete it.

    • Re:hands up (Score:5, Insightful)

      by CODiNE (27417) on Saturday October 13 2007, @09:49AM (#20965827) Homepage
      I hate to say it but I think we've reached a point where "normal people" use their tech more than the geeks do. At least in the email area. I too would be using a small chunk of my GMail space except for mom emailing me sunsets, uncle John sending pictures of his farm and all those stupid HTML emails they send. Sure its a waste of bandwidth to us, but they're generally more social and tend to fill our mailboxes faster.

          • Re:hands up (Score:4, Interesting)

            by Firehed (942385) on Saturday October 13 2007, @09:50AM (#20965837) Homepage
            I get 300GB storage and 3TB of bandwidth for under eight bucks a month (and they often have sign-up specials that knock that down to six or so). If all you're looking for is a gigantic inbox, I think that should suffice reasonably. PowWeb [powweb.com], if you care.

            Most importantly, I have IMAP. I'd been bouncing between gmail and my own domain's mail for some time, but having finally set up IMAP through my host and not having that option with gmail, my solution is just to forward * to my IMAP'd domain.
  • Yahoo! Mail went to unlimited like six months ago. Anyone still watching their mail space should focus their time fending off mastodon with their obsidian knives.

  • Why don't people care about their data's safety? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 13 2007, @08:12AM (#20965251)
    I find it astounding that people would so willing store so much personal information on the servers of these companies. I don't care if we're talking about Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, or some other company. It's just damn scary to think that so many people would just give out all that data. Is it because they're ignorant of the risks? Or maybe they know, but it's convenient, and they're willing to take the chance that the naked photos of themselves that they're storing in their hosted email account could be publically released?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by wile_e_wonka (934864)
      Some of us use gmail for most of our email and use something less risky for the "naked photos of ourselves."

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by ScrewMaster (602015)
        Well, I do run my own server and there are many ways to get around a port 25 block. At the moment, I use No-IP's alternate-port mail service for SMTP. The server tries to send the message directly to the destination server if it can, but since many ISPs won't accept mail from a non-static IP, if that fails it falls back and sends the message out through No-IP's server on a different port. Works extremely well, and I haven't had an outgoing message go through my ISP's mail server in years.

        For incoming mai

  • it's true! (Score:5, Funny)

    by ClippySay (930525) on Saturday October 13 2007, @08:13AM (#20965263) Journal
    / It's true, people is attaching files of \
    | huge size! My back wire pains and my    |
    \ job insurance won't cover it!           /
         \
          \
           \     ____
            \   / __ \
             \  O|  |O|
                ||  | |
                ||  | |
                ||    |
                 |___/

  • just one new feature (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DMoylan (65079) on Saturday October 13 2007, @08:24AM (#20965313)
    i'd be really happy if they allowed me to delete the attachments but leave the email. i believe the feature was requested yonks ago but so far has not happened. i'm currently at 50% but that would drop to less than 10% if i could delete the attachments i already have downloaded.

    other than that i cannot fault the service. i get my email at work, home and on my phone with no hassles. thanks google!

    • Re:just one new feature (Score:5, Funny)

      by Duncan3 (10537) on Saturday October 13 2007, @09:05AM (#20965521) Homepage
      It takes at least 5,001 engineers to figure out how to delete attachments, and Google only has 5,000. So it's really just beyond them to figure it out. It's not like the code to do that is just laying around in a dozen open source packages or anything.

      I've known dozens of people what "worked" at Google, and they all say it's just one big party. The only people that work are the low-paid ad sales crew - the ones responsible for 99.9% of last quarter's revenue.

      If it doesn't sell ads, noone works on it.

      • Re:just one new feature (Score:5, Interesting)

        by budgenator (254554) on Saturday October 13 2007, @10:56AM (#20966379) Journal
        What I've always wondered is why Google doesn't just figure out a way to delete duplicates and keep one attachment for each Email to use, just think of how much space they could save by just storing one Cutsie picture of kittens playing with yarn instead of one for everyone in Aunt Millie's Email List.
          as for your red hot ex girlfriend in a Princess Leia, check usenet.

  • Single point of failure + high value target (Score:5, Interesting)

    by G4from128k (686170) on Saturday October 13 2007, @08:37AM (#20965369)
    I can understand using these services as a backup, but as people shift more and more of their online life to web 2.0, they will find that less and less of their files/data/structured products reside on their own local PC. How many people have a full backup of their Flickr albums (with all the organization structures and metadata that they've enter into flickr?) How many people have a full backup of their GMail accounts? These systems are just one botched upgrade away from data loss (does Google or its competitors have a full backup of ALL users' mail service data and will the restore process actual work?)

    I also wonder at what point in time will internet criminals shift their attentions to online services such as Hotmail/Yahoo/GMail as a means of hosting spam/scam operations. A smart scammer could parasitize a group of GMail accounts and send out a few spams a day from each account from a million accounts at once. As long as the scammer obfuscates their emails (use Picassa to create CAPTCHA-like GIF spam) so that the Gmail doesn't notice a million identical emails being sent for a million accounts, the parasite process can survive. And if a criminal finds a way to create an internal GMail worm (one that can propagate itself from account to account without any interaction by the account holder), then they can turn the entire GMail system into a botnet.

    My point is that these massive system have some serious single-points of failure and are becoming extremely high-value targets for internet criminals.

    • Re:Single point of failure + high value target (Score:5, Informative)

      by MadMorf (118601) on Saturday October 13 2007, @08:54AM (#20965459) Homepage Journal
      These systems are just one botched upgrade away from data loss (does Google or its competitors have a full backup of ALL users' mail service data and will the restore process actual work?)

      Speaking as a storage engineer working for a vendor used by one their competitors (The Goog uses us too, but not for Gmail afaik) the answer is yes.

      A couple of months ago there was a failed raid group which housed 200,000 mailboxes, which was restored with only a loss of 15 seconds of email.

      Not bad for free, eh?

    • People don't back up anyways. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Oshawapilot (1039614) on Saturday October 13 2007, @08:55AM (#20965465) Homepage
      With the exception of probably the majority of us here, most computer users are completely devoid of any regular backup schedule regardless. IMHO this makes Gmail far superior for the average (read as: hopelessly unprepared) computer user. I've lost track of how many people I've heard say "I lost your email because my computer crashed" over the years. I've yet to hear one Gmail user say the same thing. That aside, I'm sure Google, of all companies out there, make some effort to ensure there's some amount of backup or redundancy as part of the Gmail system.

    • Re:Single point of failure + high value target (Score:5, Insightful)

      by timeOday (582209) on Saturday October 13 2007, @08:57AM (#20965479)
      Sounds like a strong argument for everybody keeping their money at home under the mattress instead of a bank.

      Compared to the atrocious data security and safeguards most home users have (which is to say, none), having the pros at google or hotmail take care of it is a huge step up. At least they don't put it all on one drive with no backup or accidentally throw it away when they get a new computer.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by evilviper (135110)

      How many people have a full backup of their Flickr albums

      Probably every one of them.

      (with all the organization structures and metadata that they've enter into flickr?)

      If the worst problem you have from an event of major data loss, is being forced to input some metadata, you can count yourself as damn lucky.

      These systems are just one botched upgrade away from data loss

      As opposed to storing everything locally? I know lots of people that have lost lots of data when their local system was ruined thanks to viru

  • I can see where they're coming to... A new service:

    Burn all that e-mail that's burning your account on a DVD overnighted to you for only $50!!! For an extra $20, all the e-mail that has been burned will be tagged "DVD" so you can delete it in a click!!!

  • Hotmail isn't a good comparison (Score:4, Informative)

    by CNERD (121095) on Saturday October 13 2007, @08:48AM (#20965423) Homepage
    Hotmail STILL has ads at the footer of every message sent. Neither Yahoo nor Gmail do that. Who cares how big they let your inbox be, if they make every email you send look like spam.

  • Problem? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RAMMS+EIN (578166) on Saturday October 13 2007, @08:49AM (#20965425) Homepage Journal
    ``There's only one problem, Google's main competitors Windows Live Hotmail and Yahoo Mail far surpassed Gmail this year with their own capacity.''

    Problem? On the contrary! This is great. It's competition at work, improving things for users. Google offered lots of storage. Now it's competitors offer more. In response, Google will offer more. Whichever of these services you are using, you will get a better deal. The only problem here is how you can put all that space to good use.

  • They surpassed it because (Score:5, Insightful)

    by unity100 (970058) on Saturday October 13 2007, @08:50AM (#20965433) Homepage Journal
    People are not utilizing their services to the fullest. Naturally, they are able to oversell their storage. As users utilize only percentages of that space you can go on allocating more to each user, because they will be only using a percentage of it anyway. Much common in the hosting world. but not advised.

  • Who even wants to use something else? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Iloinen Lohikrme (880747) on Saturday October 13 2007, @08:56AM (#20965469)

    Who even wants to use something else than Gmail? I use Gmail as my personal email, and my company uses Gmail for domains for our email. From the day one Gmail has offered easy to use and intuitive web mail with enough free space. In about three years that I have used Gmail for my personal use, I have only succeeded in using 312Mb of it. My own company mail address has only gathered 157Mb. For those people who use web mail for email, I don't think that the space requirement has been after Gmail was launched a key part on comparing different email services. Even if Gmail still had only 1Gb limit, I still wouldn't even consider other services.

    Also if somebody from Google is reading this message, what I need and want right now, that you are not offering is J2ME mobile client for Gmail for domains. It's ridicules that Google offers mobile client for regular Gmail, but for Gmail for domains there is non. There should be no technical reason for denying the client. If you don't want to offer it free, maybe you could offer it as a part of subscription for Gmail for domains. And no, I don't want to use mobile version via mobile browser, that just doesn't work as well as pure mobile client.

    Another wish that I have is that Google besides raising email space would raise space for photos. I love Picasa and I have saved some of my personal photos to Picasa Web. The only thing why I haven't moved all my personal photos to it is that there just isn't enough space for it. Also I don't want to order subscription for it, as for me it's unclear what happens to photos if I end the subscription. Does Google just delete all photos after day 1 of non subscripted time? In example if I hurt my self or get sick, or my credit goes bad, and I can't afford to pay the subscription, I really wouldn't want all my loved photos just disappearing in bit space.

  • google wants users to reach limit and pay up (Score:5, Insightful)

    by paleshadows (1127459) on Saturday October 13 2007, @09:19AM (#20965611)
    • Google now sells storage [blogspot.com] to people that reached the space limit: 10GB for $20 per year, 40GB for $75, 150GB for $250, or 400GB for $500; the prices are specified in https://www.google.com/accounts/PurchaseStorage [google.com], but you need to have a gmail account to access this page.
    • Google repeatedly refuses to users' requests to add to the gmail interface an option to delete attachments, which is one of the most wanted gmail features [grytoyr.net], thereby making it hard to save space.
    • Likewise, google repeatedly refuses to let you sort email messages by size [google.com], making it almost impossible to locate the most space-consuming emails, a functionality one really needs when one reaches the space limit.
    • Considering the above non-existent options are really trivial to add, one can only conclude that google wants you to reach the limit and pay up. And they claim they're "not evil"...

  • Am I missing something here? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BadEvilYoda (935532) on Saturday October 13 2007, @09:50AM (#20965845)
    What is limiting you to ONE GMail account, if your first one is too full? It's not like they verify anything, if you're absolutely in love with GMail, and run out of space in free account #1, sign up for free account #2, and off you go, instant DOUBLE STORAGE. Yes, it's slightly inconvenient, but with auto-forwarding of all new mail to the new account enabled, and the ability to "send as" the old account #1 from #2 ... really not much of a problem.

  • Briefcase... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by evilviper (135110) on Saturday October 13 2007, @10:18AM (#20966039) Journal
    The biggest problem with online services in general, and Gmail specifically, is that companies keep trying to impose arbitrary confines on them.

    You know why GMail can't add space fast enough? Because they don't have a Yahoo Briefcase type service, with a nice interface, where people can directly store and manage their files, and more than that, directly SHARE a file with an unlimited number of other users. Instead, somebody hacks up a program, and your files get stuffed into an e-mail with all the overhead, and thousands of people have their own private copies of the same damn file.

    Such a service might not be profitable on its own, but it might just make up the difference, thanks to saving them tons of money from not having to keep upgrading their mail servers that have been picking up the slack for people that need such a service.

  • You are currently using 225 MB (7%) (Score:4, Interesting)

    by blackwizard (62282) on Saturday October 13 2007, @12:03PM (#20966975)
    I've been using gmail almost since launch and I've been pretty frugal with the space.

    On the other hand, we signed my grandmother up for gmail a year ago. She gets so many forwarded messages and the like that she is using up ALL of the space now. Apparently she really likes receiving them, too...

    And don't get me started on how hard it is to sort through those thousands of messages to pick out the ones that are OK to delete. GMail's "search, not sort" mentality just doesn't work for Grandma. I can't sort by size and delete the top offenders. There's no way to search for large messages that she didn't reply to so I can just get rid of the top ones of those, either. Frustrating.

    • Re:A tip on how to clean-up your GMail meanwhile! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sisukapalli1 (471175) on Saturday October 13 2007, @09:11AM (#20965553)
      It would have been really nice to have a "search by attachment, with size > X" option... This way, we can delete huge attachments first. Often, in Thunderbird, I sort by size and keep moving large messages to another folder.

      Gmail search has been wonderful, so I use it for searching messages, and use Thunderbird for reading mails.

      S

    • Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Informative)

      by Charlie Kane (1098491) on Saturday October 13 2007, @10:12AM (#20966009)
      I'm a journalist. I get lots of email from publicity types, many of which include print-ready imagery (which can be as much as several megabytes in size). I get email from freelance writers, which often includes attached .DOC files of stories and/or invoices. (I know, I know -- I'm nuts to be using Microsoft Word when emacs would do the job with less overhead.) I try to regularly delete the largest, least necessary email from my box, but in truth what I really like about Gmail is the ability to keep everything. For one thing, it works as a great PR photo archive with next to no effort required on my part. For another, it's a poor man's backup system -- I actually trust it more than the one my office IT department provides, which has failed me in the not-too-distant past. Anyway, I'm at 1209 MB and growing.

      Email attachments are obsolete? Get out of town. I happily use FTP as much as possible, of course, but email attachments are, bar none, the easiest, fastest way to communicate with publicity agents and other journalists, not all of whom are Internet savvy. Yes, there are occasional issues where attachments are munged -- or legitimate attachments get snared in our corporate spam filter -- but those annoyances are far outweighed by the relative convenience of not having to teach every single person I deal with by email on a daily basis how to download and use FTP clients.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by budgenator (254554)
        And GMail doesn't allow you to transmit Windows executables AND it scans zip files for windows executables but leave Linux and Mac executable alone, and doesn't check .tgz files. They both have unfriendly policies when it comes to attachments, but most Windows users need the protection eve if it is annoying for people on other OSes.
        There fixed it for you.

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