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Gmail Users Get A Storage Boost [updated]
Faies writes "As reported by ZDNet: Not to be outdone by Lycos, Google just upped its 1,000 megabyte accounts to 1,000,000 MB. I just recently checked my inbox, and the number at the bottom confirms this. "You are currently using 12 MB (0%) of your 1000000 MB." That's more than my hard drive...and plus, Google clearly wants to hold the title of being best, so who knows what will happen if someone else tries to compete with a terabyte." Now how much would you pay? Update: 05/19 13:34 GMT by T : Several comments to this thread indicate that the listed mailbox size limit has returned to the previous 1GB level, so this apparent change may be nothing more than the result of a misplaced decimal point.
Honestly, what use does one have for such a large mailbox? I'm afraid to think what will happen if this would go live without too much restrictions. The warez guys would be all over this. Then it will be cut & cut until it's basically useless (look at what say geocities have had to do to curb piracy). Still, i'd like to get an account when it goes live (and any storage above say, 1G isn't useful to me.)
Will wank off Linus Torvalds for fame.
Strange.
I still see 1GB in my account, which it still says in the FAQ.
The faq also says a maximum of 10MB per message.
Pretty dang cool marketing tactic, if you ask me.
Nobody really expects a terrabyte of storage do they?
After clicking on 'Compose Mail,' just click on 'Attach a file.' At that point, you'll be able to browse the files on your computer and add your attachment. Once you've selected a file to attach, click the 'Open' button and that file will be added to your message. You will see the path of your file listed just below the subject field. If you'd like to get rid of the attachment, just click 'remove.' With Gmail, you can send and receive messages with a maximum total size of 10MB.
999998000 MB
If religous zealots don't believe in Evolution, then why are they so worried about bird flu?
Not long after I submitted this article, my account (and those of 4 others I know) reverted back to 1,000 MB. Since the article does mention that Google had no official comment, it's quite possible that this was all a fluke. I had observed the changes earlier in the evening, but waited to see if there was official confirmation from a large new source (i.e. ZDnet) before thinking this was for reals. As it turns out, it may not have been so.
For reference, my friends and I noticed the size reductions around 1:45 AM PST. They did not occur all at once; mine was one of the last ones to get set to 1,000 MB. Another small detail is that not all gmail accounts I knew of got set to a terabyte- there was one user who was feeling quite left out in the gigabyte pool.
Even though everybody seems to be talking about Lycos offering 1GB, I've seen very few people mention that Lycos' offer is not free.
To get the 1GB account you will need to cough up 3.49GBP a month.
Still a good offer though, if you don't have the option of running your own server, but definately not as good as Google's free version.
In God We Trust, Others We Monitor
Well, let's see. Assuming 1.544Mb T-1 is available for use 24/7 and it's dedicated to sending 1mb attachments at a time (and you can send 1,000,000 of those). Figure about 60 megabytes an hour (or 60 messages an hour) it would take 16,667 hours or 694 days.
Google has nothing to worry about by offering 1tb of storage. They have two years to get it online...
Just add {In Space!} to anything.
The article mentions that so far only a few users are testing the 1,000,000 MB limit.
It never hurts to read the actual article.
A few people have made the comment that Google can do this because 99% of the people will only use a few MBs of storage anyway. Reasonable theory, but here's another idea -- it doesn't matter if everyone uses a massive amount of storage.
First, figure out how many people there are in the world that might potentially use Gmail. Then figure out what is the potential maximum amount of unique data each of those people could generate on a daily basis. Then determine the size of the redundant information that could pass through the Gmail servers.
Note that a huge percentage of emails and attachments are sent to multiple recipients. For each piece of email or attachment compute and store a unique hash. Each account consists of only a list of hashes and some header metadata. This redundant information will significantly reduce the total storage space.
A quick seach finds this Berkeley study that suggests that there were about 400 PB of email (unique) generated last year. Assuming that you can save 1 GB of data for the fully-loaded cost of $1 (US), storing all of the internet's annual email traffic costs $500M annually in the worst case.
The best case is significantly better than that, as you can:
a) compress text by up to 80%
b) store every mail only once
c) store every large binary only once
d) add storage as needed, not up-front
e) reduce the cost of storage over time
This is off-the-cuff, but Google is looking at maybe a $50M annual investment in storage to store all the email on the internet, even if everyone uses it. They don't even need a storage limit. Period.
For anyone interested in trying out Gmail for themselves:
Gmail Swap
Basically you post up what you're willing to trade for an account and if someone's interested you're set. Current notable items include a monkey, an iPod, cigars and many other much weirder things.
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Objects in Mirror are Losing!
Looks like just one more reason to get top dollar when I auction my account ;)
Slashdot I hate you!!!!!
Everytime slashdot runs the freakin' gmail story it DRIVES UP the price.
Just when things begin to cool off, THERE IS another slashdot story!!
Either stop it, or I start posting Soviet Russia jokes again -- YOUR CHOICE!
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
I could use it. For one thing, I'm an email packrat, and only delete my yahoo mail when I'm out of space. But a 1TB account would be useful for so much more than email. I think of it as free web-based storage. If I could get my hands on a free-for-life 1TB gmail account, I would whip up some code to encrypt and store arbitrary information as gmail messages. With the privacy concerns regarding gmail, encryption would be a necessity for using gmail in this fashion. A proper interface would allow gmail to look like an encrypted, web-based file system.
Also, it appears that there is a 10MB limit per message. No problem, just treat gmail as a harddrive with variable block sizes, up to 10MB. Storing larger files would simply mean splitting the file across multiple messages.
Exactly. You aren't the average user. And what the average user doesn't use in their accounts, you'll use in yours.
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I'm currently working on a linux file system driver that uses google email boxes. Performance isn't that great, but I'm working on that. I can already tell that fsck.google is gonna be a bitch.