Google Vows to Increase Gmail Limit

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."

Comments

hands up

[wwmedia]

hands up who here uses gmail to the max?

myself after 2 years im only using ~500MB

Re:hands up

[konekoniku]

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).

Re:hands up

[Gaerek]

Archive button is your friend. That's the whole purpose of the labels.

Re:hands up

[SnowZero]

Sounds terrible. That kind of stuff really belongs on a website, and email should just refer to it.

Problem?

[RAMMS EIN]

``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.

People don't back up anyways.

[Oshawapilot]

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.

google wants users to reach limit and pay up

[paleshadows]

• Google now sells storage 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, 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, thereby making it hard to save space.
• Likewise, google repeatedly refuses to let you sort email messages by size, 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?

[BadEvilYoda]

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.