Are Webmail Storage Quotas Redundant?
The last time I checked my Gmail quota (actually just a few minutes ago), I was just using 45 megabytes of my 3,373 megabyte quota. So are email quotas irrelevant?
If that’s not enough, over at the Gmail blog, they’ve just mentioned “More Gmail Storage for All”
In my opinion, it’s been a brutally effective marketing campaign with the other free email marketing services like Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail upping their 20megabyte and 100megabyte quotas to try to match the (current) market leader.
Will you be able to exhaust it all?
Not likely, unless you’re like the user who “sends minute to minute photo updates of her kids in RAW format”.
More than a handful of Internet marketers I know run their business using primarily their Gmail accounts, but until the process of writing an email evolves beyond drafting a text message with attachments, you might have difficulty making full use of your email quota.
Google’s instant messenger service Google Talk provides text messaging which is then archived in your Gmail account. It’s a good alternative to the other instant messenger services and I’ve been using it more frequently for project collaborations.
Still, do email service quotas mean anything anymore?
If nothing else, it can be therapeutic to see the quota tick upwards when you’re taking a short break…
11 comments on Are Webmail Storage Quotas Redundant?
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Sam Harrelson
October 16, 2007 at 8:34 pm (17 years ago)I actually had to pay for more storage for my GMail account since I was getting close to maximum!
I’ve had my account since a couple of days after their launch in ’04 and it’s full of all sorts of old emails and files. I honestly use GMail as my storage box / external “cloud drive” and keep all sorts of things (files, pics, .zips, notes, etc) in there. You just can’t beat the search function there!
Andrew Wee
October 16, 2007 at 8:54 pm (17 years ago)Sam,
Have you backed up all your jun, er, stuff in there?
Losing 3gb of work and personal memories can be really painful.
You’d think with all the new-fangled stuff that’s taking place, email ought to at least implement tag clouds, automated mail filters, ajax tech…ok, don’t get me started…
Text messaging and integrated VOIP is great, but…the bread and butter issues need to be taken care of first, don’t you think?
Sam Harrelson
October 16, 2007 at 9:07 pm (17 years ago)Yep, everything is backed up and packed away nicely just in case. Always a good idea!
As to the features point, you can do a great deal with GreaseMonkey scripts in Firefox. That’s not immediately user friendly or available to casual users, but if you’ve got a little hacker in your blood, you can do wonders with GreaseMonkey and GMail!
jen_chan, writer SureFireWealth.com
October 17, 2007 at 1:11 pm (17 years ago)I often wonder about that. While I do not have a gmail account, Yahoo! does provide a large quota space for its users. I never even make it to the middle. But you gave an interesting thought. What if they’re all getting ready for something much bigger than just writing messages and attaching files? You never know what they will spring on you.
robert
October 17, 2007 at 5:00 pm (17 years ago)Sam,
you know you can always get a second gmail account.
that way you won’t have to pay extra for the storage.
back in ’04 it was kinda hard to get 2 gmail accounts but now that’s it’s one for all and all for one, it’s quite easy.
Andrew Wee
October 17, 2007 at 8:59 pm (17 years ago)unfortunately, i am experiencing a lot of inertia against picking up linux, php, or any other coding…
I have a couple of greasemonkey texts around, but it’ll be some time till i get to them.
Andrew Wee
October 17, 2007 at 9:01 pm (17 years ago)Seems a little counter-intuitive to create multiple emails just to save a little.
I think that $10-20 is something well spent.
I continue to pay a crazy price to maintain my email (with a 10mb quota) at my old ISP from the early 90s, just because people still mail me there.
robert
October 20, 2007 at 5:47 am (17 years ago)you are right Andrew.
I guess it just depends on the amount of money someone is willing to spend on email storage.
BTW, I can’t wait to get my hands on the cool product you and Amit are working on right now.
Rachit
October 23, 2007 at 3:39 pm (17 years ago)Actually I have to disagree … I’ve used my GMail account for about 3 years now and before GMail just raised their limit, I was at 97% (after I had to delete a lot of stuff to remain under 100%).
And having that storage space has been a huge boon. Having my files backed up on Google’s servers (which are distributed and backed up several times over), is actually much more reliable than my own computers (Windows dies, that’s a reality).
As for running out of space, it’s not that hard. For example, I get powerpoint presentations, documents and PDF files in my gmail account. An average PPT runs 2-4 MB. Documents run 200KB to 2MB. PDF files are in the same range. And if I’m working on this stuff with a team, I have to send and receive these thru my gmail account. With an average of 7-8 revisions for every PPT file, each presentation eats up 40+ MB in my account.
Of course, this doesn’t include those which have audio add-ons.
Now, many ppl don’t see this happening because they primarily use one computer and use desktop software. But when we have computers at office, computers at home, a laptop for travelling, and ready Internet everywhere … Web-based emails are more useful.
And if you exchange versions of any kind of documents, its not hard to fill up a few gigabytes.
Of course, I agree that Google was using this as a selling point. But they really screwed up there. Initially, they had advertised an “infinity + 1” storage plan for Gmail (On their 2nd anniversary) ….
But this year, they started asking people for money for more storage! That’s like cheating … I’m glad that Yahoo & MSN stepped up to offer great email solutions. Both Windows Live and the new Yahoo mail are very capable emails … good enough to match Gmail feature for feature.
So I guess we should be thanking Google for upping the stakes in the email game. I suppose it’s harder for them to match their own standards of evolution now.