GMail, how far will it go?

[evo]

It's on 2053MB now, well past the predicted 2GB mark.

Where will it stop?

Bets on!


http://www.gmail.com

[_Aerospace_Eng_]

well if u think about it, 1gb is 1024 mb or something like that so thats 2048mb + 5mb, the 5mb could be some buffer space that google uses, but how much space could they possibly offer, the money spent on the disk space, wouldn't it become to much, and then you would have to ask yourself, how much money does google actually have? i think its going to get up to 5gb before its released to the public officially

[redhead]

Most people are going to be using a tiny fraction of that though (eg, I've accumulated 40MB since June last year... not alot really.), so it isn't as if they have to spend money on 2 Gig of storage for each user, rather 2 gig of storage for probably not more than the top 1% of users, while making it seem very attractive for the average user, who's not going to use that much space.

I'm not sure how far it'll go, perhaps the 5GB idea isnt as unrealistic as I'd thought... I guess we'll have to wait and see!

[JamieR]

I don't see how it can continue...Gmail how has thousands of users, and with 2GB storage each, that means a lot of money has to go on servers and disk space. It really does make me ask -"How much money does Googlereally have?"

~Jamie.

[...{chris}...]

Let me ask you all this! What does Bill Gates, WalMart, and Google(now) all have in common?

They are all slowly taking over their industry! Soon to be the world. Id like to know where Google gets all its money. Maybe those Google ad's now seen on several pages bring in some change. But go Google go!!!

-ChRiS

[evo]

Servers and diskspace are very cheap nowadays. It wouldn't be hard for a company that size to maintain them.

[dniwebdesign]

You have to remember they are on the stock market as well so that would bring in some money. With their shares costing $180.040 (US), that's alot of money, cosidering there are 175,260,000 shares out there.

So far I've used 92 MB or 4% of my 2 GB.

Anyway, they're also getting into the powerdrink area... so much for Gatorade or Powerade... How about some Google Gulp!

http://www.google.com/googlegulp/images/orange_200.jpg
http://www.google.com/googlegulp/images/purple_200.jpg
http://www.google.com/googlegulp/images/red_200.jpg
http://www.google.com/googlegulp/images/white_200.jpg

Google Gulp Info (http://www.google.com/googlegulp/) (the FAQ, I find is hilarious)

[JamieR]

lol yeah ~ http://www.codingforums.com/showthread.php?t=55904 :D

I can't wait for it to come out on my local supermarket's shelves, if it ever does:p

[gsnedders]

I'd say 2.5GB Max.

[redhead]

...Gmail how has thousands of users, and with 2GB storage each, that means a lot of money has to go on servers and disk space...But that's my point, they know full well that only about 1% of users will ever fill that up, and they also know that if they were to double it again, only that 1% would ever take advantage of it, so they can continue beefing up their "storage" with very very few people actually using it, surely?

I get the feeling I'm wrong and that I've missed some fundamental truth, but thinking about it logically I cant see how X users * 2 GB = GMails storage needed.

[wabirdman]

They wouldnt be using servers as their storage, that would be way too expensive. They would most likely be using a storage area network (SAN) to store the data.

You can rig up a 32TB SAN for about $75K AUS. Obviously that is nowhere near enough space to cover all the users that they would have but SAN's are very scaleable and work out a lot cheaper to add more disk space to compared to buying a new server and stacking it with disk's.

Now being the fact that they are "Google", SAN vendors (IBM, HP, HDS) are going to go out of there way to to offer fantastic pricing to them to get there product in there so Google will almost definately get much better pricing than most.

wabirdman

[liorean]

Don't forget that Google already had an enormous amount of storage even before GMail. Today it has multiple datacenters on each continent, each datacenter has multiple hard backups of the entire spiderable part of the web (and I don't believe they are cutting it close when it comes to storage) and also probably a considerable part of it stored in RAM at any single time. GMail requires much storage, but Google was in that business before GMail. Besides, Google promises so many users so high capacity that they know with certainity that even the top users will take their time filling a GMail account. They have a constant need for new storage as the web grows and as GMail usage grows, but that's no news for them, that's how it has been since the beginning.

[_Aerospace_Eng_]

but see me using the gmail shell, i can access my gmail account like a hard drive on my system so its 2gb extra so now i really do have about 40gb instead of 37.5gb

[JamieR]

All I can say further is that Google are really doing us a favour :D

[redhead]

Don't throw anything away.
2057.232437 megabytes (and counting) of free storage so you'll never need to delete another message

And you can see the 2057.23247 bit increasing, how exciting. :)

[royall]

Going at about 10 bytes per second,

10 bytes multiplied by...
60 seconds per minute
60 minutes per hour
24 hours per day
365 days per year
________________
315360000 bytes per year!

Cool!

[ChronicleX.com]

don't gmail have text ads on it?

don't google make money on them to.

[evo]

Urm that would be 30mb.

[liorean]

Urm that would be 30mb.
If you forget to count one of the zeroes in it, yes...

[evo]

Probably did or forgot to type the extra "0"... was really tired earlier this afternoon.

:rolleyes:

[oldcrazylegs]

i agree with chris above. after gmail runs all the other email services off the web guess what? no more free email and the prices will be astronomical because they know you can't go any where else.