Google keeps increasing your mail storage space

If you’ve used Google Mail, or Gmail, long enough, you’ve probably kept an eye on the little status line at the bottom:

You are currently using 149 MB (3%) of your 4482 MB

That’s directly out of my Gmail account as of this morning. Some people like to keep their email clean, and delete everything. I tend to let my mail pile up and up and up and up…

The thing is, that amount available to you has just increased and you may not have noticed. It happened a few weeks ago when it jumped to 2.9 gigabytes and then again on the 23rd of October, where it increased another 1.5 gigs to 4.5 gb total.

And it doesn’t stop there. Google keeps adding more and more space, despite having a plan where you can pay to have additional storage.

By January 4th of 2008, which is only a few months away, you’ll have about 6 gigabytes available to you. By 2038, if email is still around, you’ll have 42 gigs. Wow.

So there you have it. You really don’t need to delete mail at all, because you’ll likely never run out of space.

Why keep your email? Well, Google has such a great ability to search through old email, that it’s worth it to just hang onto them. I tend to use the search feature a lot, to find things I lost, like perhaps a license key, or a username and password I forgot.

If you aren’t using Gmail, you might want to think about it. Being stuck using Outlook or some other Operating System-based program will hold you back from the freedom to check your email anywhere you are.

I wrote a blog about all of this, and you should check it out if you want to know more.