Gmail Storage Space Plotted

[Weasel]

I've been keeping track of the amount of space available to Gmail users ever since the April 1st 2005 "infinite storage + 1" announcement. It seems the growth has been linear, but sometime in late 2005 Google decided to change the rate. Google probably realized they couldn't realistically promise increasing server space by almost 3.3 MB per day and changed the function to 0.4 MB per day. At the current rate, Gmail will reach the 3 GB mark on approximately April 2008, which would be Gmail's 4 year anniversary.

UPDATE Oct 18, 2007: The Gmail team has just implemented a huge storage boost for gmail. The growth rate is over 10x or the previous storage increase, with a projection of over 6000 MB by 2008. I've updated the graph, if you would like to see the old graph, click here.

UPDATE Jun 10, 2009: Looks like their rate has decreased since the start of 2009. In 2008 Gmail space was going up by about 3.38 MB per day. Now the increase is about 0.36 MB per day. Do these numbers look familiar?



Digg this

[col.mustan]

Dont get it sorry.

[Demento]

3GB in the occasional pictures, and text form of emails is still WAYYYY too much. Im only at 6% now.

[Weasel]

It seems we've been dugg:

http://www.almostsmart.com/upload/fi...ont%20page.png

[Madre]

This will get their attention. We should start charging an admission fee.

[Narnar]

What? Noooo.. I've already used up 824mb of my space... :P

[oceandream130]

Ooooh...very interesting! I've had gmail since the beginning and I think I'm still only using about 5% of it. I'm not certain what I would do with 3.0GB.

[Hamana]

i guess noone would ever send me so many emails that i can fill the space...right now i am still using nearly any space: "You are currently using 7 MB (0%) of your 2715 MB."
maybe i am just really really unimportant...

[Alfie1982]

Great job. Thanks for taking the time to build that graph!

Roll on 2008!

[Summer Gurl]

I don't know if it bothers anyone else but when i am viewing whos online... 7 pages of "people" just looking at this thread... its kinda annoying

[Guinness And Mohawks]

wow thats cool that you actually took the time to do the graph, the bottom line is that no one needs that much e-mail storage. period. but i love my gmail account, because i hate google way less than i hate microsoft.

[Weasel]

Originally Said by STORM

I don't know if it bothers anyone else but when i am viewing whos online... 7 pages of "people" just looking at this thread... its kinda annoying

That's because there are 7 pages of people looking at this thread. We even broke the record for most visitors ever: "Most users ever online was 1555, 18 Hours Ago at 11:23 PM."

[oceandream130]

Originally Said by Weasel

That's because there are 7 pages of people looking at this thread. We even broke the record for most visitors ever: "Most users ever online was 1555, 18 Hours Ago at 11:23 PM."

Damn! What was the previous record?

[Summer Gurl]

Originally Said by Weasel

That's because there are 7 pages of people looking at this thread. We even broke the record for most visitors ever: "Most users ever online was 1555, 18 Hours Ago at 11:23 PM."

I know this Gmail ant that great! why is everyone looking at it

[gylgamesh]

That growth rate has decreased and it will continue to decrease in the future as Gmail gets more and more users. Otherwise the expansion rate of server capacity would have to grow proportionaly to the total number of users and that would sooner or later bankrupt Google.
The goal of "unlimited" storage space is even theoretically impossible. It has been assumed that there are about 10^80 particles in the whole universe and even if each of them would be a storage bit for Gmail that would still be limited. The storage capacity on earth alone is clearly much more limited. Even if at some point Gmail will compress older emails I don't think the capacity will ever exceed 10 GB.

Here the facts:

from

Thu 2006.06.29 13:46:00 UTC to
Sat 2006.07.01 02:46:00 UTC = 37 hours
GMAIL capacity has increased from
2739.249302 MB to
2739.753487 MB resulting in a
capacity growth of 0.504185 MB in 37 hours.
that is an increase of 0.013627 MB per hour.

I predict that one year from now the capacity increase will be well below 0.01 MB/h.

[MudPuppet]

Don't say that. Google can do anything.

[gylgamesh]

I STRONGLY disagree! Google did one good thing: the search algorithm. The rest of what the do is mostly a waste of time and money.
Just look at Google Earth! A bunch of decades old satellite or aerial pictures that they probably got for free! You can't even zoom in by clicking somewhere on the map. Every good atlas is better.

[MudPuppet]

Google Earth has entertained me for hours.
Gmail is flawless.
And don't get all technical shit on me - Google is fun, sleek, effective, and powerful.
Google is sexy. And you know it.

[gylgamesh]

Google Earth is supposed to be a powerful map machine not an entertaining gimmick.

Gmail has some flaws, for instance the domain name gmail.com is too long, gmx.de, gmx.at or gmx.ch is the shortest posible and has 1GB of free storage. Besides gmail is very new, not available to everybody and its future is very uncertain.

The search engine is the one and only Google cash cow, but is losing daily market share so we'll see where Google stands ten years from now.

[Weasel]

Originally Said by gylgamesh

That growth rate has decreased and it will continue to decrease in the future as Gmail gets more and more users. Otherwise the expansion rate of server capacity would have to grow proportionaly to the total number of users and that would sooner or later bankrupt Google.
The goal of "unlimited" storage space is even theoretically impossible. It has been assumed that there are about 10^80 particles in the whole universe and even if each of them would be a storage bit for Gmail that would still be limited. The storage capacity on earth alone is clearly much more limited. Even if at some point Gmail will compress older emails I don't think the capacity will ever exceed 10 GB.

Here the facts:

from

Thu 2006.06.29 13:46:00 UTC to
Sat 2006.07.01 02:46:00 UTC = 37 hours
GMAIL capacity has increased from
2739.249302 MB to
2739.753487 MB resulting in a
capacity growth of 0.504185 MB in 37 hours.
that is an increase of 0.013627 MB per hour.

I predict that one year from now the capacity increase will be well below 0.01 MB/h.

No one expects google to provide "infinite space". That was just their '05 April Fools joke, so don't take it too seriously and think google will use each atom in the universe for a storage bit.

As for their rates, it's clear from the data they are linear and arbitrarily changed by humans. I think it's more than a coincidence that the 3000 MB number happens to fall on a gmail anniversary. For that reason I don't think they will be decreasing the rate, as it's already pretty slow now.