NEWS Google just escalated the email storage arms race by a factor of 1,000.
Several users of the search engine's Gmail web-based email service noticed on Tuesday that their storage limits had quietly been raised to 1 million megabytes or 1 terabyte. That's four times the typical capacity of a new high-end PC's hard drive.
The Gmail service is still in testing and it wasn't immediately clear how widely Google will offer the higher storage limit, under what conditions, or to which users.
Google didn't respond for requests for comment late on Tuesday.
Detroit resident Rajiv Vyas, who has been using Gmail for about a month, was wowed by the change.
"It's great. Although I am not sure what I will do will all this memory," he said. "In the long run, it would help me store not only photos but every file on my desktop. This is 10 times more [storage space] than what I have on my office or home PC."
Others who spotted the change posted notices to web logs and websites.
Google triggered a rush to offer more storage space for web-based email services with the April announcement of 1GB of capacity. The move pressured the dominant web-based email service providers, Yahoo! and Microsoft's Hotmail, which currently charge subscribers $10 to $50 per year for a much smaller amount of email storage space.
Yahoo! responded to Gmail with a plan for 100MB of space. In the UK, Lycos is moving to offer 1GB for a fee. And the Macintosh-focused competitor Spymac offers 1GB at no cost.
Gmail's liberal storage limits may be popular but the service's terms triggered privacy concerns because of Google's plan to scan the content of email messages in order to serve up targeted advertisements.
Stephen Shankland writes for CNET News.com.
Comments
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1. Angus Doyle
This announcement seems to be one of 2 things. First being a marketing ploy to push its competitors over the limit. Secondly and more likely it seems that they are trying too hard to lure people in to sign up. Seeing as information is king, the persons with access to this will indeed control the way we think. Yet I feel that if there plan is to use adwords in the email messages, the run the risk of saturating the market, people will get immune to the adverts after little time. The bottom line is that there is no such thing as a free lunch, no doubt we will be subjected to targeted SPAM!!!! and I am still suspicous of the privacy issues.
I will wait with anticipation, personally I think google is starting on a slippery slope, and there is more government involvement than they are admitting. Take Heed google, if people lose trust, people start looking elsewhere. I will be blocking access to this service, in order to protect our company and staff. 1 terrabit of storage could transfer a lot of confidential company information out of our company.
2. anonymous
Unfortunately it isn't the case. It was just a glitch in the Google systems and the storage space now shows as before.
3. Brian Burkill
The SINGLE reason why I will not be taking up Google mail is because of the privacy clause.
I DO NOT want advertisments, and so would rather do without the disk space.
What are you gonna do with a Terabyte of space anyway?? I bet Google are gambling on the thought that nobody will use that much.. Wouldnt it be interesting to see what happened when everyone used 75% of their quota.. I can see disk drives falling over left right and centre.
4. anonymous
I think this is a great idea and but how do you log on. Yahoo is trying to do the same thing thought so you better watch out.