Are they serious? (Gmail)

jp · Post by jp » Sun Apr 03, 2005 3:55 pm

Yesterday they had this thing on the login page about going to infinity+1 on storage and blah blah blah. To the left it said "Don't throw anything away. 2054.179753 megabytes (and counting) of free storage so you'll never need to delete another message." and it was just a number constantly growing. I thought "That would be awesome... if it wasn't April 1st."

Today I go to login to GMail and the number is still growing... and it shows I have that much space in my account. Seriously, if that wasn't an April Fools joke then GMail is the most fucking awesome thing since... well... GMail.

Also, if anyone wants a GMail account I have 50 invites... so yeah...

magnum opus · Post by **magnum opus** » Sun Apr 03, 2005 4:25 pm

eh, all this means is i have to make fewer accounts to back up my shit

Ganelon · Post by **Ganelon** » Sun Apr 03, 2005 4:26 pm

I feel bad for them so I keep my old messages even though I delete everything everywhere else. Must be a lot of people just keeping on deleting stuff, meaning they won't be able to extract any ad preferences.

jp · Post by jp » Tue Apr 05, 2005 3:27 am

And it is still going... this is fucking crazy (yet awesome at the same time).

Zhon · Post by **Zhon** » Tue Apr 05, 2005 4:04 am

Everyone has 50 invites now, even newly-created accounts. GMail is basically open to anyone now, except you still have to convince a current user to send you one. As for space, maybe they upped it since the other providers finally duplicated them with 1 GB.

If GMail works the way it claims, it makes no difference whether you keep your mails there or not...their claim is they only use the current mail you're looking at to derive ads on the side.

As for using it as backup, as long as you guys remain the minority, then Google probably won't care. If the very unlikely event in which a lot of people start using it this way, then GMail may be changed. The only way to ensure that something continues to be offerred by a corp is for it to be profitable.

Stormwatch · Post by **Stormwatch** » Tue Apr 05, 2005 5:14 am

I once wondered, why don't they offer webhosting like that?

Here's the thing... pretty much no one is going to use their Gmail accounts fully, not for a looong time; most people have no more than, what, a few MB of email, at most? Also, only you check your own email, right?

Now imagine a webhosting service like that. People would easily find things to put there (R0mZ! MP3! War3z! M0vie ripz!). Many people would get such files at the same time, and bandwidth cost would be pretty high.

So, this may be Gmail's secret: they can offer what seems to be a lot because no one will actually use it to the fullest.

Am I rambling too much? Yeah, gotta get some sleep now.

Kevin · Post by **Kevin** » Tue Apr 05, 2005 5:21 pm

Stormwatch wrote:Now imagine a webhosting service like that. People would easily find things to put there (R0mZ! MP3! War3z! M0vie ripz!). Many people would get such files at the same time, and bandwidth cost would be pretty high.

People already use Gmail for things like that. I know a few accounts I can log on to with a gig of mp3s sitting there for download. If too many people log into an account within a certain timeframe it locks it for a bit, but you can just cc each message to half a dozen other accounts if you need that much access.

I don't have a link on me, but someone wrote up a Gmail fileserver extension for windows that adds your gmail account as an extra 1gb (2gb+ now) harddrive in windows explorer which you can treat just like any other physical drive. Files are stored as attachments to messages, subject prefixed with something standard so you can automatically have them sent to a specific folder while still using the account for regular mail.

Thunder Force · Post by **Thunder Force** » Tue Apr 05, 2005 6:25 pm

Kevin wrote:I don't have a link on me, but someone wrote up a Gmail fileserver extension for windows that adds your gmail account as an extra 1gb (2gb+ now) harddrive

Gmail Drive

Stormwatch · Post by **Stormwatch** » Tue Apr 05, 2005 11:39 pm

Talking about web hosting... does anyone know a free service that will allow external linking to images (i.e., avatars and sigs)? I don't need much room, a few megs will suffice.

MovingTarget · Post by **MovingTarget** » Wed Apr 06, 2005 12:01 am

www.photobucket.com

www.photodump.com

Stormwatch · Post by **Stormwatch** » Wed Apr 06, 2005 5:58 pm

Awesome! Photobucket is just what I needed, thanks!

MovingTarget · Post by **MovingTarget** » Wed Apr 06, 2005 6:04 pm