Google Boosts Gmail Storage to 2GB
April 1, 2005
By Matt Hicks
On the one-year anniversary of Gmail, Google is doubling the storage
limit on e-mail accounts to 2GB and keeping the service as an
invite-only beta.
The increase, going live on Friday, is the first of a number of
storage bumps that the company is planning in the coming weeks and
months, said Georges Harik, product management director for Gmail.
Google Inc. has decided to make an indefinite number of ongoing
increases to Gmail's storage limits to meet user demand. Since
introducing Gmail on April Fool's Day a year ago, Google has heard
from users wanting to know what happens when, and if, they reach the
1GB cap, Harik said.
"There are people approaching 500 to 600MB, and even 900MB, and people
are asking what the plan is for them," Harik said. "We're trying to
stay ahead of any issue [users] may have with Gmail and anticipate
their needs."
The storage boost follows Yahoo Inc.'s announcement last week that it
will boost free Yahoo Mail accounts to 1GB of storage in late April,
matching Gmail's previous cap. On paid accounts, Yahoo already
provides 2GB of storage.
When Google first unveiled Gmail, it spurred a storage race among the
leading Web-based e-mail providers. Along with Yahoo, Microsoft
Corp.'s MSN Hotmail service also has increased its storage limits by
providing free accounts with 250MB and paid accounts with 2GB.
Despite speculation that Google might use the April 1 anniversary to
make Gmail broadly available, Harik said that the service will remain
an invite-only beta.
What about privacy? Click here to read about concerns raised by
Gmail's displays of sponsored listings.
But getting invited to Gmail has become easier in recent weeks.
Earlier this month, Google began providing random Gmail invites to its
home-page visitors. Google also has substantially increased the number
of invites available to current Gmail users.
With the storage boosts, Google plans to offer increases
simultaneously to both current and new Gmail users, Harik said. He
said exact dates and storage targets for the upcoming increases were
not available but it would occur in "short periods of time."
In other Google news, the company Thursday announced a feature for the
Mozilla Firefox browser that speeds the loading of the top Web page in
Google search results.
Google now instructs Firefox and other Mozilla browser to download the
top search result in advance, Google software engineer Reza Behforooz
wrote in the Google Blog.
"So if you click on it, you'll get to that page even more quickly,"
Behforooz wrote.
Also, on Wednesday, Google released a stock-quote feature that lets
users type in a ticker symbol in its search-query box to retrieve
stock information. Google is receiving a direct feed of market
information to provide the capability.
The ticker-symbol lookup also works in Google SMS (Short Message
Service), the company's mobile offering for retrieving targeted search
results through mobile messaging.
Check out eWEEK.com's Messaging & Collaboration Center for more on IM
and other collaboration technologies.
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