Gmail offers a gig of storage so that us normal folk will never need to clean out our email boxes. They can remain as archives of all of our dealings and communications. Later, when we've filled up a good portion of the gigabyte allocated to us it will be cost effective for Gmail to evolve their service into 10 gig.
It's amazing how many email users are simply affronted by that very gesture, as though an inbox that is less than 50% full is a source of shame, and thus Google has made their job of maintaining a full inbox more difficult.
Every time I hear of a different service increasing the sizes of their email boxes, it seems to be reviewed favorably over Gmail. Hotmail, Yahoo, and Lycos have all upped their inbox sizes to at least 100MB, most often 2gig with a subscription. Barney just sent me a link to an article touting an Israeli email service called Walla as the next Gmail killer. Why, you might ask? Because they provide 1 gig of space with their free accounts, plus mail filtering, email search, and virus protection. The article's optimism does not seem to be affected by the fact that every web based email I've ever seen includes filters, search and anti-virus.
The only other feature advertised is support for various multimedia capabilities, apparently geared towards allowing you to (ab)use your email box for multimedia file storage.
And then, of course, Sarah Gilbert suggests that Gmail is made moot by Big IMAP, which offers potentially more than a gigabyte of storage, plus IMAP access and (obviously) no ads, for the low low price of $10-$20 per month. Here is a quote from her blog:
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I would be remiss if I didn't mention, however, that Big IMAP gives you a lot more value than any Gmail invite - more storage, IMAP support, and no ads. There is a 30-day free trial if you want to check it out ;)
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The fact that Gmail remains at least three times cheaper (zoolander homage intended) doesn't seem to be addressed.
There have been many times that I wished I had some gift or another to impart upon the world. Perhaps I could cure cancer, or feed the homeless, or build a better internet, but now those hopes have been marred, because apparently purity of altruism sometimes appears to be received offensively, and I'll have to continue sharpenning my skills of rudeness and self-interest in order to fit in in this world.
Posted by jesse at July 7, 2004 03:18 PM