And having that storage space has been a huge boon. Having my files backed up on Google’s servers (which are distributed and backed up several times over), is actually much more reliable than my own computers (Windows dies, that’s a reality).

As for running out of space, it’s not that hard. For example, I get powerpoint presentations, documents and PDF files in my gmail account. An average PPT runs 2-4 MB. Documents run 200KB to 2MB. PDF files are in the same range. And if I’m working on this stuff with a team, I have to send and receive these thru my gmail account. With an average of 7-8 revisions for every PPT file, each presentation eats up 40+ MB in my account.

Of course, this doesn’t include those which have audio add-ons.

Now, many ppl don’t see this happening because they primarily use one computer and use desktop software. But when we have computers at office, computers at home, a laptop for travelling, and ready Internet everywhere … Web-based emails are more useful.

And if you exchange versions of any kind of documents, its not hard to fill up a few gigabytes.

Of course, I agree that Google was using this as a selling point. But they really screwed up there. Initially, they had advertised an “infinity + 1″ storage plan for Gmail (On their 2nd anniversary) ….

But this year, they started asking people for money for more storage! That’s like cheating … I’m glad that Yahoo & MSN stepped up to offer great email solutions. Both Windows Live and the new Yahoo mail are very capable emails … good enough to match Gmail feature for feature.

So I guess we should be thanking Google for upping the stakes in the email game. I suppose it’s harder for them to match their own standards of evolution now.

I guess it just depends on the amount of money someone is willing to spend on email storage.

BTW, I can’t wait to get my hands on the cool product you and Amit are working on right now.

I think that $10-20 is something well spent.

I continue to pay a crazy price to maintain my email (with a 10mb quota) at my old ISP from the early 90s, just because people still mail me there.

I have a couple of greasemonkey texts around, but it’ll be some time till i get to them.

you know you can always get a second gmail account.
that way you won’t have to pay extra for the storage.
back in ‘04 it was kinda hard to get 2 gmail accounts but now that’s it’s one for all and all for one, it’s quite easy.

As to the features point, you can do a great deal with GreaseMonkey scripts in Firefox. That’s not immediately user friendly or available to casual users, but if you’ve got a little hacker in your blood, you can do wonders with GreaseMonkey and GMail!

Losing 3gb of work and personal memories can be really painful.

You’d think with all the new-fangled stuff that’s taking place, email ought to at least implement tag clouds, automated mail filters, ajax tech…ok, don’t get me started…

Text messaging and integrated VOIP is great, but…the bread and butter issues need to be taken care of first, don’t you think?

I’ve had my account since a couple of days after their launch in ‘04 and it’s full of all sorts of old emails and files. I honestly use GMail as my storage box / external “cloud drive” and keep all sorts of things (files, pics, .zips, notes, etc) in there. You just can’t beat the search function there!