Google lies

From http://www.gmail.com (Google GMail):

"Don't throw anything away. 1000 megabytes of free storage so you'll never need to delete another message."

This is BS.

I keep all my e-mail since May 2001 (The Bat! message base) and I have 1.1 GB of e-mail.

So, 1 GB = about 3 years of e-mail storage.

So, why do they lie? Why don't they tell the truth?

Gigel
Tuesday, April 6, 2004

Surely it depends on how much e-mail you send and receive?! My Outlook Express message store from about 1998 to now is about 114 MB.

John Topley (www.johntopley.com)
Tuesday, April 6, 2004

They are probably going by the average users consumption - and yours does seem a bit excessive. You must have either millions of emails or loads of attachments saved?

Fothy
Tuesday, April 6, 2004

They're basically talking about people who don't collect porn stuff ;)

Sathyaish Chakravarthy
Tuesday, April 6, 2004

i've kept all of my e-mail since 1985 (PROFS,lotus notes,outlook, i-mode) and it's less than 300k.So,why trollH

who gives aH
Tuesday, April 6, 2004

I keep most (dumped a few mailing-list things) email since 1997 online (older stuff from 1987-1996 in backup archives, but my guess is that would add at most 25Mb) and that amounts to 2.28 GB.

Just me (Sir to you)
Tuesday, April 6, 2004

Don't throw anything away unless it has no value. You don't need mailing list archives when you can find them on the web. It would be like setting your browser cache to "infinite". You don't need to keep spam (not even to teach the filters) because Google will do that for you. Don't keep mail big attachments in your Sent folder because you have the files elsewhere.
You may have gigabytes of email but how much of that is actually plain text that you read? Maybe 1%.

TomA
Tuesday, April 6, 2004

> Don't keep mail big attachments in your Sent folder because you have the files elsewhere

Not always the case. If I were to apply for jobs *cough* then I would personalise the CV I attach for each application. There's no better place to keep it than with the email because that is where it is easiest to find.

Tuesday, April 6, 2004

Most of the volume comes from attachments to received messages. I like having these in my mailbox since they are best indexed and searchable there.

Just me (Sir to you)
Tuesday, April 6, 2004

Well, nothing stops google from increasing the space they offer over time.  In fact, left to me, they probably should have started with a smaller amount of space (250mb?) and increased it over time with the target of 1gb in mind; same way they do with their "number of pages currently indexed".  It would have recieved the same amount of publicity ("google offers .60x webmail space").

I have a post, which includes links to some nice google webmail features, here:
http://www.afriguru.com/2004/google-webmail.html

Regards,
Seun Osewa

Seun Osewa (afriguru.com)
Tuesday, April 6, 2004

what's the point?

I guarantee you that the spammers are already revving up their spam generators to spew out billions of messages addresed to  [randomcharacters]@gmail.com

You'll need a gigabyte of disk space just to handle the spam.

Quote of the day: "People don't really check their e-mail.  They just delete the spam."

My Cousin Vinniwashtharam
Tuesday, April 6, 2004

So, do you actually _store_ your spam mail ?@?

Seun Osewa (afriguru.com)
Tuesday, April 6, 2004

Hey cousin, look at this thread that I just started...

http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=130461

Google would only need to keep one copy of every email that is sent to them, even if it is sent to a billion recepients.

here is a potential datamodel

tblUsers (UserEmail (PK), UserName)
tblMessages (MsgId (PK), Messsage)

tblUserMsg, (UserEmail (FK), MsgId (FK) )

All you do when message arrives is trigger that creates entry in tblUserMsg for all recepeints

When individual user deletes message, remove corresponding user/msg row in the tblMsg.

Once in a while, run through tblMessages, removing all records with no corresponding entries in tblUserMsg

Tapiwa
Tuesday, April 6, 2004

Yes, but they'll still have to count the space as part of your 1gb allocation.  Spam should be deleted.

Seun Osewa (afriguru.com)
Tuesday, April 6, 2004

Trouble with spam is that they now encode little unique bits of random text in each email, so that filters can't just block the same message sent to lots of people. So Google would probably end up storing each spam individually.

But I'm sure Google would have some decent kind of Bayesian filtering that would block most spam. Popfile does it almost perfectly.

Matthew Lock
Tuesday, April 6, 2004

"So, do you actually _store_ your spam mail ?@?"

My spam folder (1997->) is around 37Mb.

Just me (Sir to you)
Wednesday, April 7, 2004

I have 44000 messages. I don't store spam.

However, every time one of my coworkers sends me archived source code, and stuff like that, I keep it.

So, 1 GB / 44000 messages = average 22 KBytes/message

Gigel
Wednesday, April 7, 2004

If 1 GB only lasts you 3 years, that's very slightly less than 1 MB per day.

I guess they think the vast majority of people in the world get less than 1 MB of email a day.

spammer
Wednesday, April 7, 2004

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