GMail Reaches 5 Gig

Google Mail's, or Gmail, inbox and storage capacity has been increasing ever since it was released to the public this February, and now it has reached new heights


GMail's Mileage Reaches 5 Gigabytes of Storage
As of today, November 19, 2007, Gmail's storage capacity has reached over 5,000 Megabytes or 5 GB of online storage. That's all for free online, and that also includes your Picasa and Blogger accounts.

Google's Gmail capacity has been increasing at about 1 megabyte per hour ever since it was released to the public last February of 2007. Google's promise is that they will increase the storage capacity indefinitely, or as long as they have space on their servers.

After Gmail's initial announcement and development, many existing web mail services quickly increased their storage capacity. For example, Hotmail went from giving some users 2 MB to 25 MB (250 MB after 30 days, and 2 GB for Hotmail Plus accounts), while Yahoo! Mail went from 4 MB to 100 MB (and 2 GB for Yahoo! Mail Plus accounts). Yahoo! Mail storage then proceeded to 250 MB, in late April of 2005, to 1 GB. Yahoo! Mail announced that it would be providing "unlimited" storage to all its users in March 2007 and began providing it in May 2007.

These were all seen as moves to stop existing users from switching to Gmail and to capitalize on the newly rekindled public interest in web mail services. The desire to catch up was especially visible for MSN's Hotmail, which upgraded its e-mail storage erratically from 250 MB to the new Windows Live Hotmail which includes 5 GB of storage. As of November 2006, MSN Hotmail upgraded all free accounts to have 1 GB of storage. In August of 2005, AOL started providing all AIM screen names with their own e-mail accounts with 2 GB of storage. Another source of competition came from 30Gigs who were offering 30 gigabytes of storage, initially through invite only but now available publicly.

Other than the general increase of storage limit, there has also been an improvement of the e-mail interfaces of Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail after the launch of Gmail. Gmail's ability to have an attachment size of 10 MB was also matched by Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail during 2005. Following the footsteps of Gmail, Yahoo! launched the Yahoo! Mail Beta service and Microsoft launched Windows Live Hotmail, both now incorporating Ajax interfaces. Google increased the maximum attachment size to 20 MB in May 2007

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Copyright 2007 Sonicsoft Corporation
All Rights Reserved

Good 'ol Gmail

Google's answer to the email rivalries is the Gmail. It's free, and has unique features that really make it stand out among its competitors


Google Gmail Exposed

Gmail has come a long way since it first debuted. In April 1, 2004, Google's web-based email service was released as a beta, but to a limited users only - you need an invitation from a Gmail user to create your own email account. In February of 2007, it was opened to the public, and anybody can create an account without any invitations.

Before the invitation-only status was removed, Gmail has the largest email storage capacity - 1 GB in size, compared to Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail's megabytes-sized inboxes. It was the choice for people who have to store lots and lotsa emails. And when it opened to the public, that storage capacity soared to 2 GB. As of now, Gmail's storage capacity is creeping to 5Gb and still increasing to a little more than 1 MB an hour.

The unique feature of Gmail is it's unique presentation and foundation. It uses AJAX, a technology that allows you to refresh certain areas of a webpage, without refreshing the entire page. That allows faster load times, and very responsive page. Clicking the Inbox immediately shows your inbox folder (without the page refreshing). In the same way, clicking any folder shows the folder's contents almost instantaneously.

And it's unique 'conversational view' allows you to see the thread of your email in one single view. All messages in the email are grouped together in a stack, so all the replies to the email and your replies to the email are readily available.

But these are the ones that makes Gmail stand out among the rest. You won't see these in Yahoo! and Windows Live Hotmail:

Security
By default, all your emails and data go through unencrypted connection. However, changing the http:// in the address bar to https://, you can manually force Gmail to use a more secure, encrypted connection to retrieve your emails. That reduces third-party sniffing for data and user information, like your contacts.

Plus Addressing
Gmail has this handy, and unique feature, that allows you to plus your addresses. If you receive the Sonicsoft Wired Update email, you'll notice that it is used extensively. Plus addressing allows users to send emails to username+extratext@gmail.com, where extratext can be any string. Emails will still be sent to username@gmail.com. This is especially useful when subscribing to online websites. So you can filter out the messages received from a subscribed site, a user might register the email address as username+websitename@gmail.com.

The Dot Addresses
Another useful feature of Gmail is that it doesn't recognize the dot or period. It ignores them instead. So, all emails to goog.le@gmail.com, g.o.o.g.l.e@gmail.com, and g.oog.le@gmail.com will still go to google@gmail.com. This is useful to sort out or filter messages you receive.

You might have noticed that Gmail is still in beta state - meaning it's not yet released as final. It's been beta ever since it was released, and many people are wondering whether Gmail will get out of beta state, or might go on forever as beta, known as the perpetual beta. Google says that it will remain in beta so they can improve their services whenever it is needed. Last month, Gmail was updated to version 2.0. However, some people are reporting problems with the new format. Users are allowed to go back to version 1 anytime they like.

Check out the Official Gmail Blog for more news.

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Copyright 2007 Sonicsoft Corporation
All Rights Reserved