How <i>does</i> Gmail enlarge its users mailbox storage space every second?

[user1397]

If you go to http://gmail.com/ it tells you how much space it gives its users for email storage. But it increases every second, no matter how small an amount, it increases.

It is almost up to 3 GB of storage, which is more than any other main-stream online email service as far as I know.

If you require all that space is another topic, I am just interested in how they are able to achieve this.

[kr0n05 I I]

They're a multi-trillion dollar company, yeah, I wonder how too. :lolflag:

[Crashmaxx]

They oversell, just like everyone now-a-days. They know 90% of people won't use the majority of that space any time soon. So they don't need to have that much space available.

Broadband internet is the same way. They don't have 6Mb/s for every customer at once, but they know 90% of people will not use anywhere near that much most of the time. That is why they are getting so upset about peer to peer stuff and torrents. They don't have as much bandwidth as they sell, so if too many people use most of what they bought, the whole network will slow cause its maxed out.

Really not a fair practice, but some do better then others. Google will manage this fine as by they don't oversell as much as many and can afford to add a lot more space and bandwidth at a moments notice. When was the last time google.com went down regardless of load?

[lisati]

Hmmmm good question. I had wondered too, maybe it's a trick of some kind.

[FuturePilot]

Wow, that is interesting. How do they acquire a that space?
But I think Windows Live Mail gives you 4 GB

[RAV TUX]

If you go to http://gmail.com/ it tells you how much space it gives its users for email storage. But it increases every second, no matter how small an amount, it increases.

It is almost up to 3 GB of storage, which is more than any other main-stream online email service as far as I know.

If you require all that space is another topic, I am just interested in how they are able to achieve this.

My Yahoo premium e-mail has been with unlimited storage for as long as I can remember, with NO ads.

...and it comes with my domain name: jozef@OzEnterprise.com

[~LoKe]

Google has a farm of about 450,000 servers (as of 2006) with one or two 80GB hard drives each (36,000,000 - 72,000,000GB of storage, as of 2003), which is roughly 36,000 - 72,000 terabytes, or, 36 - 72 petabyes. That's a lot of storage, assuming my math is correct.

Even assuming it's only 36 petabytes, it's around 3x the amount of storage Microsoft has.

God knows what they have now.

EDIT: To add, Google wants to host everything. They want to offer a digital copy of every book in every library, as well as just about everything else.

[Lostincyberspace]

They oversell, just like everyone now-a-days. They know 90% of people won't use the majority of that space any time soon. So they don't need to have that much space available.

Broadband internet is the same way. They don't have 6Mb/s for every customer at once, but they know 90% of people will not use anywhere near that much most of the time. That is why they are getting so upset about peer to peer stuff and torrents. They don't have as much bandwidth as they sell, so if too many people use most of what they bought, the whole network will slow cause its maxed out.

Really not a fair practice, but some do better then others. Google will manage this fine as by they don't oversell as much as many and can afford to add a lot more space and bandwidth at a moments notice. When was the last time google.com went down regardless of load?
Uhh never.

[ticopelp]

Bag of holding?

[el_ricardo]

its actually about 6.2GB now, which pisses all over windows live

google's blatently going to release something new that utilizes all this space, google documents, for example, but that's only the beginning methinks. I've heard rumours of google tv as well, which could use this space well

[rax_m]

They oversell, just like everyone now-a-days. They know 90% of people won't use the majority of that space any time soon. So they don't need to have that much space available.

Broadband internet is the same way. They don't have 6Mb/s for every customer at once, but they know 90% of people will not use anywhere near that much most of the time. That is why they are getting so upset about peer to peer stuff and torrents. They don't have as much bandwidth as they sell, so if too many people use most of what they bought, the whole network will slow cause its maxed out.

Really not a fair practice, but some do better then others. Google will manage this fine as by they don't oversell as much as many and can afford to add a lot more space and bandwidth at a moments notice. When was the last time google.com went down regardless of load?

Yep.. I have to agree that that makes sense.

BTW I think yahoo mail is now unlimited! But I think gmail is better.
Just such a pain in the *** to move ;)

[Lostincyberspace]

Yep.. I have to agree that that makes sense.

BTW I think yahoo mail is now unlimited! But I think gmail is better.
Just such a pain in the *** to move ;)
Just have google check it and move it all love for you.

[rax_m]

Just have google check it and move it all love for you.

Will it be able to move all my email that is saved in subfolders as well?

Thx

[kevdog]

Kind of off topic but google released a study of their harddrives last year. I think I read the summary on toms hardware. This has nothing to do with solid state drivers.

Basically conventional wisdom states that with a new batch of hard drives, there will be an initially high failure rate (due to manufacturing defects, etc), and then with time more and more hard drives will fail due to mechanical failure (assuming equal read/write cycles among the drives). See theoretically the total number of yearly failures of a group of two-year old drives, should be less than the total number of yearly failures of a group of five-year old drives.

Google however did not find this to be the case. Excluding the initial failure rate, google rate the failure rate gradually rose over time but then leveled off. I dont remember what the leveling off point was. They found that the failure rate of many of their old group of drives was no higher than many of their newer drives. They didnt speculate any conclusions for this, however maybe its just overall a manufacturing problem.

[mech7]

umm yahoo offers unlimited space

[Fascination]

umm yahoo offers unlimited space

Yes, but its Yahoo. No class. :)

I've never been able to understand how people could possibly use all the space (putting aside using the account as a virtual hdd).

[Lostincyberspace]

Will it be able to move all my email that is saved in subfolders as well?

Thx
I am pretty sure it will move them over you might need to make new folders/tabs for them once it is done though. Or you could set up filters before and then start moving them and it will sort it.

[TaintedTux]

They oversell, just like everyone now-a-days. They know 90% of people won't use the majority of that space any time soon. So they don't need to have that much space available.

Broadband internet is the same way. They don't have 6Mb/s for every customer at once, but they know 90% of people will not use anywhere near that much most of the time. That is why they are getting so upset about peer to peer stuff and torrents. They don't have as much bandwidth as they sell, so if too many people use most of what they bought, the whole network will slow cause its maxed out.

Really not a fair practice, but some do better then others. Google will manage this fine as by they don't oversell as much as many and can afford to add a lot more space and bandwidth at a moments notice. When was the last time google.com went down regardless of load?

I agree with this to a point, but the 3gb of space is quite nice if you're using the Gspace Firefox extension. :-D

[hhhhhx]

i believe that google uses the storage capacity of the sun for its data base :lolflag:

[julian67]

If you go to http://gmail.com/ it tells you how much space it gives its users for email storage. But it increases every second, no matter how small an amount, it increases.

It is almost up to 3 GB of storage, which is more than any other main-stream online email service as far as I know.

If you require all that space is another topic, I am just interested in how they are able to achieve this.

By the awesome power of marketing ;-)