ANTenna Blog -- Networking & Communications

I've been relying Gmail as my personal e-mail for more than 5 years now, and I often use it to "store" stuff that I want to be able find later. It's easy to just e-mail things to myself so I know it'll be available from anywhere. And still I'm using only 23% of the 7390 MB that Google now provides for free. Apparently, though, some people need more space, and Google is lowering its prices for additional storage -- offering 20GB for $5 a year -- and boosting available options all the way up to 16 Terabytes!

The Google signup page for additional storage lists the following tiers:

• 20 GB ($5.00 per year)
• 80 GB ($20.00 per year)
• 200 GB ($50.00 per year)
• 400 GB ($100.00 per year)
• 1 TB ($256.00 per year)
• 2 TB ($512.00 per year)
• 4 TB ($1,024.00 per year)
• 8 TB ($2,048.00 per year)
• 16 TB ($4,096.00 per year)

That's a big drop from the old rates, which started at $20 a year for 10GB.

No one really needs 16 TB of e-mail storage, of course. But what really bugs me -- and should bug SMBs as well -- is the comparison with typical Microsoft Exchange installations that limit mailboxes to a mere fraction of what Google offers for free, never mind these extensions. My Microsoft Exchange mailbox is capped at a paltry 500 MB, which I started bumping up against within months of going on the system. Despite deleting many e-mails and archiving others, I have to hassle with managing my e-mail to avoid going over that limit almost every day, and God forbid someone sends me a big attachment! I'm shut down from sending e-mails until I can offload the offending file.

Sheesh. How much is that productivity drain worth compared to how much storage costs?

Clearly, something is out of whack here, and for once I don't think it's Google. Storage is cheap these days, and it's time that all e-mail vendors need to embrace that fact, not keep denying it.

Oh, and you can add storage space to Google's Picasa photo albums on the same terms.

Don't Miss: Google's Announcement

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