You'll never probably need to delete another message

Remember when GMail first came out?  1GB of email was unheard of, especially in a free service at the time.  One of Google’s big selling points was “you’ll never need to delete another message.”  It was right there on the home page.  If you compare the home pages from 2004 and today for Gmail you’ll note they still refer to it as being “Lots of space” but they no longer say you’ll never need to delete another message.  The message about never deleting email disappeared sometime between March, 2009 and December 2009.

Why did the message go away?  Because the users proved that 1GB (then 2GB, then 4GB, then 7GB) simply wasn’t enough to store EVERY email.  To combat this, back in 2007, Google released a means of purchasing more storage space at a rate of 6GB for $20/year, this storage would be shared amongst your Google Docs, GMail, and Picasa accounts.  Over time these prices got even better.  Yesterday you could buy 20GB of storage for $5 a year.

Today however, with the Google Drive release, the prices have changed from being yearly to being monthly, while yesterday you could get 20GB for $5 a year, today the cheapest plan is 25GB for $2.49 a month (which comes out to $29.88/year).  This is a very significant increase, but it’s not what I find the most annoying:  GMail storage space is now completely separate from Google Drive (formerly Google Docs) and Picasa storage.  The 25GB you are purchasing is only for Google Drive and Picasa, not for GMail.

They soften the blow by ALSO giving you an upgrade to 25GB on GMail, but this is separate from the 25GB on Google Drive.  Now this means that you are really buying about 35GB for the $29.88 a year (but you could previously buy 80GB for $20 a year so it’s still a sizeable increase), but the kicker is, the 25GB of space on GMail is fixed.  If you buy 25GB of space on Google Drive, you get 25GB of space on GMail, if you buy 1TB of space on Google Drive, you get 25GB of space on GMail.

There is no longer any option available to purchase more than 25GB of space on GMail whatsoever, no matter how much you may want it so that you never have to delete another email

I’d like to say I have hope that they will allow this option soon, but I don’t really.  The premium Google Apps for Business has long given 25GB of space for GMail, and even though I have personally wanted to buy more space, Google has never given me the option to buy more on a Google Apps account.  It seems the dream of limitless email storage is no longer alive.