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It also doesn't help that Google's free tier (15GB) is laughably small in 2026. HDD capacity and Google's profits grew many-fold since that was last increased

It also doesn't help that Google's free tier (15GB) is laughably small in 2026. HDD capacity and Google's profits grew many-fold since that was last increased (in 2012-ish?).

eterm 7mo ago
It does seem ridiculous that over 20 years ago, gmail was advertised with a real-time allowance ticking away increasing, which started at an incredibly generous 1GB allowance and you could watch it tick up in real time faster than you could fill it with mail. People designed "gmail-as-storage" apps to take advantage of this. 20 years later and we get a pathetic 15GB for mail, photos and everything else combined.
- Terr_ 7mo ago
  TBF that's a little bit apples-to-orchards, since publicly routed e-mails have certain expectable size/frequency characteristics compared to, say, all the videos someone possesses.
- Dylan16807 7mo ago
  1GB that grew to 7GB over about 4 years and then 15GB over another 5 years. And has been stuck at 15GB for about 13 years. https://lifetourer.com/gmail-and-storage-capacity-cmon-google/ https://lifetourer.com/gmail-and-storage-capacity-cmon-googl... The limit used to cost a whole dollar of hard drive space (plus redundancy), sometimes more than that. If they kept that up with adjustment for inflation then 100GB would be the free tier today, not a $20/year tier.
tredre3 7mo ago
It is small, but if you look at their competition it's still competitive. Only Mega offers more for free (20GB). Microsoft offers 5GB. Ente.io offers 10GB. Proton.io offers 2GB (if you jump through some time-limited hoops, most of which defeats the purpose of using a privacy cloud, you get a whooping 5GB free instead) Filen.io offers 10GB, but you can get 30GB if you do a similar dance to proton and spam your referral code everywhere.
- Dylan16807 7mo ago
  Notably Microsoft used to offer 15GB until decreasing it a decade ago. So while I would say 15GB is pretty typical, I would not say it's competitive. I would say the competition died in 2013.
  - Thorrez 7mo ago
    If the top offer is 15 GB, then 15GB is competitive, even if multiple providers offer it. Disclosure: I work at Google, but not on anything related to this.
    - Dylan16807 6mo ago
      Competitive implies competition. The competition ended over a decade ago, and 15GB stayed 15GB even though the price of providing it dropped 5x. Even though they're near the top, none of those companies are "competitive" in my book.

It also doesn't help that Google's free tier (15GB) is laughably small in 2026. HDD capacity and Google's profits grew many-fold since that was last increased (in 2012-ish?).

eterm 7mo ago

It does seem ridiculous that over 20 years ago, gmail was advertised with a real-time allowance ticking away increasing, which started at an incredibly generous 1GB allowance and you could watch it tick up in real time faster than you could fill it with mail. People designed "gmail-as-storage" apps to take advantage of this. 20 years later and we get a pathetic 15GB for mail, photos and everything else combined.

Terr_ 7mo ago
TBF that's a little bit apples-to-orchards, since publicly routed e-mails have certain expectable size/frequency characteristics compared to, say, all the videos someone possesses.
Dylan16807 7mo ago
1GB that grew to 7GB over about 4 years and then 15GB over another 5 years. And has been stuck at 15GB for about 13 years. https://lifetourer.com/gmail-and-storage-capacity-cmon-google/ https://lifetourer.com/gmail-and-storage-capacity-cmon-googl... The limit used to cost a whole dollar of hard drive space (plus redundancy), sometimes more than that. If they kept that up with adjustment for inflation then 100GB would be the free tier today, not a $20/year tier.

tredre3 7mo ago

It is small, but if you look at their competition it's still competitive. Only Mega offers more for free (20GB). Microsoft offers 5GB. Ente.io offers 10GB. Proton.io offers 2GB (if you jump through some time-limited hoops, most of which defeats the purpose of using a privacy cloud, you get a whooping 5GB free instead) Filen.io offers 10GB, but you can get 30GB if you do a similar dance to proton and spam your referral code everywhere.

Dylan16807 7mo ago
Notably Microsoft used to offer 15GB until decreasing it a decade ago. So while I would say 15GB is pretty typical, I would not say it's competitive. I would say the competition died in 2013.
- Thorrez 7mo ago
  If the top offer is 15 GB, then 15GB is competitive, even if multiple providers offer it. Disclosure: I work at Google, but not on anything related to this.
  - Dylan16807 6mo ago
    Competitive implies competition. The competition ended over a decade ago, and 15GB stayed 15GB even though the price of providing it dropped 5x. Even though they're near the top, none of those companies are "competitive" in my book.