I can't keep up... and I LIKE it!

When Google released it's GMail application with 1G of space, it was exponentially more than anyone at the time. Who would ever need 1G of space? For mail?! It was one of those claims some thought they'd never have to honor for everyone -- kinda like fitness center memberships. They continued to incrementally up the ante and storage with a little counter on the home page that showed the storage available to each GMail account.

As of right now, they're telling me... "You are currently using 352 MB (6%) of your 5328 MB." I had hit a max of about 10% several weeks ago, but then they kicked the allocation into HIGH gear and are rapidly outpacing my inflow of mail. But that's OK. How often do you get something you want, before you need it, for FREE!

Other services like Hotmail (5G), Yahoo (unlimited), etc are adding storage feverishly, but people will still remember that it was Google that offered it first. Some people took it as a personal challenge to fill up their GMail account when they first got it and some actually achieved that goal, but now that there is so much space available that's just not fun anymore.

Google has started offering a paid storage option for their Picasa accounts, but I've not seen anything about requiring payment for even larger GMail boxes.

Almost Smart has a chart that shows the growth of GMail storage allocation. Guess I won't be running out of space for my mail anytime soon.