Google: The Missing Manual, 2nd Edition

Chapter 11. Gmail

When Google unveiled Gmail, its free Web-based email service, on April 1, 2004, and announced that each user could have an entire gigabyte of space for mail and attachments, many people assumed it was a nerdy April Fool’s joke. (A gigabyte is so large, it needs its own box to explain how big it is; see Section 11.1.) Most free Webmail services at the time parceled out only 2, 4, or maybe 10 megabytes of mailspace (a megabyte is about a thousand times smaller than a gigabyte). With those services, when your inbox filled up with spam, your incoming messages started bouncing back like toddlers on a trampoline.

Google wasn’t joking about the gigabyte. As with the other Webmail services, it lets you check your mail and send messages from just about any computer, anywhere on the planet, that has a Web browser and an Internet connection. But with Gmail, you have room to receive and save all your messages, too—two and a half times over, now that Google has upgraded its accounts to store two gigabytes instead of one.

Note

Several other Webmail services have scrambled to improve their own offerings since Gmail got up and running. Hotmail accounts now offer 250 megabytes of room for mail, and Yahoo upped its free mailbox capacity to one gigabyte per person in an attempt to match Gmail—but it tries to wheedle $20 a year from you for the two-gigabyte account. Gmailers now get 2.5 gigs free.

In addition to giving you two and a half gigabytes of server space to pile up your electronic ...