Just a couple weeks ago, I was struggling to make sure my gmail account didn’t exceed the limit.
The Gmail Warning Bar
I had my gmail account 97% full with a yellow bar notification advising me to take necessary actions so that I could still be receiving email.
(Screenshot below was taken in October of 2011)
It turns out that most of the mail that I have in my account is attached with photos dear to me. The photos are taking up most of the space with an average size of 3~5 mb. Most of my emails document my dialogue with family, friends, and associates which I don’t want to ever delete. With over 28,000 messages how in the hell will I ever find the time to clear my account???
What I Did
For a couple of months, I thought about deleting my entire Sent Folder but it’s just too precious to delete… So I decided to delete any mail that was worthless to me. I also deleted the entire Spam Folder and the Trash folder but that gave me just an extra 1% to my account which didn’t help. I thought it was time to buy additional storage or transfer to a new Gmail account.
The Gmail Surprise
Google is full of surprises!!! Upon opening my gmail account today, I noticed that the yellow bar vanished and that I had about 30% lof space left in my account. At first, I thought Gmail was deleting my emails and so I checked. Nope… Gmail did not delete anything and I still had all my messages from 2004. I then looked carefully again and I saw this number: 10241 MB… it used to be around 7600 MB, I can’t believe I skipped that.
Just to confirm it a bit more here’s Gmail’s login page.
When Did I Start Using Gmail
I’ve had my account since Gmail was launched (ca 2004). I would consider myself one of the lucky first ones to actually get an account on Gmail and choose an account name that I wanted!!!
Although there is some advantages of getting a desired username, I thought that after 8 years, gmail would succumb it to its storage limit but I guess not!
Thanks Google. Your free services are amazing!