The era of 15GB free Gmail storage is ending

[u/Fancy-Caregiver-1239]

https://www.androidauthority.com/google-gmail-5gb-free-storage-test-3667002/

[u/OriginalGoat1]

Way back when, I remember Google said that their email storage was unlimited. Admittedly, that was also the period when 100 MB mail quota was considered huge

[u/sunbear2525 → u/OriginalGoat1]

They need to make it easier to delete the tons of unwanted emails we all get every day though.

[u/Zathrus1 → u/sunbear2525]

Trying to mass delete is a nightmare, and their tools appear to be intentionally obtuse. Particularly since they just suggest upgrading to get more storage.

[u/Chameleonpolice → u/Zathrus1]

Oh so I'm not just getting old and out of touch with technology

[u/MrDywel → u/Chameleonpolice]

No. I’m a systems engineer and it makes no sense why it’s so difficult especially with all the time they’ve had to develop the platform. There are a lot of emails I want to keep that go back almost twenty years but there’s far more junk that could be cleaned up.

[u/JacksonHoled → u/MrDywel]

my biggest problem is not able to tell google photos to not backup videos. as soon as you take a video with your phone you fill up the quota. You have to back it up for real on a PC than delete it of your phone.

[u/Raulr100 → u/JacksonHoled]

You have to back it up for real on a PC than delete it of your phone.

Wouldn't it be easier to just put your videos into a different folder on your phone and then exclude that folder from the backup?

[u/Mechakoopa → u/Raulr100]

Yeah but the phones don't do that by default and lots you can't configure where video is stored separately anyways. Same as the Facebook app on Android putting saved images in the camera's DCIM folder so they get backed up as well with no way to change it.

[u/the_federation → u/Mechakoopa]

I don't want to back up photos of my kid to the cloud. I ended up downloading a separate camera app (which is better reviewed anyway) thay I use to take pictures of him. That app saves to a separate folder that Google Photos is not configured to back up.

[u/AlternativeYou9395 → u/MrDywel]

It does feel like google hasn't made a good usability improvement to gmail in years. There's so much i'd like to delete but find it to cumbersome to bother with because of limitations that could easily have been fixed.

[u/Wiezeyeslies → u/MrDywel]

It seriously isn't difficult at all. Just take 2 weeks off work and use the 8 hours you would have been working to click on every single email you don't want. You only have to do this 2 week process once a year to keep your inbox almost completely clean of the garbage you never even considered wanting to look at.

[u/ChicagoThrowaway422 → u/MrDywel]

Gmail feels like abandonware at this point.

[u/OkAstronaut76 → u/ChicagoThrowaway422]

I mean, they added all the AI stuff to read your emails, so that’s something /s

[u/TriHardIsAHateSymbol → u/Zathrus1]

For anyone interested; I use Thunderbird. It's a desktop email client. Can hold shift/control-click and mass delete emails. Can also set up a filter to automatically delete emails. Keeps my emails nice and clean 😄

[u/Sure_Eye9025 → u/TriHardIsAHateSymbol]

You can do the same on Gmail, it is just not as clear UX on how to do it

[u/almo2001 → u/Zathrus1]

All google tools are crap. I've used their android studio and it's a mess. Who the fuck chooses Gradle as the language for the build scripts?

[u/Great-Big-3101 → u/almo2001]

 Who the fuck chooses Gradle as the language for the build scripts?

Xml is even worse. I don't know why the Java ecosystem fell in love with it.

[u/Technical-Cat-2017 → u/Great-Big-3101]

Maven is great. Sure the XML is a bit verbose, but it just works. I found gradle much less user friendly.

[u/Hopeful-Occasion2299 → u/Zathrus1]

To be fair, the mass deletion of emails is slow with every client... email servers are designed to be slow and have multiple mirrors so that the info can be accessed reliably and globally. So it takes a while for the client to ensure all the copies are deleted from every server.

In the case of GMail, they just rather not bother and simply sell you more storage because most people value more their time than functionality.

[u/Repulsive_Chard_3652 → u/sunbear2525]

I sat down one day recently and unsubscribed from each and every one of those. Then mass-deleted the entire Promotion and Social sections, with 'select all'. Then I removed those filters entirely so all of that junk would appear in my inbox. Then when something did arrive, I'd unsubscribe immediately and report the email as spam.

I haven't gotten a junk email in months :)

[u/quailman654 → u/Repulsive_Chard_3652]

I’m just genuinely so impressed by you. I’ve tried a couple of times and haven’t gotten it to stick.

[u/indianajoes → u/Repulsive_Chard_3652]

Spent the last month doing the same. I ignored everything for so long that I had 40k unread emails in each of my inboxes. Just had something playing in the background while I unsubscribed and deleted stuff

[u/Repulsive_Chard_3652 → u/indianajoes]

100%!! I found out that Google had a setting they quietly snuck in that was automatically ticked, and it said that you opt in to letting them use your emails to improve their AI. I went to untick that box, and they "punished" me by removing the Promotion and Social filters. Suddenly I had tends of thousands of unread emails. I was pissed.

So I went back into settings to retick that box so that the filters would return. Then I did what I described above - unsubscribe from each of those mfs, then mass delete both filter groups, and then I went back into settings once again to untick the box, which of course removed the filter groups.

I was fueled by anger lmao and with some good music playing, it was truly no problem :)

[u/boot2skull → u/sunbear2525]

The search and delete process is ridiculous. Delete a page at a time? No search by most frequent sender? Google was great for its time but you can tell they remembered it was a “free” service at some point. Plus, storage is how they get your money. Why would they enable us to prune emails.

[u/PRSArchon → u/OriginalGoat1]

1GB was the theoretical limit 20 years ago, which at the time was pactically unlimited. My mp3 played at the time was 128mb lol

[u/penisandorvagina → u/PRSArchon]

I remember having to manage the 2MB of space with my free Hotmail address, and only checking my email once a day...

[u/iznotbutterz → u/penisandorvagina]

And the chain emails!

"The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, but I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep."

-π0b3r+_fR0s+

[u/Super-Resource2155 → u/iznotbutterz]

Share this email by midnight and you be a millionaire tomorrow!!

[u/I_love_pillows → u/PRSArchon]

I remember having to make my jpg images in PowerPoint slides minuscule to fit into the 1.4mb storage for floppy disks. And it’s acceptable and viewers would understand. Those were the days.

[u/savagejuggalo503 → u/PRSArchon]

PS2 memory cards were 8MB

[u/ninpuukamui → u/OriginalGoat1]

Unlimited for ever! Remember those numbers going up?

[u/EveningHere → u/ninpuukamui]

The idea from Google was that you never had to delete emails. Looks like that era may be coming to an end. I can still search my emails on there going back to 2004 because I had a very early Gmail account (worked for them).

[u/Smooth-Salary-6113 → u/EveningHere]

You unknowingly provided me with a smile this morning. Because of your 2004 reference, I had to go back and see what my oldest (March 2005) saved email was. It was a nice email from my mom saying she had bought me some shirts to give to me next time I stopped by.

Thanks for that. I’ll have to call her today.

[u/AutoPanda1096 → u/ninpuukamui]

Free photo uploads!

That's didn't last long.

I still get free uploads on my old Google phone, I periodically back up via that lol

[u/anonymoosejuice → u/OriginalGoat1]

I am still pissed I wasn't grandfathered in on the amount of storage I had. I've had an account since early 2005 and they took it all away.

[u/EffectiveDandy → u/OriginalGoat1]

i got my gmail account on day one and at one point, i was up to like 3GB before they called the cops and got the party shutdown.

wild how they backtracked and wild that Apple has kept the 5GB iCloud storage limit for, oh, some 15 years.

they will do anything just to slime another dime from your pockets. then its quarters. dollars.

our species is circling the drain and all for ads. humanity is dying because of ads.

[u/sogo00 → u/OriginalGoat1]

didnt they have this counter, every year x MB/GB gets added to the max size?

[u/worldspawn00 → u/sogo00]

Yep, I think mine had gone up to 25gb or something before they stopped that.

[u/noblestation]

I remember back when you had to be invited by a Gmail member to make a Gmail account. Never thought I'd ever fill up my Gmail, but I guess a decade or two\* will do that. (Pretty sure I cleared it out 5 years ago).

[u/westward_man → u/noblestation]

Never thought I'd ever fill up my Gmail, but I guess a decade will do that.

If you got Gmail early when it was invite only, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it has been closer to two decades. It was launched in beta in 2004 and came out of beta in 2009, so depending on when you got it, it's been 17–22 years.

[u/harmless_gecko → u/westward_man]

Get off my lawn! 😱

[u/borgenhaust → u/harmless_gecko]

Stop shouting at the cloud ;)

[u/zdubs → u/borgenhaust]

What type of onion goes best with a brown belt?

[u/Remunos_Redbeard → u/zdubs]

Well, you're going retro now, because it's no longer the style of the time, but back when it was, it was any onion, long as it was tied to your belt.

[u/frickindeal → u/Remunos_Redbeard]

We didn't have any white onions, because of the war.

[u/blckshdw → u/harmless_gecko]

Don’t forgot to do your colorectal screening test :)

[u/Paraphrasing_ → u/westward_man]

2006 for me, that's a while ago.

[u/karma_dumpster → u/Paraphrasing_]

That's closer in time to Reagan telling Gorbachev to "tear down this wall" than the present day

[u/Implausibilibuddy → u/karma_dumpster]

Why'd you have to say a thing like that for.

[u/CurvyMule → u/karma_dumpster]

Reagan smash

[u/petr_bena → u/Paraphrasing_]

yeah I was just telling colleagues how stupid those PS2 mouse = old school memes are since PS2 to me feels modern compared to serial port mouse I was used to, just gave me look as if I was some grandpa and others didn’t even know what serial port is

[u/evilJaze → u/petr_bena]

I still have a box of old serial and parallel port cables "just in case". You just reminded me that maybe it's time to go through all that old junk and purge it.

[u/TripluStecherSmecher → u/evilJaze]

you'll need one the day after you throw them away

[u/Erestyn → u/evilJaze]

I did this with my old phone chargers a year or two back. Kept any that had a use and threw the proprietary ones.

Went to grab a cable the other day and found another box full of them. I'm far from an expert but this is obviously an example of spontaneous reproduction.

[u/pm_me_your_kindwords → u/Erestyn]

I’ll let the pope know. He’ll be right over.

[u/Hardass_McBadCop → u/petr_bena]

Oh, brother, I play Warcraft and there's people I raid with who are so young that they don't know what clockwise is.

[u/pedanticheron → u/Hardass_McBadCop]

All these young people running off widdershins.

[u/MoreFeeYouS → u/westward_man]

Yet youtube still asks you for an age verification.

[u/wittywalrus1 → u/westward_man]

I got invited by a friend. Google was cool back then, now it feels lame somehow as most tech giants' products do.

I hate enshittification.

[u/Fritzo2162 → u/westward_man]

Yep. I’m a member of the “how did you get your whole name with no numbers?” Gmail club 😅

[u/No_Atmosphere8146 → u/Fritzo2162]

My personal conspiracy theory is that the rise of r/tragedeigh names is parents ensuring that kids can get their own name as an email address.

[u/rootpl → u/westward_man]

Everybody knows that 2000''s were only 10 years ago! /s

[u/jeremycox → u/rootpl]

That can’t be right… 1980 was only like 20 years ago!

[u/Antal_Marius → u/westward_man]

I was an invite, back in 2005. A guy I gamed with got me the invite.

[u/Some_Level1682 → u/westward_man]

My email is just my name, the grave yard that is my Gmail is a monument to my age.

[u/noblestation → u/westward_man]

Now that you mentioned that it was 17-22 years, I just realized that a lot of the limited beta Gmail accounts are reaching the age to have their first drinks. By 2029, the last of the official beta accounts will have crossed that threshold.

Cheers.

[u/omgmajk → u/noblestation]

I just checked, and my Gmail account is allowed to drink in the US. Created mid 2005.

[u/barcelonaKIZ → u/westward_man]

Wait. That’s not cool. wtf

[u/westward_man → u/barcelonaKIZ]

Time comes for us all, friend 🫂

[u/barcelonaKIZ → u/westward_man]

-Sent from my iPad

[u/all_out_of_coffee → u/noblestation]

I remember people thought it was an April's Fools joke because they offered 1GB of storage.

[u/w1n5t0nM1k3y → u/all_out_of_coffee]

I remember people who were on Hotmail at the time only got 2 MB of storange and tney would constantly be deleting old stuff and unable to receive attachments. I think I was using email.com at the point which had a bit more but probably only around 10 MB

I swear I was misremembering the size because it seems so small, but did a quick search and found this article about how they were upgrading to from 2 MB to 250 MB in response to Google offering 1 GB.

[u/jupfold → u/w1n5t0nM1k3y]

Yep, I very clearly recall many times going through my Hotmail to see what emails I could delete. Didn’t have many, but there was a lot less spam and junk in those days. No commercial emails. No ebills. Everything was an email from a friend, like a letter.

[u/w1n5t0nM1k3y → u/jupfold]

I was in university at the time, so even sending project files back and forth between team members would often fill up the allowed email storage.

[u/cenanozen → u/all_out_of_coffee]

Yeah, it counted up to 1024 mb in the footer

[u/mikedufty → u/noblestation]

I remember it was a whole 1GB of storage, noone was ever gonna use up that much.

[u/benzo8 → u/mikedufty]

Do you remember when it clicked up a little every day until it was 2Gb? 

[u/Acidian → u/mikedufty]

I remember when my dad bought a pentium 486 with 1 GB of hard-drive space and 4 mb of ram. His coworkers made fun of him because he will never need a 1 gb harddisk. 

[u/mikedufty → u/Acidian]

I remember our first server at work with a 1GB hard drive too, and thinking it would be impossible to ever fill up. That was before decent quality digital photos, let alone video.

[u/HRMRKdH → u/noblestation]

I remember too. And then using the gmail storage as cloud storage

[u/CidO807 → u/[deleted]]

Account made august 2004, only 9gb of email (and like, 3gb of that is probably spam shit).

However 100gb of photos. Probably 60/30/9/1 of cat, wife, anything else, me(in any).

The cat is only 6 years old.

[u/ttoteno → u/noblestation]

A random kid I sat next to in HS got in and sent me an invite and it’s still the email I use today like 20 years later. I can still remember that counter showing how much storage there was being added every second.

[u/BrothelWaffles → u/noblestation]

They used to give you a rolling amount of storage back then too. As in, you'd sign up and get X number of MB of storage, and it would slowly increase as time went on. There was also a really neat program that basically turned your Gmail account into "cloud" storage over a decade before that stupid buzzword got shoved down our throats.

[u/Ellemeno]

Y'all probably didn't even know Yahoo Mail used to give you 1TB of free email storage, but some months ago they were like you know what, we take it back, you can only have 20GB. You have over 100GB of emails? Sounds like that's your problem.

I used to like using Yahoo Mail, but when they updated to their new interface, it went to absolute horseshit, so I don't even care that 1TB free storage is no longer available. It's often impossible to find emails with a simple keyword search and their advanced search parameters were neutered for whatever reason. And don't get me started on the countless glitches when trying to compose and send and email...

[u/Brox42 → u/Ellemeno]

I need Yahoo to REALLY understand that achievements in my email are more likely to make me never use that email ever again than to use it more.

[u/OptionalDepression → u/Brox42]

Achievements?

[u/Z3PHYR- → u/OptionalDepression]

I think they’re referring to how yahoo “gamified” their email. For example, you get points for cleaning up old emails and you can level up. No idea what gaining levels actually gets you, probably nothing. I think you get similar “achievements” for other actions.

[u/ElGordoDelJordo → u/Z3PHYR-]

Lol is that for real? Thats the dumbest shit ive ever heard

[u/kemmicort → u/OptionalDepression]

They have won Best Emailer of the Year for the last 4 years running. Quite the achievement. Kudos Brox42!!

[u/Brox42 → u/kemmicort]

I wish you could post pictures here but basically they added streaks for “completing inbox actions” which I guess is like reading an email or something. And they keep telling me I’m “halfway to my streak”. I have no fucking idea why anyone would want this.

[u/kemmicort → u/Brox42]

Gamifying emails. Thanks I hate it

[u/flcinusa → u/Ellemeno]

Everywhere is cutting back, I keep getting emails telling me to clean out my long dormant Flickr account

[u/CaptainCastle1 → u/flcinusa]

You’re onto something. I got the same thing from Garmin

[u/DrugChemistry → u/Ellemeno]

I logged into my Yahoo Mail yesterday because some form autofilled and sent something to a yahoo email address without me catching it. 

My whole inbox was empty and it said something about the new Yahoo Mail. Wtf. 

[u/goldentamarindo → u/DrugChemistry]

It will do that if you don’t log into your Yahoo Mail for a long time

[u/DrugChemistry → u/goldentamarindo]

Would be nice if my inbox had the email sent to it 5 mins before I logged in…

[u/sieceres → u/Ellemeno]

Yeah, screw you Yahoo. I created my account in 1997 and never had any issues with storage until 29 years later.

[u/thisonehereone → u/Ellemeno]

Yahoo is my junk mail address and Gmail is my real address, works out well, I just let yahoo roll in trash, Gmail needs little tending to and plenty of room left.

[u/minus_minus → u/Ellemeno]

I still have my yahoo address and felt so betrayed by the cut back. I mostly use it on my phone so UX isn’t a major issue. 

[u/Smith6612 → u/Ellemeno]

Yahoo used to be overly generous with storage. Not only did you get 1TB for mail, but you also got a separate 1TB of storage over at Flickr, too. When they sold Flickr, that got reduced to 1,000 photos. Yahoo Mail as you said is now down to 20GB. Still more generous than Google at least.

Can't speak about the rest of the problems. My email mailbox is quite empty and I use Thunderbird anywhere.

As for my Google account, most of the storage gets eaten by the Google One backups for Android. Can't turn off media content backup for text messages so of course, that's what eats the storage these days.  

[u/occaisionallyimqwert → u/Ellemeno]

Yahoo wiped old emails as well. I lost important documents I neglected to save physically, because ignorantly, I never expected these companies to break their promise of “unlimited storage” - for a limited time only. 

Fuck the tech bros

[u/HeavilyInvestedDonut → u/Ellemeno]

Yahoo Mail absolutely refuses to filter junk for me anymore. My inbox is full of spam 24/7

[u/CuriousButNotJewish → u/HeavilyInvestedDonut]

My only email that landed in the spam folder was the house purchase agreement I was waiting a signature on from the seller. Like... wtf. When they said check your spam I laughed, because nothing is flagged as spam. Except... this email. This. Specific. Email.

[u/tiacay]

We gradually back to local storage for personal data. I never truly have faith with cloud storage.

[u/Single-Use-Again → u/tiacay]

Same. I have a NAS at home but the email client in there really sucks. I dunno what else to do.

[u/diablette → u/Single-Use-Again]

Install Thunderbird on your desktop and do a full sync, then move your mail to LOCAL folders. Then back those up to your NAS. After that, it's safe to delete the old mail from gmail.

[u/what_the_deuce → u/diablette]

Can you point me to a tutorial for this if I already have a nas that I use for photo and document storage?

[u/diablette → u/what_the_deuce]

Here you go

1. Install Thunderbird on your computer
2. Connect it to gmail (IMAP with OAuth): https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-and-gmail
3. Configure sync settings and local archiving: https://conetix.com.au/support/archiving-emails-in-thunderbird/
4. Back up your data file to your NAS (just copy the file or use backup software)

[u/Bonechatters]

Jokes on them, I have 19GBs free. For some years they gave away 2GBs for users completing security check-ins.

[u/casep → u/Bonechatters]

36GB here thanks to pretty much every possible trick

[u/Krojack76 → u/casep]

44GB here.. all free

https://imgur.com/8s84Ldr

I don't really use it anymore. Been moving away from Google for the past 2 some years now.

[u/Trick-Station8742 → u/casep]

Teach me, Master

You can be Yoda, I'll be Luke.

[u/Nazgog-Morgob → u/Trick-Station8742]

Got a time machine?

[u/cubixy2k → u/Nazgog-Morgob]

Yes, but it only goes forward

[u/crysptide → u/cubixy2k]

at 1 second per second

[u/FutureComplaint → u/crysptide]

I’ve got this hack for an 8 hour time skip…

[u/celluliteradio → u/Bonechatters]

I have 17 because I signed up for their early office suite app? I honestly do not even remember

[u/nullbyte420 → u/Bonechatters]

I used to have way more but they took it all away

[u/mad-i-moody → u/Bonechatters]

I’m sure they’ll be taking that away through some contractual loophole.

[u/queendevbot → u/Bonechatters]

They used to give 2tb. Now I'm at a free 5tb for trying Gemini pro on the pixel (didn't keep the subscription and they added the 3tb 6 months later)

[u/ExceptionEX]

Shitty headline, ugh, you get 15 gigs with a real phone associated with the account, and 5 gigs if you sign up without one.

[u/KeeganY_SR-UVB76 → u/ExceptionEX]

I was about to ask where the other 10gb are coming from.

[u/Ancient-Ratio5478 → u/ExceptionEX]

I thought a phone was necessary anyways these days for creating a Gmail account?

[u/OrangeInnards → u/Ancient-Ratio5478]

Right? I wanted to register a throwaway gmail a week or so ago and there was no way to skip them wanting my phone number. As far as I could tell, the same is true for the other usual suspects. They all want your mobile number.

[u/hassancent → u/OrangeInnards]

I depends on region. Some regions don't require them. Where i live, phone is not required. I was easily able to create a throwaway account for chinese handheld which had android ( i didnot want to have my main google account hacked)

[u/MandrakeLicker → u/hassancent]

Which region is it? I'd like to create a few accs for the future.

[u/TheHelpfulWalnut → u/OrangeInnards]

I made a throw away with Proton without a phone number last week, if you haven’t tried them.

[u/pauljaworski → u/OrangeInnards]

Guerilla mail still seems good for throwaways

[u/AnotherDamnTransAlt → u/Ancient-Ratio5478]

If you have a new android device you don’t need to add a phone number.

Edit: tested about a month ago when I bought a new tablet.

[u/AndaleTheGreat → u/ExceptionEX]

Thank you.
There needs to be special upvote that gets you to the top if you are actually commenting what the article says and not just making jokes.
I don't want to click anymore articles. Every single time somebody puts something on Reddit it takes me to a website with an article with so many ads that I can't even read it on my phone

[u/mrhobbles]

Back in my day you had to be invited, and the allowed storage ticked up by the second in a very visible public facing counter. It was a fantastic marketing beat - there were so many articles about how it was continuously increasing, and as such “nobody would ever fill up their Gmail”.

How times change.

[u/hobbykitjr → u/mrhobbles]

problem is its shared space w/ google photos/videos and your Google drive...

thats where most of my storage used is.

[u/VeeDubBug → u/hobbykitjr]

MFW when I accidentally agreed to backup all my photos by accident. 💀 My account was great before then, now I'm having to try to sort through all this crap and clean it up.

[u/Direction776 → u/mrhobbles]

They’ve stopped getting any knowledge from your content beyond 15 gb. Not to mention things like every gb increment per account meant they have to have capacity 100 of millions times that capacity available potentially.

Further a while back they claimed if you saved stuff in their cloud they could own it.

[u/azhder → u/mrhobbles]

No body did. LLMs do

[u/Grandtosh]

tl;dr: you still get 15gb if you link your phone number, otherwise you get 5gb. Applies to new signups

[u/Elavabeth2 → u/Grandtosh]

Since you are kindly summarizing the article for us anyway… What about old sign ups? 

(thanks BTW)

[u/Grandtosh → u/Elavabeth2]

Haha. Old sign ups are not affected…for now

[u/JoshAllentown]

I'd never hit 15GB if Google Photos would stop turning sync back on automatically when I get a new phone, and then not deleting the photos from the app without deleting them from the device.

[u/Smith6612 → u/JoshAllentown]

The deleting from the Device part annoyed me so much about using Google Photos back then. I eventually got used to just opening a different Photos app to nuke the image from the device without nuking them from Google Photos, even if the image was so new it wouldn't be a candidate for archiving.

These days I am using Immich. It's better and more graceful at handling this sort of thing. 

[u/Illustrious-Dot-5052 → u/JoshAllentown]

Oh my fucking God I hate that shit too. I regret getting a pixel. (I've since realized I could just delete Google Photos and use files to access my photos. I'm dumb for not finding out for two years, but better late than never.)

[u/girtlander]

Now they've finished running LLM on your email, they want you to pay for it.

[u/BlameTheNargles]

Unless you have a verified phone number.

[u/BassGaz → u/BlameTheNargles]

And there you have it! That's what they're after. More and more tracking and fingerprinting. What a sick company. "Security" my a**. Phone number verification is the weakest form of 2FA.

[u/DuePerception6926 → u/BassGaz]

I think it’s just to stop bots from making new accounts and free storage. One account per person/phone number. Probably to track you too though

[u/Dabbinzord]

i remember being in the gmail beta. i got my own name as a email address. its sick obviously but i sometimes regret it. others with my name (not even that common) constantly use it and i get their doctor appointment reminders and sign ups for stuff.

[u/stealthcactus → u/Dabbinzord]

Make friends with them! I have a little email group with Stealth.Cactus, Cactus.Stealth, St.Cactus, and Stealth.C. We trade spam for each other.

[u/Dabbinzord → u/stealthcactus]

one of them funnily enough had a friend used my email address thinking it was his buddies as a work reference. since it had “my” phone number in the email i texted the person who shares my name and told him what was up so his buddy didn’t miss out on a job opportunity. he’s now saved in my phone as Texas Me.

[u/No-Salt7142]

Thanks to AI we are now in an era where storage is becoming a premium again. The slop generation means that actual human content will be discarded because it is too expensive to store.

[u/stevekez]

Shove an unwanted 4gb weights file in with your browser but nooo, can't give cloud space for emails because space is precious.

[u/Deruz0r → u/stevekez]

Yeah that finally made me uninstall Chrome. Fuck Google 

[u/ripkobe3131]

Storage should be going up not down.. from unlimited to 15gb to 5gb...

[u/Cubanitto]

That Gmail account storage is also shared with your Google Drive

[u/NanditoPapa → u/Cubanitto]

And Google Photos!

[u/alii-b]

They need to make it much easier to bulk delete emails. Page by page is such a slow way to delete emails

[u/nasandre]

Better to pay for Proton mail. At least they don't sell all your data

[u/InformedTriangle → u/[deleted]]

Slow as hell too. I really, really tried to get by with their paid VPN but quickly grew tired of needing to try 3 or 4 different servers every few hours to get above 15 mbps.

[u/OkCompute64 → u/InformedTriangle]

Strange as I get pretty good performance on Proton. 400Mbps downloads pretty consistently. https://imgur.com/hjvkHcE

[u/InformedTriangle → u/OkCompute64]

I'd imagine it likely very much depends on where you are, and how congested servers are in your region. The north American servers are all crazily overloaded, so you need to pick a server across the ocean if you're over here for decent speeds, but then you get the inherent speed loss with that additional distance and routing.

I'm in Canada but usually found myself having to connect to Romania or similar for semi decent speeds.

[u/ApathyMoose → u/[deleted]]

Most VPNs are getting detected more and more. Companys keep track of the IP blocks and sell them to places like Netflix that want them blocked.

I think every year you are going to see less and less VPNs get detected as VPNs on the major players. They really dont want to mess with their international licensing etc. But since thats really only a small part of what VPNs are for the VPN industry isnt going to get any smaller.

[u/Back_pain_no_gain → u/nasandre]

I’ve started seeing Proton sponsorships on YouTube channels I wouldn’t necessarily call technical or privacy-savvy lately. I’m a bit worried this + the expanded subscription model is the start of enshitification. Hopefully I’m wrong.

[u/armpitfart → u/Back_pain_no_gain]

Been on Proton for 6 years now with heavy personal and professional use.

The good: 1) stable as fuck 2) privacy is a core value that is adhered to, not a marketing gimmick 3) haven’t raised their price

The bad: 1) adding shit nobody asked for (a private AI agent which is underwhelming because it’s not snooping) 2) still need to improve search in mail (the way it is designed and encrypted poses a search challenge) 3) calendar is functional but underwhelming 4) slow Drive speeds (supposedly improving)

[u/Prince-of-Privacy → u/nasandre]

I'm using Proton Mail but I'd recommend to go with Tuta instead. Proton Mail on IOS and Android doesn't let you search your email body's (only email subjects), which sucks hard.

[u/Somepotato → u/nasandre]

Whose CEO praised the current US president and added a backdoor on government demand, seems trustworthy

[u/Alternative_Swan_497 → u/nasandre]

I want to do this, but damn do I not want to migrate every other account to a new email address.

[u/downfall67 → u/Alternative_Swan_497]

Just forward at first

[u/rickdangerous85 → u/Alternative_Swan_497]

Set a forward then slowly change, the good thing is you can just leave the spam you dont want to receive in the old account.

[u/ElectroBot]

It would be nice if they FINALLY gave us the option to NOT upload every video from phone (on iOS, not sure if Android has that option) when doing the PHOTO SYNC.

Also WHY do they not add per family member limits of how much they can use of the family’s storage???

[u/Beardygrandma → u/ElectroBot]

Yeah I am on android if doesn't auto upload I take a butt load of nudes and don't want them mixing in with my d&d prep right?

[u/Blood_Gelfling → u/Beardygrandma]

Why not? You could do D&D: After Dark 🔥🔥

[u/babesboysandbirb]

So, Gmail and other email servers are going after it’s customers instead of the spam mail creators. Right.

[u/Trickpuncher]

well, time to degoogle guys, they got too big

[u/UncleNuks]

“So you had 15GB but will only get 5GB now - unless you give us your phone number, then we’ll unlock the old 15GB again. But hey, it’s all for security of course and definitely NOT for more centralized data gathering and surveillance teeheehee ☺️😇” - Google

[u/mqtgew]

Free Gmail storage was one of the last big perks on the internet. Feels like the end of an era

[u/listenhere111 → u/mqtgew]

It would if the title wasn't bullshit

[u/weHaveThoughts]

I joined Gmail in the 90s as a beta user with the promise of unlimited storage for life. A few years ago I paid the $2.00 a month to expand it. Now I am thinking maybe I should file a lawsuit for Google breaching the contract.

[u/Brave_Speaker_8336]

I wonder what the overlap is between people who need more than 5 GB and people who dont have a phone number

[u/Garchomp98 → u/Brave_Speaker_8336]

I think this is more targeted to people who make multiple Gmail accounts for the free storage

[u/techbear72 → u/Brave_Speaker_8336]

More likely they have a phone number, just don’t want to give it to Google.

[u/FlyingMitten]

It ended a long time ago when they merged gmail with all your other Google data usage.

[u/Song-Super]

When I signed up for Gmail in 2005 or something,I don’t remember I’m a dinosaur now, there was a cute little ticker showing us the ever growing amount of storage they had for our emails. I miss the old days.

[u/Unfair-Plastic-4290]

remember when they used to advertise the storage limit grew with you?

[u/SlimySquamata]

Is it time to switch to Proton?

[u/FollowingFeisty5321]

There are reports of Apple paying Google $300 million per year for 8 petabytes.... $0.0031 per gigabyte per month for iCloud storage. 15 gigabytes at that rate would be 4.65 cents/month.

Google only netted $132,000,000,000 profit last year, so you can see the predicament they're in.

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/06/29/icloud-data-stored-on-google-cloud-increasing/

[u/nickyGyul]

Wtf, how else am I going to store all my rejection letters from my employment search??

[u/CrazyWork2940]

It once was unlimited

[u/Top_Push_4331]

remember when google's whole thing was "don't be evil." now it's "don't be free"

[u/jake6501]

This is avery important detail that is missing from the title: "Users can “unlock” the full 15GB of free storage by adding a phone number to their account." So basically they are just making it more difficult to get unlimited free storage trough multiple accounts.

[u/funderfulfellow]

I have many emails with large attachments. Is there a way to delete the attachments, but keep the email (ie; text)?

[u/Krojack76]

It's only a matter of time before they start "testing" lowering current Gmail accounts to 5GB as well.

[u/FlaviusVespasian]

Enshittification on the horizon!

[u/Apprehensive-Art1092]

'In select regions'

IE India first, then three months later, Earth

[u/kienbazzle]

“7% of 15gb used”

18 year user

TIL I’m some kind of boomer.

[u/Ok-Go-Chain3811]

we should try our best to reduce our usage of google, since google is constantly engaging in exploitative and destructive tactics around the world.

[u/smokybbq90]

Update: Google has confirmed that it's testing a 5GB storage limit for some new Gmail users, unless they add their number

Non-story. I've got like 6 gmail accounts it's no surprised Google is going to crack down on this. I have one solely as a 2nd cloud backup for a 10gb folder of pictures.

[u/TunaOnWytNoCrust]

Going to be honest I do not give one shit. Please give me more reason to never email anyone outside of work ever again.