Yesterday, May 18, 2004, saw the announcement of Lycos Europe offering its paid members 1 gigabyte worth of email storage, while Yahoo announced similar updates last week.
This was all done in response to Google’s launching of Gmail. The notorious launch was initiated on April 1st, or April Fools Day in the US, and has since been the subject of much critical pieces, both good and bad. But it was Gmail’s storage capacity that drove this move for competitors to update their email storage options.
It appears that these competitors may to rethink their new strategy. Apparently, some users of Gmail have found that their 1 gigabyte worth of storage has increased to 1 TERABYTE. That’s 1000 times the amount of the current storage rate (1 gig = 1000MB; 1 terabyte = 1000GB).
This news has not been confirmed by Google, but, several Gmail users have noticed this increase. A letter to the editor of Murdok from Alan Townsend commented on Gmail’s apparent storage increase: “My Gmail account still showing 1,000,000 MB this morning!”
Andy Beal and Google Blogoscoped are reporting that this astronomical increase may be a Gmail bug or that it may be for Google employees. Although, with the letter Garrett received this morning, it appears that regular account users are showing 1TB storage amounts.
From Google Blogoscoped: “Update: a source who doesn’t want to be identified just informed me ‘all Google employees get a Gmail account with one terabyte of space’.”
From Andy Beal’s blog: “[Update]: Now, there is speculation that it is a bug of some sorts. A lot of people saw their storage revert back to 1000mb, however my account is still at 1000000mb.”
Andy links to the Techdirt blog which says, “I checked my own Gmail account, and indeed, it showed the approaching terabyte level of storage. A quick note to a friend at Google confirmed the obvious: it was a mistake. However, that hasn’t stopped rampant speculation to run around the internet – to the point that even News.com(.com) has written an article about it.”
The writer of this post mentions an interesting point that has been going around in light of the Terabyte issue, “one juicy rumor about the fix: before they (Google) fix this error, they’re making sure that no one actually has gone over the gigabyte storage level.”
So, is this a Google bug or an incredible (storage-wise) move on Gmail’s part? If it indeed proves true, does Google have enough storage capacity to offer everyone a terabyte? There doesn’t seem to be a definite answer, although the Techdirt post does clear things up a bit.
Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for Murdok. Visit Murdok for the latest search news.
