Did Gmail Increase Its Storage Limit To 1TB For All Users? No.

Reports in the Indian media last week, based on a Google blog uploaded on 25 October, have led to the false hope among many Indian users of Gmail, that their storage limit was being increased from 15 GigaBytes (GB) to 1 TeraByte (TB), that is 1000 GB. Not True.

They are being misled by the term ‘Individual Workspace Account’ which was repeated by many print media members and online news sites, without explaining that this did not refer to you and me and many other lay users of a free Gmail account, which since 2020 has been rebranded as part of something Google calls Workspace – an omnibus term for tools like Gmail, Google Meet, Google Drive, Calendar, Chat etc.

However, the breathless news stories, mostly sourced from wire services, but bearing individual bylines, did not bother to explain (some of them seem not to have understood) that because we are individuals using Gmail and other free Google tools including Google Drive, that does not make ours an ‘Individual Workspace Account’. 

No, what we use is a free Gmail account and the storage limit for that remains 5 GB. As does the storage of the Google Drive that we can associate with our Gmail account.

‘Individual Workspace Account’ as defined by Google is a professional user – maybe a small company or a one-person firm, which uses  Gmail as a custom email address.

If I own an Internet domain like www.AnandNews.com , say, Google lets me create an email ID like anand@anandnews.com  rather than anand@gmail.com. This looks more professional on my letterhead.

Till May 1 this year, I could do it for free just like any other free Gmail account – a small help that Google extended to very small or self-employed micro businesses. 

This has now been withdrawn and one has to pay an annual fee to use each such Gmail name in the format that reflects one’s company in the email ID.

Such accounts are termed Individual Workspace Accounts and it is these paying customers – the annual fee begins at the equivalent of  $100 -whose storage limit is being increased from 15 GB to 1 TB.

For the rest of us ordinary Gmail users, the status is ‘Jaisey Thhey’.

Most free email clients come with a certain amount of free storage. Microsoft’s OutlookMail like Gmail offers 15 GB and it is the same for those who still use Hotmail – the email created by an Indian, Sabeer Bhatia, in 1995 and acquired by Microsoft two years later. 

It is identical in look and feel to Outlook but Microsoft has allowed users to stick with the ‘Hotmail.com’ in their mail ID.

Many email clients are associated with a Web browser. Opera, the independent browser from Norway which is now owned by a China-based group, used to offer a browser but this has been discontinued.

Vivaldi, another Norway-based independent browser started in 2016 by a cofounder of Opera with many privacy and safety features, offers 5GB storage with its browser.

Firefox and Brave two other independent browsers, the former from the Open Source Mozilla project do not have email clients of their own.

Biggest storage with Yahoo

But when it comes to massive storage, a browser associated with one of the pioneering browsers – Yahoo – has every one else beat. YahooMail comes with 1 TB of free storage,  matching what Google last week promised to paying customers of its Workspace tool. 

So if you don’t want to ever experience an overflowing mailbox and the hassle of deleting mails to avoid paying for additional storage, a free YahooMail account is the answer. 

Although, most of us are unlikely to need a terabyte of mail storage in our entire lifetime.

Read the Google blog announcement here.