nherc's Journal: On the GMail Storage Capacity (Past, Present and Future)

On seeing the recent increase in storage that GMail is making available to its users, I went digging for more details and potentially for some more concrete information as to what users could expect in their web mail storage futures. The following report details the odd and somewhat disturbing information that I actually uncovered.

Now, the ongoing storage-per-web-mail-account counter on the Gmail home page...

Lots of space
Over 4387.115006 megabytes (and counting) of free storage so you'll never need to delete another message.

... had not just sped up, and increased but it had also jumped ahead at some point recently which led to this investigation.

In searching Google for an explanation about its own odd behavior (notably probably not the best search methodology on a subject said search engine may not want to be found) I eventually came across an ambiguous answer from the Offical Gmail Blog that on Oct. 12, 2007 they "sped up the counter again" as well as a general overview of the GMail storage situation since inception. This included the fact that they started their "Infinity+1 storage plan" on the GMail one year anniversary in April 2005. Incidentally, the counter on the perma-linked one year anniversary page detailing this increase from 1000MBs of storage to 2000MBs and counting still reflects the amount of storage on that day in the past and is not in sync with the current amount nor speed despite it still going.

Trying to find out what we can expect in the future, I suppose I could have tried to figure out the speed and amount of increase per time period and worked it out roughly to a nice increasing straight line on a plot of time versus space allowed. Fortunately, I know better and went straight to the source. The HTML source that is... and surprisingly Google leaves the amount of storage it intends on providing and even when, including changes to the speed of the allocation very clear if you can do a bit of arithmetic. In comparing this data, with the info from the Official Google Blog cross-checked with source code from various old copies of the Gmail home page from the Internet Archive WayBack Machine I came up with the following startling revelations...

• Gmail started in April of 2004 by giving users a then unheard of 1000MBs of space for their web mail needs.
• On Gmails one year anniversary, in April of 2005, they increased the 1000MBs of storage to 2000MBs and counting. Since then, the maximum limit has been ever increasing at various speeds. See the data at the end for some rate information.
• From Oct. 12th 2007 until Oct. 23rd 2007 storage grew from 2912MB to 4321MB. Quite a quick and arbitrary jump if I may say so. I wonder what the large amount of the jump and dates could be really be attributed to?
• From Oct. 23rd 2007 until Jan. 4th 2008 we will continue at the current pace to 6283MBs.
• I believe GMail staffers will start tweaking the array used to calculate these numbers on or before Jan. 4, 2008 or we will be on a slow ride to 43008MBs which we won't hit until the year the Posix timer flips and the Internet explodes: 2038.
• If there are still no changes made by the GMail staff (come on guys how about an update already!) we'll get a significant increase in speed as we get as close to Infinity+1 as Javascript circa 2038 will let us, as we head for the Javascript Number.MAX_VALUE of megabytes of storage due on Jan. 2nd, 3456. In circa 2007, my Firefox web browser tells me that Number.MAX_VALUE is currently ~1.79E+308.
• On Wednesday, January 2nd, in the year of 3456 at 7:00:01 AM GMT, according to Google, the universe implodes upon itself and/or Google becomes self-aware. In either case, make sure you are wearing some clean undies this day if your are still around.

Now, here's the boring stuff unless you are a true geek--the data I scraped from GMail and the Wayback Machine with the exact dates and storage amounts that GMails storage counter was busy counting up to all of these years:

NOTE: the CP array, found in the HTML/Javascript source code of the GMail homepage, controls the Gmail counter. The first number being the date/time in milliseconds and the second being the storage amount in megabytes to be counted towards by that date/time.

NOTE 2: I left the odd comment regarding "Estimate[d]... nanite storage" above the CP array in on the first data set for all to ponder just what, exactly, Google is up to. Hmm... (It's actually there folks, go look for yourself.)

Now for the data listed from most current (most interesting) to oldest (mostly for confirmation) with some comments/notation thrown in:

Oct 25th, 2007
// Estimates of nanite storage generation over time.
var CP = [
[ 1175414400000, 2835 ], Sun, 01 Apr 2007 08:00:00 GMT
[ 1192176000000, 2912 ], Fri, 12 Oct 2007 08:00:00 GMT
[ 1193122800000, 4321 ], Tue, 23 Oct 2007 07:00:00 GMT
[ 1199433600000, 6283 ], Fri, 04 Jan 2008 08:00:00 GMT
[ 2147328000000, 43008 ], Sun, 17 Jan 2038 08:00:00 GMT
[ 46893711600000, Number.MAX_VALUE ] Wed, 02 Jan 3456 07:00:00 GMT (BTW, MAX_VALUE is 1.79E+308)
];
Starting Quota = 2757.272164

April 20th, 2007
var CP = [
[ 1167638400000, 2800 ], Mon, 01 Jan 2007 08:00:00 GMT
[ 1175414400000, 2835 ], Sun, 01 Apr 2007 08:00:00 GMT
[ 1207033200000, 2980 ], Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:00:00 GMT
[ 1238569200000, 3125 ], Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:00:00 GMT
[ 1270105200000, 3270 ], Thu, 01 Apr 2010 07:00:00 GMT
[ 1301641200000, 3415 ], Fri, 01 Apr 2011 07:00:00 GMT
[ 1333263600000, 3560 ] Sun, 01 Apr 2012 07:00:00 GMT
];
Starting Quota = 2000

August 21st, 2006
var CP = [
[ 1167638400000, 2800 ], Mon, 01 Jan 2007 08:00:00 GMT
[ 1175414400000, 2835 ], Sun, 01 Apr 2007 08:00:00 GMT
[ 1207033200000, 2980 ], Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:00:00 GMT
[ 1238569200000, 3125 ], Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:00:00 GMT
[ 1270105200000, 3270 ], Thu, 01 Apr 2010 07:00:00 GMT
[ 1301641200000, 3415 ], Fri, 01 Apr 2011 07:00:00 GMT
[ 1333263600000, 3560 ] Sun, 01 Apr 2012 07:00:00 GMT
];
Starting Quota = 2000

July 20th, 2005
var CP = [
[ 1167638400000, 2800 ], Mon, 01 Jan 2007 08:00:00 GMT
[ 1175414400000, 2835 ], Sun, 01 Apr 2007 08:00:00 GMT
[ 1207033200000, 2980 ], Tue, 01 Apr 2008 07:00:00 GMT
[ 1238569200000, 3125 ], Wed, 01 Apr 2009 07:00:00 GMT
[ 1270105200000, 3270 ], Thu, 01 Apr 2010 07:00:00 GMT
[ 1301641200000, 3415 ], Fri, 01 Apr 2011 07:00:00 GMT
[ 1333263600000, 3560 ] Sun, 01 Apr 2012 07:00:00 GMT
];
Starting Quota = 2000

March 2nd, 2005
Quota is a static 1000

-nherc