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The era of 15GB free Gmail storage is ending (Update: Google responds) (www.androidauthority.com)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 6 points 6 months ago (9 children)

I would prefer they didn't do this, but I understand. Storage isn't without cost. 5 GB is a lot for email actually. It's probably intended to reduce abuse from bots. We should probably not be using free email anyway.

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  • [–] 19 points 6 months ago (8 children)

    Storage is incredibly cheap, though. If Google used S3, the cost for a 15GB account would be pennies a year, and since they host their own architecture it can be orders of magnitude less. This isn't about recouping costs. This is just about shaking users down for more subscription money.

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  • [–] 16 points 6 months ago (6 children)

    It's about tying phone numbers to accounts.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago (3 children)

    If it were, they wouldn't tie it to storage space. That doesn't matter to scammers and spammers; they'd require it for sending to more than x recipients per month, or for API access, or for any number of other things. The one thing spammers and scammers don't need is storage space. They just need a trusted email gateway and IP address.

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  • [–] 8 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    New Gmail accounts still get 15GB if they provide a phone number. So it's specifically about that.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    That's the excuse. But phone numbers tied to names are available all over the dark web and the light web—that's a fundamentally worthless data point by now. They don't actually want that, they're just saying it so you think it's for scam prevention.

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