In 2004, Google upended Yahoo's email platform with the release of Gmail. Within one year after that, Yahoo was tottering on the brink of bankruptcy and the rest as they say is now history.
To steal Yahoo's thunder (and to a large extent, Microsoft's Hotmail), Google simply made a radical promise - unlimited email storage for ever.
In the years since, Google has gradually walked back from those words, first by releasing a 5 GB storage, and then providing a counter to show an ever increasing mailbox size, and then with the release of Google Apps for Business premier with 25 GB, raising the stakes to show that not all users are equal. But at no time did Google make the proposition open that it would force users to either have to delete messages from their mailbox or be compelled to pay for more storage as Yahoo did in the runup to its shellacking. But that is exactly what Google's practice has become of late.
To steal Yahoo's thunder (and to a large extent, Microsoft's Hotmail), Google simply made a radical promise - unlimited email storage for ever.
In the years since, Google has gradually walked back from those words, first by releasing a 5 GB storage, and then providing a counter to show an ever increasing mailbox size, and then with the release of Google Apps for Business premier with 25 GB, raising the stakes to show that not all users are equal. But at no time did Google make the proposition open that it would force users to either have to delete messages from their mailbox or be compelled to pay for more storage as Yahoo did in the runup to its shellacking. But that is exactly what Google's practice has become of late.
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