The market is saturated and “don’t be evil” was a long, long time ago…
Thank you Google for TURNING INTO FUCKING APPLE RIGHT AFTER I SWITCH TO A FUCKING PIXEL
GrapheneOS is built for Google devices. Doesn’t really solve the email problem though.
Lmao I’m in the same boat
You own a Google phone, and somehow think they don’t already have your number?
Remember the 1GB Gmail reaction? I remember:
Damn, this image can now drink alcohol in the US.
5GB is plenty for emails, won’t be an issue for 99% of people.
THE problem with google’s storage is that they actively mislead consumers:
- They bother customers during setup and after with: “Do you want to backup your device?” To which a considerable amount of people react to as “Yeah ofcourse I want that!”
- Google does not show any indication where this backup goes or about the eventual payment so people just forget about it.
- After some time their gmail and photos app will start to complain: “YOUR STORAGE IS FULL” - with constant notifications. And their Gmail stops working so they can’t receive emails anymore.
- These regular people confuse ‘storage’ with internal storage so they start looking for ways to expand their internal storage, which obviously doesn’t do anything.
- Eventually they give up and either pay google the ransom or make a new email.
This is the real dark pattern behind their “free cloud”
It is interesting. I’ve deleted almost all my emails from my Gmail account and it just won’t go bellow 50% full. There is no way to see what is taking up the space.
My mother on the other hand has 3000+ emails and it’s at like 15% full. They absolutely do this on purpose.
Are you sure you’re not using anything else google related that might clog it up? That’s what I’m getting at. Check google one for a breakdown.
It is honestly. My Gmail is 16 years old and I’ve only used a third of a gig.
and if you need more you’re probably using a dedicated mail client anyway
“improve security”
isn’t basically common knowledge at this point phone recovery methods decrease security? How do companies keep getting away with this.
I sincerely and earnestly want Google to fail and cease to exist.
Except for YouTube. Spin that off first.
Probably not the place for it, but I’d be good with YouTube dying. And I’m someone who pays for YT Premium (gasp!).
Something will take it’s place, something better. I think about what it would take to scale to YT’s size from an infrastructure standpoint and the only thing close, I think, are porn sites.
How great would it be to have HubHomez by PornHub as a YT alternative. Need to work on the branding a bit but I don’t care about the platform. I’ll follow the creators to StreamyFling, a collaboration of xHamster and xvideos. Same infrastructure, different content.
C’mon porn sites. Do it. Do it.
Can you please hope I never win the lottery?
seems that Google is testing offering only 5GB [for new accounts] free storage unless you add a phone number to your account.
iCloud accounts are 5GB if you a phone number. You don’t get to create an account if you don’t add a number.
I’m not defending this move. It’s on the same level as them yanking their free lifetime unlimited storage on ONE accounts. But I also get it.
So add a phone number, what’s the big deal?
Nope. I’m not giving Google my phone
Fair enough. I use my phone for 2FA, so they’ve had my number for quite a while now.
- Google is reportedly testing a 5GB storage limit for new Gmail accounts, down from the standard 15GB.
- Users can “unlock” the full 15GB of free storage by adding a phone number to their account.
Seems they’re trying to get phone numbers this way. Maybe it’s for increased user data, maybe it’s to prevent fraudulent activity, maybe it’s to have more information to give authorities.
To be generous, this could just be anti-botting. It sucks that bots suck up so many resources, and make things that could be free not free just to try to stop them. When you can have bots create thousands of accounts trivially, it makes sense that they need to provide some kind of identifier.
phone numbers were already an almost mandatory addition to new Google accounts. You need to set up 2FA when you make a new account, and the option to use an authenticator app is so well hidden… meanwhile Google still wants your phone number “to authenticate you”, even though it’s less secure than storing your password on a post it on your phone.
I work with homeless people and I discovered you can no longer make email without a cell phone with any major provider. I can’t get them into their social security without an email.
I was able to find an email provider that didn’t require a cell phone, but then you had to use a cell phone to get past the verification on the social security site. You are absolutely fucked without a cell phone now.
The GUI of both of those sites are nearly identical. Are they the same service?
Thank you.
Thats really twisted. They really want to make not owning a cell spy a crime. Every time I learn something new about Surveillance it makes me more anarchist.
The problem is that it isn’t an intentional design decision. It just happens to be the easiest way to add a “cost” to sign-up.
Proton mail doesn’t require a phone number
Proton doesn’t work with social security website unfortunately. I ended up using Tuta mail but then later got stuck on Login.gov because it required either a cell phone to verify by taking pictures of ID or a desktop with a camera for a video call.
Needless to say this is not something someone with no computer skills can accomplish. What is even worse is the local social security office stopped taking walk-ins. The solution? You guessed it, use the social security site to login and request an appointment…
The way they’re going they’ll have increased social instability
Damn it’s like they don’t want the system working at all, that’s so convoluted and unnecessary
I tried to make a second account recently, and it wanted me to scan a qr code with my phone that then wanted to send me a text message. At the same time they were saying “this won’t associate your phone with the account.” I don’t believe that.
believe nothing any company claims… assume whatever they claim is a lie, and they are about to defraud you because we’ll… that’s all they know how to do… illegal activities, mislead, fraud…
How are you creating google account without phone number
I haven’t made one in years. When I made my account it was back when you needed an invitation.
Exactly. I’ve been down this path, countless times, you can’t. I ended up using mailsac.com for temp emails instead.
This sounds like Google is offering 5free gigabytes to temporary accounts, something that couldn’t be done before.
Kinda fair. Stops botnets just stealing server space.
Anyone else remember when Google bragged about never being worried about storage as you watched your storage free count, grow and grow and grow.
50372364.45 GB and growing. It will always be free.
Remember Dont Be Evil???
Rotfl
TBF when Iade an account there to check it out back then, they offered about 1GB. But that was huge for the time back then
I remember when they offered 1GB, was at a time when I think the standard hotmail was like either 10 MB or 100 MB, and they made the announcement on april 1st.
Then did it via an invite system.
You know now that I think of it, I wonder what would have happened if google plus had used a similar playbook to that. Seems like with gmail google knew the “exclusivity” was a selling point. Facebook grew big via similar strategies (only these special college students can get it, ok a few more colleges can), meanwhile google plus was "HEY, USE GOOGLE PLUS NOW, Oh you aren’t using it yet, we made your youtube account a google plus account now, so now you have an account please use it now!
While social media in general is toxic. I do feel design wise google plus was leaps and bounds ahead of facebook at the time. Circles is IMO the feature that would have made social media actually semi-useful. (IE post your video game content to gamer friends, fun activities to friends, and not putting any job risking content to bosses etc…).
Google Plus was invite only in the beginning, though
I think so, I don’t remember how long that was. But I do distinctly remember the era where it was shoved down everyone’s throat, which I have to say stuck with people far more. Telling people that they must use it, generated so much hatred for it it was insane.
They tried that with Google Wave.
I don’t think marketing was wave’s problem… nobody understood what the hell wave was. I used it for a few months… and I can’t tell you what the hell it was.
And that was the end of the wave for invite started social media.
Yeah, the whole ‘you now have a mandatory account’ made for a mad scramble of how to disable every possible scrap of data sent to them. It may have been some small push into the self hosting game too.
Fellow OG. I remember. The day it was close to hitting 5gb I was watching it like an every guy watches their car odometer as it hits some magic number. It was worthy of celebration.
1gb back then was 5x the allowed size for my exchange mailbox at work. HUGE!
I remember. I’m also paying Google $2 a month for 100gb. Fucking bastards. But can you point me to 100GB for less?
You’re going to have a hard time beating $2/mo unless you roll it into something else like blackblaze ($100/year for unlimited storage), Microsoft office 365 ($100/year with 1 TB of OneDrive), etc. If your space is going to photos, the speed and responsiveness of Google photos far outpaces some of the alternatives (cough cough OneDrive).
Self hosting is a viable alternative if you’re interested in having more control/local storage or if you are interested in this kind of thing and want to do it/dabble in it as a hobby.
I personally built a NAS, which will take far too long to amortize vs just paying $2/mo. I chose this route because I value a local backup and because a NAS can a bit of a lifestyle product. “It can double as a server!”. Sounds fun, but I would want to build the thing I host which will also take time so… You could potentially build a NAS that will average out to $2 or less a month if you have spare parts or score some used parts cheap. Odds are that route could also be used for self hosting.
If you did the annual security ‘check-up’ you got an extra 2GB (maybe it was just 1GB and I did it a couple of years).
I mean, OneDrive did the same, except their tactic was just to delete your files instead of store them, instead of increasing it…
I purged all my email from google a while ago due to increasing privacy concerns.
Yeah but problem is, android forces you to have A Google account.
Graphene os solves this problem
Update: May 15, 2026 (2:57 AM ET): Google has now confirmed this test in a statement to us while giving more details regarding the feature
Next up: too many people are exporting their data at once, so now exporting your data costs extra.
Pretty sure that’d be illegal under GDPR.
Only if enforced.
High storage costs is hitting them too ehh
You mean high equity costs lol
I still have my gmail account from 2004 or so. I never delete anything, and it is where all the garbage mail goes, although I use it occasionally for purchases and other things.
So 22 years of email, never deleting anything, and I am well under 5gb.
You’re lucky enough to have a non-common email address then and/or unsubscribe from tons of stuff? Mine is a common first name + 2 digits, and I’ve hit the limit a couple times.
i dont think i ever unsubscribe on that account, I don’t pay much attention to it. common name? No not really so nobody is guess spamming it I suppose.
I think i have a ton of emails from places the no longer exist! I outlasted them!
Anyone old enough to remember that Gmail launched with “unlimited” storage?
IIRC, they launched with 1GB (which was ridiculously much for the time) and later only had “unlimited” in the sense of “continuously slowly increasing”. Until they reached 15GB and never budged from there again.
The 1GB Gmail storage was initially announced on April Fool’s Day and it was quite the topic of discussion whether it was real or not.
A year or two later they upped it to 2GB and also announced this on April 1
They never did. You are thinking of photos.
But I do remember thinking 1gb and it growing over time was worth implementing GmailFS and using a free gmail account as a “get to it anywhere” file system I could mount on Linux.
