this post was submitted on 05 May 2026
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I remember when Gmail was advertised as unlimited email storage. Then they limited it. Then they sold more storage for it.
I remember when the Google Pixel offered free unlimited high quality photo backup to excuse the fact it had no SD card.
Then it offered free medium quality photo backup to excuse the fact it had no SD card.
Then it offered nothing because it had squeezed serious competitors with SD cards out of the market.
High quality uploads were free for all Google Photos users and tben they changed it to medium quality and now we get nothing.
I used high quality uploads for a long time deleted the original files. Turns out those *high quality" uploads were not very high quality and realised that I have ruined years of my photos believing in this gimmick. Fxck Google.
It still does, for models that were sold that way. My Pixel 4 still gets free uploads to Google Photos. Which I should really move to immich one of these days.
I’m told it’s finally time to make the move
I don't remember Gmail ever offering unlimited storage, and I can't find any record of that offer ever being made, either. When they first launched, they gave 1GB, which was the highest of any free email service at the time by an order of magnitude, but never unlimited.
I have had Gmail since it was in beta and needed an invite to use.
Yes, it was originally touted as unlimited email. "Never have to delete another email!!" This was in 2003 (or was early 2004? It all runs together these days. I got married in 03, and got the invite not too long after) when my cousin sent me the invite.
The big webmail provider back then was yahoo.com, and I still have that email address as well. AOL even started offering a free webmail for people who had broadband Internet, but wanted to use or keep their old dial up AOL account.
Hotmail was also a thing, and this was before MS bought them and merged it with msn.com
They kept incrementally adding more storage capacity to your account every day. It slowly ticked up and their marketing claim was that it would just keep growing forever. As we can see, that… did not happen.