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“Your Gmail Storage Is Almost Full!”

Screw you, Google! I’m sick and tired of your strong-arm tactics to suck money out of us. Not only have you demonetised my YouTube channel and accused me of plagiarism as if I’m a common thief and scoundrel, but now you don’t want me sending email because your measly allowance of 15 free gigabytes is, according to you, almost full. Is the glass half empty or half full? From my perspective, my paltry storage allowance is only three-quarters full, so that’s a long way from being almost full. Or let’s just say that it’s a quarter empty, which still isn’t anywhere near full.

Your intimidating messages don’t fool me, no siree! But it will scare the hell out of millions of other Gmail users who are maybe not as savvy as those of us lucky enough to work in the tech industry. Imagine granny who relies on Gmail to keep in touch with her friends and family and she receives an intimidating email such as this one. She’s going to start climbing up the walls, hitting the panic button, calling her family, and asking them what she should do for heaven’s sake! That’s what will happen and all because your heartless and synthetic android algorithm has been programmed to nuke us all the second we hit your so-called almost-full brick wall.

Google, I’m getting weary of your penny pinching and arbitrary tactics, designed to get us all to kneel before the altar of your mega-corporation billions. To intimidate your customers in such an aggressive manner — because yes, we are your customers, believe it or not — is tantamount to blackmail no less. It’s like Billy The Kid saying ‘Hand over all your money or you don’t make it to the bar!’ Google, you are outrageous, not only in your gluttony for more billions, but by assuming the role of arbiter of good taste, whatever the hell that is, but also your presumption of judge and very probably, a hanging jury. What’s the matter with you?

But I have a cunning plan, to quote the loveable Baldrick, because, Señor Google, you’re not the only player in the park, not by a long shot.

Long, long ago, when the land was lush and green, where pixies and fairies leapt through the sun-dappled foliage, a sprinkling of pixie dust fell all ’round me and a wise wizard appeared in my midst, whereupon he summoned me to make haste to the land of OneDrive where I would languish in golden fields of terabytes. And it came to pass that I heeded the sage’s words, gathered up my gifs, my jpegs, my MP4s, packed them all into my knapsack, beckoned all my furry friends to join me and we danced merrily towards the golden light, singing all the while to that famous ditty, “Google, eat my crumbs.”

18 thoughts on ““Your Gmail Storage Is Almost Full!””

  1. “to the land of OneDrive where I would languish in golden fields of terabytes. ”

    Onedrive’s free plan is only 5 GB, 1/3 of Googles. What am I missing here?

    1. Fair point, JD
      But Microsoft/OneDrive doesn’t block your ability to send and receive emails if your storage becomes full, as far as I am aware.
      In my book, that’s blackmail.

      1. I don’t use Onedrive and trying to understand your post.

        So, you are saying that if using Onedrive (which has a 5GB limit) and you have 11.24 GB of data (from your Gmail account screenshot), Onedrive is not going to send an email that you are over your balance? And, they don’t send an email when you are approaching your balance (say 4 GB used)? In other words, balance limits are not enforced on Onedrive and you can store terabytes of data on a free account in the land of “golden fields of terabytes”?

        Or, do you have to pay for those golden fields of terabytes (like on Google). If so, then what exactly is the difference except that Google has 15 GB free and Onedrive has 5 GB Free.

        Sorry, I am just confused from this article.

        JD

        1. JD, no I’m not saying that and neither does my article, the whole point of which is that Google holds people to ransom for filling up the 15GB of space with the threat of losing Gmail functionality. In other words, Gmail would cease to send and receive emails.
          OneDrive doesn’t send out this threat, but perhaps what’s confusing you is that I omitted to mention that I have Office 365 which comes with 1TB of OneDrive storage, hence the golden fields of terabytes.

        2. Left out kind of an important point! Comparing a paid 1 TB service to a 15 GB free service is just wrong. Since you are paying (in US, it is $7/month for Personal) I hope that MS is not sending you messages while you are under the 1 TB you are paying for.

          I’m not as enamored with Microsoft as you are. I try to avoid Google and Microsoft as much as possible. My main machine is a Windows machine and I have a DESKTOP version of MS Office (I wouldn’t trust MS to store my personal documents). My phone is Android, but I try to restrict my dependence on Google, too. I have some throw-away Gmail accounts, but my main email, is neither G or MS, my main cloud backup is neither, and my main search is DDG. Main browser is Brave and 2nd is Ungoogled Chromium on desktop. On phone it is Bromite, etc.

          I really hope a $7/mo subscription offers more than a FREE account!

          Really misleading article that you posted.

        1. JD
          The linked article only covers a OneDrive account being frozen and nowhere in the article is it mentioned that Outlook/Hotmail function is affected.
          In fact, I see no reference to an email being sent by Microsoft to the effect that you would no longer be able to send/receive emails, in spite of my extensive Google search.

  2. Nice rant! But since it didn’t go viral and is only seen by the fans who follow Daves Computer Tips there is not clout.
    Personally, I do not trust and cloud storage for anything I deem important. If my online storage got close to full I would just delete a lot of old useless stuff. I typically do a semiannual review anyway and clean out the deadwood. 🙂
    I do see your point of a big corporation using useless scare tactics just to generate some extra revenue. GOOGLE is not the 1st or the last.
    Keep your powder dry and forge ahead.

  3. In all fairness, we should compare apples to apples. As has been mentioned, OneDrive only gives you 1/3 the free cloud storage that a Gmail account gives you. Plus, you can have multiple Gmail accounts, each with another 15GB of storage. So, while I don’t have any love for Google, there are workarounds. If Google says you’re running out of storage, open another Gmail account. I have at least 6, with 90GB of cloud storage at my disposal.
    To make logging into these Gmail accounts as simple as possible, I let my browser (FF) store the login. To manage a reasonable level of security, I make the last 4 characters of the password symbol-numeric, i.e., $5^7. Then, I delete the last 4 characters from the password manager so I must type them in manually. For each account, my active input is only those 4 key strokes. Works for me.
    To JD, I recently ran Brave (Chrome) and Firefox (Mozilla) through a couple of robust online security scanners. Firefox won. And, Firefox does a better job of managing the computer’s memory. I use Brave on occasion, but I find it easier to manage browser security issues with Firefox and it is my go-to browser.
    Also, if you’re tapping links on your Android phone, you might not be aware that Google (Android System Webview), no matter what browser you use, adds a Google web address in front of every link to send that address through their data mining traps in order to record every web link you tap on or every key stroke you type in the address bar. This happens when you tap on a link in a webpage, an email or in search results. The only workaround I know of is to copy the URL and paste it in the address bar manually.

    Joke: Google is hiring. Just send in your name. They already know everything else about you. 😉

    1. Danthaman. I am not going to get into a XX browser vs Firefox war (it is out of scope for the article), Firefox used to be my main browser, but I switched to Brave for privacy reasons. Your test would depend on what settings were in each browser before your test (I have mine set for privacy). Just a couple of points you might want to consider.

      Starting Jan, no new Manifest V2 extensions are allowed in the Google extension store, and by July 23, Chrome will deprecate V2 extensions. Adblockers, etc will not work in Manifest v3. Manifest V3 will cripple the adblocking capabilities. Firefox gets virtually all of its funding from Google and always follows what Google says and will follow suit here. Brave’s adblocker is not an extension and therefore is unaffected no matter what Google does to the extension APIs.

      Firefox only has 3% of market share (and is continuing to fall). Websites will not be testing to Firefox’s engine and more and more will stop working correctly on Firefox.

      1. Hey JD,

        Did you get the browser market share percentage for Firefox from Statcounter? Statcounter’s statistics are notoriously inaccurate/skewed. Statcounter counts every visit, not just unique visits. Meaning, if a single user visits one of the monitored domains multiple times during the monitoring period, every visit is counted. This not only skews the results but also leaves them wide open to be gamed.

        NetMarketShare was the only reliable/accurate source for these types of statistics as they only counted unique visits. Unfortunately, NetMarketShare ceased providing its service some time back.

  4. Yes, well, that site quotes Statcounter as its source. As I said, I wouldn’t be quoting or accepting any statistics sourced from Statcounter as being accurate.

    Last time I produced an article on market share was in November 2020, just before NetMarketShare ceased its service: https://davescomputertips.com/internet-explorer-still-4th-most-used-browser/

    It’s something I’ve kept an eye on over the years and percentages tend to change very little from month to month.

    That said, I do agree that Firefox’s market share has been on a downward trend for some time and I also agree that, with the dominance of Chromium-based bowsers, that trend is likely to continue.

  5. Yahoo gives 1TB storage FREE, but they only have an 8% share of the email service market.

    Would anyone leave Gmail and go to Yahoo?

  6. Marc,

    “In fact, I see no reference to an email being sent by Microsoft to the effect that you would no longer be able to send/receive emails, in spite of my extensive Google search.”

    As I mentioned in my reply, the MS support article was to MS freezing the account when over the limit. There were screenshots of the emails that MS sends that state that you can not send or receive emails when over your limit that specifically states that you can not send or receive emails while over the limit. As I stated, I don’t know how to post an image here, so just go to MS support site if you want to see screenshots of the emails. BTW, the way to fix it is to unfreeze your account and delete stuff to go below your limit.

    Anyhow, your whole premise on this story is wrong. You imply that the free Onedrive account allows terabytes of storage with no limitations on sending or receiving emails when you go over the 5 GB limit. We found out that:
    1) Ondrive free is 5 GB Gmail is 15 GB
    2) You have a PAID Onedrive account, not free
    3) Onedrive will freeze your account if you go over limit
    4) MS will not allow emails to be sent or received if over the limit

    This is the most misleading post I have ever read on DCT and I am surprised this post meets DCT standards. You did no research for this post and it is full of errors.

    Now, if your article was “I’m sick of Google and I am willing to pay Microsoft to get away from anything Google” then I wouldn’t have an issue with this article, but that’s not what you posted or implied.

    1. Richard Pedersen

      Hi JD,

      “This is the most misleading post I have ever read on DCT and I am surprised this post meets DCT standards. You did no research for this post and it is full of errors.”

      You apparently have not noticed that this post is tagged as humor. This was intended to be a light-hearted rant, an opinion piece if you will, and not a deeply researched article. If we have misled any of our readers, then you have certainly cleared that up with your many points.

      Let us please approach this with a lighter heart,
      Richard

    2. JD
      The entire thrust of my article is a satirical rant on Google’s strongarm warnings of losing the ability to use Gmail, a message I have received on numerous occasions and therefore decided to take a light-hearted view, rather than choke myself to death on my own bile. I don’t expect everyone to get it of course.
      From what I can gather, OneDrive does not interfere with the ability to send and receive emails through Outlook. com, which has a free storage limit of 15GB.
      https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/storage-limits-in-outlook-com-7ac99134-69e5-4619-ac0b-2d313bba5e9e
      As you correctly point out, OneDrive has a limit of 5GB, but it appears that both of these services do not operate in the same way as Gmail/Drive/Photos which are all lumped together as one storage amount and I have never received a threatening email from Microsoft, in spite of exceeding the 5GB limit on occasions.
      Yes, I have Office 365. Yes, OneDrive will freeze if you exceed the limit and no, Microsoft will not stop you sending and receiving emails through Outlook.com because the storage limits are different.
      Naturally, you are entitled to your opinion that my article was misleading, a view that I do not share, incidentally, but the topic has raised some interesting points, not least the ability to gain extra storage with Google as pointed out by Danthaman.
      I won’t be giving any further replies to this, as I have other rants that I need to get on with, so with that, I hope you enjoy the rest of the day filled with humour, as I intend to.

  7. Serving incoming private emails need storage, When the quota allotted to you is full your email service will fail to save the private email. This will happen once you reach 15.1 GB. So just like you get rid of old junk mails and news papers in your house, to resume service delete old emails or purchase additional drive space.

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