Topic awaiting preservation: where Google keeps all that Gmail hard drive space

but seriously. where DOES Google keep all that gmail hard drive space?

<edit> i shrunk'd it </edit>

(Edited by LaSun on 06-28-2005 05:54)

Haha, that's why there is always noise in the ground.

Who says they actually reserve physically those 2 gb atm you register?

Same question would apply to yahoo (1gb, tho), and they have a much larger userbase, and much more services involving space (groups, hosting, etc).

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Something else

Sexy Demoness cel

funny, and well done, picture.

Smart pic! I bet the moons phases cause periodic seek-errors (might explain the mysterious disappearance of several mail items I sent).

I'm willing to bet that GMail is stored in the brains of preserved cadavers, hooked up to the web and used for data storage (about 4TB for the average brain) in an advanced RAID-style configuration. The frontal lobes are stimulated just enough to allow the execution of basic code for error-control purposes, but all the real processing is performed by traditional servers.

Or perhaps they are hijacking space on every server they can break into - stealing a few kilobytes here and there - treating it as a single accumulated storage space, and providing the whole service almost entirely cost-free!.

Seriously though, isn't high-capacity solid-state memory becoming quite a fad at the mo'? What if they just have banks and banks of current generation solid-state storage systems in small rooms across the globe? The cost might be horrific for the average corporation, but this is Google! Never know what they might be doing to generate revenue on the system in the meantime.

Aha! Solid state memory storage centres funded by the government, providing free high-capacity mail services and advanced monitoring and surveillance solutions for anti-privacy/anti-liberty administrations...

...or something.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzz.....

quote:

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I'm willing to bet that GMail is stored in the brains of preserved cadavers,

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Can I please have some of whatever it is you're ingesting. I imagine the colours must be phenominal... =)

Didn't you get any of those new pills? They're fantastic!

I had a thorough look through this, but found nothing of any real use (and no mention of preserved brains - so it must be true).

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzz.....


EDIT: Ooh! Just found this Gmail shell extension that allows you to use Gmail as an online storage system from your desktop. Neat!

(Edited by White Hawk on 06-28-2005 20:30)

From http://www.google.com/intl/en/corporate/tech.html :

quote:

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From the beginning, Google's developers recognized that providing the fastest, most accurate results required a new kind of server setup. Whereas most search engines ran off a handful of large servers that often slowed under peak loads, Google employed linked PCs to quickly find each query's answer. The innovation paid off in faster response times, greater scalability and lower costs. It's an idea that others have since copied, while Google has continued to refine its back-end technology to make it even more efficient.

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So google uses a lot PC's in big farms probably in datacenters all over the world. All these PC's need some basic OS right? This means it need some kind of harddisk right? So how many disk storage is needed for indexing and searching? There might be some huge leftovers here and there... i think they just found a way to use efficiently the allready existing disk space.

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Support Justice for Pat Richard

I believe, they found a way to compress their indices quite a bit.
So all of the sudden, they're saving terrabytes of storage, because their indices are some factor smaller.

Let's say half (which I know could be possible, if they switched to something akin to the fmindex)...
hundreds of thousands of half empty harddisks ;-)

They are actually looking at some land in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to build another data center......

If you think about, google caches a huge amount of data. It's conceivable that they're just using the leftover storage space for gmail accounts. I doubt anyone's actually hit the limit just using it for email (using it as a desktop storage area is another story).

At work, 4 years of email takes up only about 700 megs or so.



(Edited by silence on 06-28-2005 22:46)

Though Gmail has always been like this, it would be interesting to see how much increasing the limit to 1GB has affected Yahoo in terms of space used.



.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.

That's about the most sane answer yet, TB (unsurprisingly). I still think the recycled brains idea has merit, though...
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Having had a closer look at Gmail Drive, it appears that Google may already have taken illicit steps to halt things.

I can't imagine that third-party software like this would be welcomed, for reasons alluded-to by Silence; the average email user is unlikey to stretch capacity over anything short of years, but indiscriminate file uploads might very quickly consume Gmail storage, and over a far shorter period.

It has been a long day, I'm tired, and I just can't be bothered to look it up... so, does anybody have a clear idea of whether Gmail Drive actually contravenes the terms of use for Gmail?

I think I need to recycle my own brain...

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzz.....