

Ask HN: Can there be another gmail? - rameshnid

Since email service providers like gmail encourage not deleting any email, I am assuming there will be a point in time (rather in the size of the mean inbox of user-space) at which point it will become unviable to launch a new email service because u will have to offer migration as part of the package.<p>Will there be such a point or am I missing something?
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rchowe
Remember that as time goes on drive space prices fall as well. If you build
backblaze storage pods[1] a petabyte over 3 years costs you a little under
100k. If we assume the average email user uses around half a gigabyte[2], we
can accommodate around 2.1 million accounts on the petabyte (more if you
compress the data). Throw in another two petabytes for compressed backups and
you've got a million email accounts for 150k, or $0.15 an account (over three
years). If you show users ads that average more than 15 cents per user over
the course of three years you're making money (less paying employees that
don't operate the storage, etc.). The actual numbers may even be less.
Combined with the fact that the price of storage seems to still be going down
at a rate that most likely is faster than user inbox growth, and you'll never
hit this particular singularity.

[1] [http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/20/petabytes-on-a-
budget-v...](http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/20/petabytes-on-a-
budget-v2-0revealing-more-secrets/)

[2] 200MB more than the amount currently in my gmail; I have email going back
six years and I never delete emails, but I'm not a heavy email user.

EDIT: Formatting

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glimcat
No, Gmail is a fermion. Therefore it is impossible for a second fermion with
identical properties to occupy the same quantum state as per the Pauli
exclusion principle.

Sorry, physics humor. Real answer:

Drive space is very cheap today. It is not hard to offer several GB per user.
Email as it is currently implemented only supports messages of about 10MB each
at max, while typical messages are text-only or include only a few low-res
images as attachments. For typical users, it is therefore not probable that
they will ever accumulate data at a rate faster than is currently the case
since it is a protocol limit. Historical trends have also shown that larger
file transfers are simply routed to other methods, so it is unlikely that
email will be overhauled simply to increase the per-message size limit.

Monetizing it as a free service in a way which is not onerous to users and
convincing users that they should use your service versus a more well-known
and established provider are the hard parts. Solve that, and you've got a good
competitor. Don't solve that, and you've got a money sink.

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JohnLBevan
There's no need to close off an old account when you move to a new service, so
you can leave your gmail as an archive - that makes for an easy spring clean
too. My guess is that as cloud platforms evolve though, more and more will
offer ways out - since people/companies will begin demand it before signing up
as competition mounts. Those "ways out" will initially be bulk downloads (like
Facebook's "download your info" feature), but over time will become more
useful, offering filters on what's downloaded, pagination on downloading data,
and migration APIs such that new services can pull data from the old ones
without you needing to middle man the data. This isn't of benefit to providers
though, which is why it relies on competition / user adoption based on ways
out, and also why it will take time to become the norm.

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brackin
I believe so. Opera show cased this beta email design/feature set which was
very appealing for anyone not interested in using Google's services. They do
seem to be innovating though, the new Gmail design is much better in my
opinion and if Google+ takes off it'll become even further integrated into
your life.

I think Google really wants G+ to link all of the Google services we use
together and bring people onto services they weren't previously using. For
those which live in Google this is great but for those which only want to try
G+ or use one service it puts more barriers in your way.

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dmlorenzetti
Overall, I'm not very impressed with gmail. I'd like to think that a new email
service could lure people away, simply by providing a better product.

(Not that the particulars matter, but I find gmail slow, ham-handed in its
organization, ugly, and strangely lacking, given its origins, in the searches
it supports. Not to mention the fact that the cursor periodically disappears
when composing messages on one of the three machines I use it on.)

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boringpun
Not only can the be another Gmail, but there's also a huge need for it. Gmail
lags quite a lot (even on fast connections), and the price you have to pay to
get it for free is the fact that Google builds a huge database on your
person/interests, and that American authorities have easy access to your data
because of the Patriot Act.

I'd much rather pay a small sum of money to a provider in Europe ( = better
privacy laws).

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akronim
Do you _have_ to offer migration initially? I don't think it's something that
every service has launched with. And there's a steady stream of new email
users every year.

A few non-techy people have asked me if there are email services that _don't_
read your email for contextual ads, and they would be willing to pay. So I
think there's a market there, albeit a smaller one that the free email
provider one.

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queensnake
I'd say so, if its features + spam protection are as good. People (not only
me!) dislike having all their eggs in the Google basket.

