Gmail Hits 5 GB, Coming Soon: 6 GB

As the war for Web e-mail space heats up, Google's Gmail users may have 6 GB of storage by the end of the year.

Last month, Google announced that it was speeding up its "Infinity+1" storage plan, an initiative that had been adding more than 1 megabyte of storage per hour to a user's free capacity.

"At that time, we realized we'd never reach infinity, but we promised to keep giving Gmail users more space as we were able. That said, a few of you are using Gmail so much that you're running out of space, so to make good on our promise, we're announcing we are speeding up our counter and giving out more free storage," wrote Rob Siemborski, Gmail engineer in one of Google's corporate blogs.

The acceleration rate seems the plan has geared down again to previous levels, but not before Gmail caught up to rival Microsoft's Hotmail.

As my colleague Ed Moltzen noted recently here, Google is engaged in a Web mail space battle with Yahoo and Microsoft.

Last August, Microsoft set the 5 GB bar for Hotmail users by more than doubling its previous storage limit per user. Gmail was launched in 2004 with a 1 GB capacity and a year later announced the storage acceleration program.