Why Google should lower Gmail's attachment limit.

This is ridiculous. I can think of a dozen different reason why I would want large file size attachments. And the easiest way to do that is with email. You cannot expect the average user to go find another technology just to transfer files, when a ubiquitous technology they already have access to and know how to use accommodates that.

As a developer or designer working with clients, email is the easies way to have someone send you a file, or vice versa. Everyone has email. There's no extra client to install and setup, no new technology or jargon to learn. I understand educating people is important, but at the end of the day there are a lot of technologies that people don't need to know about. And in situations where time is critical its impossibly difficult and time consuming to tell a client to go download an ftp client, install it, configure it, then walk them through the process of transferring a file - all when they have no concept of what FTP is in the first place! Which is easier? That process with all its complexity and opportunities for screw-ups, or simply attaching a file to an email.

On the topic of file content, large files are more prevalent today. We need to accept that and use the technologies that offer the path of least resistance and widest user acceptance. Large files can be a number of different things - an original design file needed for a printer, a copy of the client database, an original high-res photo, typical office documents, audio, video, even PDFs can easily reach large sizes.

The fact that this argument is about Gmail is even more nonsensical. Gmail is one of dozens of web-based email platforms. There's no impact to the user if you get a large file attachment when using a webmail. It's just a link in the email. In fact Gmail will even zip up all the attachments in an email so you can have a smaller download. Where's the negative in Gmail's implementation of attachments - just the file size they allow to be sent? My mail server doesn't even have a limit. Gmail's implementation actually counters against several of the points the article makes. It's easy to attach a file, it's easy to remove the file, it's easy to choose to download the file or not, and it's even a seamless process to upload the large file in the first place. The argument could have well been, get users to create webmail accounts so that it's EASIER to send and receive large files!

Updated: After reading the YippieMove.com site more it's clear that the reason for this post is self-serving. Yippie Move is a service that allows you to transfer email seamlessly between providers. It's clearly better for their business model if people don't have large email accounts filled with big attachments.

>So what is wrong with emailing large files? Reason [1..2..3]

What's wrong with other means of transferring "large" files (25mb or less)? Nobody knows how, and other means of transfer do not have persistent storage. And what's this 1gb limit on Gmail? Last I checked they were over seven. My account has 27 gigs for $5 per year, making it the cheapest file storage out there by a long shot.

Reason 3 (you can't easily not download the file) makes sense, but I highly doubt that's a concern of anyone who knows of an alternate method of distributing a file.

I can't think of a co-worker who wouldn't be annoyed if I told them "just get the excel sheet from my home directory."

Nonsensical.

I'm surprised by the amount of disagreement with the author. This will probably be voted down, but here are a few reasons I dislike large attachments:

1) I don't trust online email services to store/backup my email and like to back up my own email. These giant attachments make up 99.9% of the storage space and don't compress well. My email backup has increased 20-fold in size since gmail upped their attachment limit.

2) Desktop email clients often start to chug slower when the inbox gets large. Before I've had over 100,000 emails in my Outlook Express inbox since 2003. Sorting by subject, searching, etc. were instantaneous. With these attachments, I have to periodically sort by size and run my attachment cleaner script to scrub them out or Outlook Express will get slower.

Maybe I'm using antiquated technologies but if others want better control of their own email, they might agree too.

"It is our responsibility as the tech-savvy users to educate these users." It wasn't long ago when the tech-savvy were trying to educate against "top posting" e-mail replies. It was a decisive loss, so good luck.

If you want people to use Dropbox instead, make mail clients smarter. How about when "attaching" a file, it made a copy in ~/Dropbox/Public/ and embedded the public URL in the message instead?

Emails are not really suited to send large files. Try Binfer which specializes in large file transfers. It is as easy as email, but without the size limitation. You can send hundreds of file without reducing their size. And, you don't have to upload them anywhere, they transfer directly from computer to computer. The site is http://www.binfer.com

In the era of cheap storage it would be a waste of time to lecture people on attachments. My total mailbox size for the last 3 years is a little over 5GB with the bulk of it being attachments. Not hurting anyone or anything. I could delete them if I wanted to but that would also be a waste of time. Even if it were 10x bigger I don't think I'd bother. A 1TB HD is $60 these days.

Just because the originating server allows massive attachments doesn't ensure the receiving server will accept it. Within the past week, I got an email from a client saying they couldn't receive anything larger than 5mb and we'd have to gasp FTP it.

...or use http://www.wetransfer.com (unless it's sensitive).

Stop whining.

The argument about keeping an email around is a bit silly. Most large file attachments the theoretical affected users are going to send are going to be some kind of document. You can just resave those. Besides I've yet to find an email client without a right click 'save attachment' option somewhere along the lines.

There's a common theme in the author's reasons: "Yes, I know some clients can download the messages without downloading the attachments, but not all." and "In most email clients, you cannot just discard the attachments."

Apparently we should be held back by antiquated technology.

Gmail should up their bandwidth for attaching files

FYI: Thunderbird can detach and delete attachments.

Translation: damn kids, get off my lawn!

I'd be happy if they would just stop censoring .zip files that contain .exes. Makes it a pain to support customers.