Extra capacity for businesses and Google Apps users

Google is increasing the amount of storage it provides as part of its Gmail service.

Rob Siemborski, an engineer on Google's webmail service, made the announcement on the company's official Gmail blog.

Google originally started increasing Gmail's storage in April 2005 as part of the company's Infinity+1 storage plan.

"At that time, we realised we'd never reach infinity, but we promised to keep giving Gmail users more space as we were able," said Siemborski.

"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 are speeding up our counter and giving out more free storage."

Siemborski said that schools and organisations using Google Apps to get Gmail on their own custom addresses would also get a storage boost soon.

He promised that the Standard and Education Edition storage, which currently stands at 2GB, would begin matching Gmail's counter.

Businesses or individuals using the Premier Edition will also be upgraded from 10GB to 25GB, Siemborski said.