What if your Gmail account runs out of storage space?

This morning, as every morning, I checked my e-mails while waking up. An original message was featured on top of my gmail page saying:

 You are almost out of space for your Gmail account.
You can view our tips on reducing your email storage or purchase additional storage.

Actually, it has been a long time that I was worrying that this could happen. But, I remembered that some years ago, Google had increased the storage space available for free accounts, before the expiration of my TTL.

Six years ago, when a friend first provided me an invitation to obtain a Gmail account, I remember being surprised by the available storage space. "With 1Gb, I sure won't need to delete any messages", I was thinking to myself, agreeing with Gmail's advertisment. At that time, Yahoo provided much less space.

Years have passed, though. Yahoo now provides unlimited storage and Gmail became a platform where tenths of additional services are featured.

My first reaction was to click on the link "view our tips on reducing your e-mail storage". The page dispayed was the following:

I really was confused. On the one hand, there were no details on how I could "reduce my e-mail storage". As I understood it, this would mean a way to delete some messages and create some space, a thing that - as I had heard - would not actually liberate space for some reason.

On the other hand, while in my Gmail page I was initially informed that:

You are currently using 7147 MB (95%) of your 7511 MB.

in that page I was informed that I still have some way to go until 8.43 GB.


Clicking on the next link, the purchase one, I got the following page:

Yet, as I am able to understand, it is not about "purchase" in the sense of buying, is about "purchase" in the sense of renting.

Otherwhise, I could just use an other e-mail account. Yet, I would have to inform every body that I've been e-mailing with since 6 years for my new e-mail address (given that many probably won't give a damn about me changing e-mail), plus the many lists I've been added to.

Many questions, from which the final is: to pay or not to pay?

Thinking of it as a life-time rent, it becomes stressing! Thinking of it as buying Google a beer once a year for the service, it probably worths it.