I remember the magic that was 1GB (and "infinite" because it kept slowly growing) email storage back when Hotmail gave you maybe 5MB. Crazy to think it was over 20 years ago.

It is more of an attempt to get real world IDs.

Yesterday I was forced to enter phone number for first time for "login verification". I didn't request any 2FA. They also made it clear they would save the number. Alternative was not logging in. Probably a A/B testing attempt.

I recently got free 5TB storage for one year with the Google AI Pro plan, as I had ported my SIM card to another carrier, new carrier had some sort of partnership with Google.

It was 2 TB originally, but fews days later on they just increased it to 5TB. Just bonker level of storage (for free).

I wonder why they quit their strategy of (practically) "infinite email storage". Compared to other data sources, after identifying hand-written E-Mails and attachment this would give them superior access to high quality LLM training material. I assume Mail content and GDrive file content still superior to what you find in the general "open" web.

Maybe they don't want to be evil anymore? ;-)