5/5     Can anyone who works at google send gmail invites to as many people
        as they want? or is it limited to only certain employees who are
        involved with gmail?
        \_ As I understand it, all Google employees get 50 invites.  Everyone
           they invite gets 2 invites.  Everyone *those* people invite get no
           invites except through random luckiness.
                \_ that's already at least 1TB of data. how much does storage
                   cost these days?
                   \_ compression?
                   \_ 1TB is not considered a lot of data at google. --aaron
                      \_ 1tb is not a lot of data.  Period.
                   \_ how many TB's do they have, in anticipation of many
                      more gmail users?
                      \_ google admits to "10,000+" machines. make a (poor)
                         assumption of a single 80GB disk. 800,000GB = 800TB.
                         \_ no, mass storage doesn't work like this.  they'll
                            be buying mass storage in 100tb chunks in raid
                            arrays if they're serious.  the alternative is they
                            came up with their own funky storage technique but
                            it isn't about zero likely to be an 80 gig drive
                            per box they own for gmail.
                            \_ Actually that's exactly what it is:
                               link:csua.org/u/776
                               They probably put several disks in each box.
                               Given the time this was implemented, it's
                               probably 40 gig drives, but hey. -dans
                               \_ Different service, different needs.  It would
                                  be silly to do this for a multi tb mail
                                  service.  Got anything that says they do this
                                  for gmail?
                               \_ If you read your own link you'd see exactly
                                  what went in the boxes.  If you did the math
                                  from the link you'd see it doesn't add up
                                  (as usual) to what they claim in the same
                                  article.  If you looked at their storage and
                                  performance numbers and compared their costs
                                  to a pure storage solution instead of their
                                  one-size-fits-all "use lots of low end boxes"
                                  model, you'd see that they're actually
                                  getting worse performance and paying more per
                                  tb than a more traditional solution.  GFS,
                                  indeed.  This is the one big problem with
                                  geeks running the show.  They did a very cool
                                  filesystem but it doesn't cut it on the cost/
                                  benefits as a business solution.  Too many
                                  techie PhDs scratching itches and no one
                                  doing the basic $$$ math to see if it made
                                  any sense in the real world.
           \_ I got invited by a Google employee and got no extra invites.
                \_ same here. actually, I take that back, I just checked
                   and saw that i have two invitations.
                   \_ Gmail doesn't work with cable modem.
                      \_ wrong
                   \_ Where are they? I would like to
                     <strikeout>sell</strikeout> send out two invites.
                \_ It's in red below the search filter and says:
                         Invite a friend to join Gmail!