Gmail and the 2 gig limit
Google just upped the storage cap on a Gmail account to 2 gig from 1 gig, and promised to keep increasing it.
The excellent thing about this is that every other online mail provider used the storage cap as a mechanism to get you to buy into their 'premium' service, and Google just tossed that whole model out the window. Why would anyone pay for more email storage space now?
Everything Google does for the user they pay for with ads.
This model has worked for TV since the dawn of TV, and Google is proving it can work for the web.
Of course, Google doesn't actually create content; they depend on others to do it. With TV, it's the content creation that's expensive, and that's what the ads pay for; Google uses the ads to finance the infrastructure that brings you the content. But the content creators still don't have a way to get paid.
It's as though your local cable company got the TV shows for free, and was using ads to finance the cable network, bringing you cable TV for free. But where'd the content come from?
Through AdSense and AdWords, Google does distribute some money to the content providers, but it seems to me it's usually enough to cover hosting and not a whole lot more.
The Internet still needs a way for users to get money to content creators, other than through advertising. Subscriptions doesn't seem to be the way. Micropayments could be. Or maybe something else.
But it seems to me if anyone is going to figure it out, it's going to be Google.