The news that Microsoft was upgrading their Hotmail storage have been going around since June. At first, only new accounts would receive the new limit and every time I would read someone else was upgraded I would rush to check my account just to find the same 2MB limit.

Not tonight though. After leaving the office and checking my email at home, I found myself with a whooping 250MB for my Hotmail account. Add this to a couple of Gmail accounts and I am not sure what I will do with that much space online.

A few theories have come up since with regards to the vast amount of space that several companies have started to offer their customers. Add this to the theories from people telling us that the browser will be used for more than just surfing the web and you start to see a foundation (in theory anyways) for a shift in the way we deal with information.

The 1GB concept that Gmail introduced was not something out of this world in terms of capacity, but it has shaken a market where there has been close to zero innovation in the recent past. Beyond the hard-drive space that Google provides, I can see some interesting things in the future for its web application behind Gmail. Now that Hotmail has moved into the multi-MB field, what do they have up their sleeve? A larger limit is no longer news-worthy — except when it is my account the one getting upgraded.

ps – I still have a few invitations available for Gmail, so if you are interested please let me know.