I love Google. From what I've read about the company, they are a nice place to work, they promote goodness in the Internet, and they provide nice, free stuff for folks like me to use. I'm hooked on Reader, I'm getting into Buzz, Wave is kind of out there but looks promising, and I've been a Gmail dude for a long time.
Regarding Gmail, I had figured out a while ago that all the separate email accounts I had (Charter, SCATC, others) could autoforward. So, if I autoforwarded everything to Google, and then used that as my mail server, I'd have a simpler life. I could check my mail locally on my Mac (which Apple's Mail dutifully would download from Google when started). In fact, could check my mail
anywhere I was that I had Internet access. But, to do that, I had to leave my mail on Google's Gmail and not do download and delete as one may do on most servers.
Well, after a long while, the number of emails I had stored on Google was way too large. I recall a number over 24,000. It would take forever to read them all! Now, I had already processed these via downloads to Apple's Mail (or Thunderbird before that on my Linux/Windows systems). But, something interesting happened. I decided that I would be better of not using Apple's Mail every day. I already had my browser going all the time, and the Gmail page was living in an ever present tab. In fact, I've started using Google's Chrome browser all the time, so now it's all in the family, so to speak.
But here's the problem. Google gave me, for free, a bagillion bytes of storage for free. I thought I might never run out of this - a foolish assumption. I figured, there would come a day when I'd need to prune my message and if ever the message count got to filling the bagillion bytes, I'd be better of shooting myself in the head. So, I decided to start pruning now.
The process of pruning was/is painful with Gmail because they never show you more than a set number of messages. I have mine configured for 100, but the default is 20. When I try to scroll through older message, they come up 100 at a time. With 24,000 to go, I'd be scrolling for a long while. I decided to use Search to help. I figured that, if I just searched for those message senders I didn't need to keep, like Sears or Home Depot or Amazon or any of the other ad-based emailers out there, I'd have a easier time of pruning...just not 20 per page at a time. Then I discovered the "All" and "Select all conversations that match this search" option. "All" is pretty obvious, it lets you select all the messages that are displayed in the search window. But, if there are hundreds of search result matches, and you see them 20 at a time, it's a pain to have to do them one section at a time. That's where the second option pays off. It lets you select all the others. The, a "Delete" and they are done. Cool.
I'm now down to 10,000 or so message. I'm comfortable with that. Also, I'm not using Gmail as my primary client, deleting as I go on. Then, every few days (or weekly?) I'll run Apple's Mail to pull down to my local site. That way, if I need to access something while the Internet is busy, or dead, I'll have access.
This is a win-win.
I think I love Google. "Do no evil" ...this is actually in their Corporate Philosophy...
How nice is that!.
