That Gmail storage counter seems to have been stuck around 2,800MB for quite a while. Many users have exceeded that some time ago, so it was appropriate that storage-rich Google announced new target numbers going forward.

The Official Google Blog says :

In April 2005, we started increasing Gmail storage as part of our “Infinity+1″ storage plan. At that time, we realized we’d never reach infinity, but we promised to keep giving Gmail users more space as we were able. That said, a few of you are using Gmail so much that you’re running out of space, so to make good on our promise, today we’re announcing we are speeding up our counter and giving out more free storage.

Thr new storage targets are given as :

2912MB by October 11, 2007 midnight Google time
4.2GB by the 23rd this month
6GB by January 4th next year
42GB by the year of 2038

Hmm, don’t know about 2038 but it’s good to see the company looking so far ahead.