# What is Gmail telling me as far as available space goes?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-gmail-telling-me-as-far-as-available-space-goes/504790
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [July 30, 2009, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-gmail-telling-me-as-far-as-available-space-goes/504790 "2009-07-30T17:08:57Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Nippless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nippless)
#### Post date: [July 30, 2009, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-gmail-telling-me-as-far-as-available-space-goes/504790/1 "2009-07-30T17:08:57Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Over 7353.555103 megabytes (and counting) of free storage so you’ll never need to delete another message.
This is from the Gmail front-page. What are the digits after the decimal signifying? Bytes? Bits? 0s and 1s? Every time I see it there seems to be another decimal place added. Is this logical?
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### Author:  [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)
#### Post date: [July 30, 2009, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-gmail-telling-me-as-far-as-available-space-goes/504790/2 "2009-07-30T17:19:50Z")
Well, a Megabyte is approximately a million bytes (or, some people claim, exactly a million bytes, but Google [knows that 2^20 bytes = 1 Megabyte](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=2%5E20+bytes+in+megabytes&aq=f&oq=&aqi=)), so the 6th place after the decimal corresponds (approximately) to a byte.
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### Author:  [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)
#### Post date: [July 31, 2009, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-gmail-telling-me-as-far-as-available-space-goes/504790/3 "2009-07-31T17:08:10Z")
When referring to storage space (and not RAM), a megabyte is exactly one million bytes.
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### Author:  [@Stathol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stathol)
#### Post date: [July 31, 2009, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-gmail-telling-me-as-far-as-available-space-goes/504790/4 "2009-07-31T17:41:31Z")
Mmm…kind of. That’s not really a hard rule, though. It depends entirely on who’s doing the reporting. The storage _manufacturers_ certainly use the million bytes definition – at allows them report larger numbers for their hard drives. Google may or may not be using that definition.
AFAIK, gmail reports message and attachment sizes in “binary” megabytes, so I would guess that google’s mail storage figures use the same units. But that’s just a WAG on my part.
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### Author:  [@HorseloverFat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HorseloverFat)
#### Post date: [July 31, 2009, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-gmail-telling-me-as-far-as-available-space-goes/504790/5 "2009-07-31T19:12:34Z")
If you look at the source of the page, you’ll see some javascript that generates that variable (its called quota). Im guessing someone coded it to display 10 digits. You can probably ignore everything after the first decimal point. So its saying you have around 7 gigs free space.