Shrinking the space Gmail takes up: goals, levers and trade-offs

As a product manager on Gmail, you are asked to reduce Gmail's storage size. How would you approach the problem, what changes would you make, and how would you know they worked? ```hint Break the bytes down Before proposing anything, split the stored data by what it is and where it came from; the largest buckets point to the levers worth pulling first. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Is the goal to cut what Google spends storing mail across all accounts, or to help users who are running out of their own storage quota? - Are changes to how mail is stored behind the scenes in scope, or only features users can see? - Are free accounts, paid accounts and business accounts with retention or legal-hold rules all in scope? - Is there a target reduction, or a limit on how much user experience we may trade for it? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A clarified goal: whose storage, which accounts and what kind of reduction are in scope - A breakdown of stored data by type, source and account, used to size levers before choosing them - Levers on both the infrastructure side and the user-facing side, each with its effect on users - Prioritization by savings, effort and risk to user trust, including what not to do - Metrics for storage saved with user-experience guardrails, plus the main risks and how to manage them ### Follow-up Questions - After launch, a cleanup tool frees a lot of space, but users complain that they deleted mail they later needed. What do you change? - How would you estimate how much storage a proposed change will save before building it? - How would you encourage users to clear large old attachments without it reading as a push to buy more storage?