Google has implemented a small change to Gmail that will affect very few users, but which greatly benefit the ones that actually needed it. Gmail users, both in the regular version as well as the Apps one, can now store up to 25,000 contacts in the app and can store more info on each of them as well.
Previously Google had a 10,000 contacts limit and anyone hitting it could not add anyone new to their list. While 10,000 contacts seems like an awful lot of people and it's doubtful too many users hit this limit it's obvious that for those affected, it was quite a bit issue.
"Gmail used to have a limit of 10,000 contacts. For most of us, this was way more than enough, but we heard from some of you who use Gmail to communicate with more than 10,000 people," Mike Helmick, Software Engineer at Google, wrote.
"We want you to be able to store all of your contacts in a single place, so starting today, we’ve increased the limit for all Gmail users, including all those of you who use Google Apps, to 25,000 contacts," he added.
Google has also rolled out an improvement also aimed at the Contacts power users. Previously, stored contact data could only add up to 32 KB. That's plenty of space to store some plain text data, so email addresses, phone numbers, names and other notes could easily fit.
But some users, especially those that have a huge contacts list, add very detailed data to their contacts, precisely to make it easier to keep track of them, so Google is now allowing contact data to be as large as 128 KB.
Brad Feld, an investor with Foundry Group, has an interesting account of his plight to get the 10,000 contacts limit increased. He's also a perfect example of what type of user might run into this issue.
