Gmail finally doubles email attachment limit, but it means nothing

It’s 2017, and we're still stuck with email clients that refuse to accept attachments going north of 25MB. Gmail is changing that. Well, sort of.

Google has announced that it is doubling the attachment size for all Gmail users -- going up from 25MB to 50MB. It’s a welcome move and should worry rivals Outlook and Yahoo (a lot of people use it!).

Except, they don’t really need to worry ... yet.

You see, Gmail users can receive emails with attachments that are as big as 50MB in size. But they still can't send an email that big. The attachment size is still capped at 25MB, Google said in a blog post.

This renders the change effectively useless.

There is no mainstream email client that offers email attachments beyond 25MB. Rival clients such as Outlook and Yahoo limit the attachments to 20MB and 25MB, respectively. Even Russia’s Yandex only goes up to 30MB.

So your friends who use Gmail can still only send 25MB worth of holiday pictures -- although that might be a blessing in disguise, in which case, thanks Google!

It begs the question: who is this new change aimed at? While you try to find an answer to that question, we will be hitting refresh on our Gmail tab in hope of someday receiving an email that's 50MB in size.