Matt:

I don’t think Google is trying to be evil here. If my gmail account got close to the 7GB limit, I think I’d gladly pay for more space rather than opening a different account. As for the price, you can’t really equate it to the price of a hard drive. It’s willingness to pay once you have realized you’ve maxed out your inbox.

Matt,

I totally agree. It is reasonable to pay for something 'extra'. No doubt, but I still think it shows that Google is becoming more willing to collect money from end users, where previously they were collecting only from businesses (essentially) like domain work and the google box (indexing server for lease).

You're right though, there's nothing essentially 'wrong' with it, I just wanted to point out what I think is the first of a larger shift towards monetizing end users.