DB Design of GMail: Multiple tables vs. one table?

I want to start an interesting topic about the DB design behind gmail:

Since the mail box is 1G, there must be a cluster of servers provides gmail service. One server, suppose it has 500G hard drive, may support 500 persons. How do you think google design DB? 500 tables for each user? (mail1, mail2, ...mail500) or one big table mail hold them all?

What is the performance difference between these two choice?

Thanks,

Joe Received on Fri Apr 01 2005 - 22:35:40 CEST