Thank you for participating in our Gmail beta program. We are ready to go live with Gmail, and are pleased to announce that you can keep your same email address! All accounts start fresh, but with no more "old" beta emails cluttering them, so you get the full storage space again!
-The Gmail management team

Hehe. I've had gmail for about a year and a half, but it says I'm not even using 1 meg of it yet. I think i'm just doing good on keeping it away from spammers and buisnesses.