yahoo to offer 1 gig of space for free e-mail users

[kimchicowboy]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=528&ncid=528&e=4&u=/ap/20050323/ap_on_hi_te/yahoo_upgrades

Yahoo Inc. Again Expands E-Mail Storage

Wed Mar 23, 3:14 AM ET

Technology - AP

SUNNYVALE, Calif. - Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) is quadrupling the amount of storage provided with its free e-mail accounts and upgrading its desktop search software in its ongoing duel with rivals Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

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Yahoo said late Tuesday that it will provide 1 gigabyte of storage for each free e-mail account. The current limit is 250 megabytes. The expanded storage will be available in mid-April, said Brad Garlinghouse, Yahoo's vice president of communications products.

The Sunnyvale-based company also is expanding the reach of its desktop software, a test product designed to find material stored on computer hard drives. Yahoo's software, licensed from X1 Technologies, will now index content from e-mail address books and discussions in Yahoo's instant messaging service.

The expanded e-mail storage enables Yahoo to catch up with online search engine leader Google, which offers an invitation-only service that has been offering 1 gigabyte of storage for nearly a year.

When Google introduced "Gmail," Yahoo provided just 4 megabytes of free e-mail storage. Yahoo, which runs the world's most popular Web site, has gradually increased its e-mail capacity in response to Google's competitive threat. Microsoft's Hotmail service offers 250 megabytes of free e-mail storage.

As part of its e-mail changes, Yahoo also is providing software from Symantec Corp. to clean viruses detected in attachments.

Yahoo's desktop software is also competing an array of similar products, including offerings from Google and Microsoft.

[Jeffbx]

The whole thing's silly, IMHO. I bet across the entire range of these free mail services, the *average* storage spaced used is less than 50MB/account. You could offer a free TB of storage space and the averages probably wouldn't move too much.

I'd be interested to know how much actual, physical storage space Google & Yahoo have for each GB mailbox. I bet it's less than 100MB.

[Dman33]

Uh, google called and they would like their April 1, 2004 press release back. Nice that it takes Yahoo a year to catch up. :umm:

Jeffbx is right though, they could offer 1TB yet the average would be under 100MB. I have been using gmail from the beginning and it is my primary non-work e-mail yet it is only at 50MB. On the other hand, here at my company we have some users with mailboxes near 3GB! (Goes to show you how some people are so reliant on e-mail as a file transfer medium!)

[hapoo]

great news. I like my yahoo account more since i've had it so long.

[mcs328]

I like my yahoo account more than hotmail. My hotmail gets 25 spam emails a day and maybe one legit email. I haven't used my gmail really just because I don't like the interface. I would like a delete button not a delete scroll down option.

Has anyone been getting spammed by this SMS invite from people you know into their email?

My work email is limited to 75 megs because I get attatchments that should really be linked to the actual location on out LAN instead of clogging my Outlook.

[bachviet]

I don't know what to do with all these email spaces. :eek:

[Airencracken]

Gmail is still better. The interface is the real beauty.